A Gossip on Hunting Men.
I do not suppose that William Somerville, the poet of “The Chase,” is
much read nowadays, though, doubtless, musty and dust-covered, his poems
lie among the neglected classics in the libraries of most country
houses. Yet he can lay better claim than any other bard to the title of
“Laureate of the Hunting Field” and he was a royal good sportsman to
boot. “A squire, well-born and six foot high,” is his own description of
himself to his brother poet, Allan Ramsay; and among the squires of his
native Warwickshire he held a foremost place. For his estates brought
him in £1,500 a year—a rental equivalent to at least £4,000 in the
present day. A jovial soul he was, too, with a heart as big as his body.
Generous to a fault, and freehanded in his spending of money, William
Somerville, like many good sportsmen of the same type before and since,
ran through his patrimony before he was forty. His friend, William
Shenstone, another almost forgotten poet, gives us a melancholy picture
of the latter days of the sporting squire, whose verses won the high
commendation of Johnson and Addison. “Plagued and threatened by wretches
that are low in every sense, he was forced to drink himself into pains
of the body, to get rid of the pains of the mind.” He died in 1742, and
was buried at Wotton, near Henley-in-Arden. In the churchyard there is a
monumental urn erected to his memory by Shenstone, but “_Tempus edax
rerum_” has made the inscription almost indecipherable.
I am reminded of Somerville in writing this rambling gossip on hunting
men, because no one has depicted with more animation and spirit than he
the opening of the hunting season; and there are at any rate three lines
of his which are familiar to all educated sportsmen, if only through Mr.
Jorrocks’s emendation:
“My hoarse-sounding horn
Invites thee to the Chase, the Sport of Kings,
Image of war without its guilt.”
It is to Somerville, then, that we owe the phrase, “the sport of Kings,”
more often, with better reason, nowadays, applied to the Turf.
Indeed, the Chase no longer merits the designation in its literal sense,
for Royalty is conspicuous by its absence from the hunting field. I
note, too, that English statesmen are no longer so keen to ride with
hounds as they once were. Golf seems to have more charms for Ministers
than hunting. Time was when Premiers and Secretaries of State were as
familiar figures at a meet of hounds as at a meeting of the Cabinet. Sir
Robert Walpole, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Earl
Granville, were all hard riders to hounds and loved no sport better than
the Chase. Even Mr. Gladstone, though not much of a sportsman in his
later life, was, I am told, in his earlier days sometimes to be seen in
Nottinghamshire, mounted on his old white mare, galloping after hounds
with his friend and Parliamentary patron, the Duke of Newcastle. And I
have met those who remember seeing the “Grand Old Man” at a still
earlier period of his career, in Berwickshire, keeping close up to
Willie Hay, of Dunse Castle, during a hard run.
And this, let me tell you, was no mean feat, for Willie Hay, when
mounted on his famous hunter, Crafty, despite his welter weight, was
hard to beat. In fact, he nearly always led the field with Crafty under
him; and after a bursting hour and twenty minutes the horse seemed as
little the worse for the going as his master, for both were thoroughbred
ones. Willie, to distinguish him from others of his numerous clan, was
known as “Hay of Drumelzier.” He came of an old Border stock—for he was
of the Tweeddale blood on his mother’s side—and there was a touch of the
ancestral reiver about him—the lawlessness, the recklessness, the
boldness of the Border cattle-lifter, were latent in Willie and found
vent in the hunting field. He was present at Waterloo as a spectator,
like the Duke of Richmond, but tradition has it that, unable to control
himself at the sight and sound of battle, he dashed incontinently into
the fray and rode right through one of the cavalry charges unhurt, more
fortunate than his younger brother, an officer in a Highland regiment,
who was slain on the slopes of Mont St. Jean.
The late Earl of Wemyss, then Lord Elcho, was another Scotsman of that
time who had a reputation for dare-devil riding. Indeed, he was known
all over the country, not only as a splendid horseman, but as one of the
finest all-round sportsmen of his day. As a youngster he had gone the
pace and “made things hum” to such a tune that his father found it
necessary to screw him up tightly.
But this did not prevent him from getting a pack of hounds together in
1830. He had the misfortune to lose his huntsman at the commencement of
his first season—the man broke his leg and died from the effects of the
accident—and Lord Elcho hunted the hounds himself. In this capacity he
showed that he could combine with hard riding a creditable amount of
Scottish canniness and caution.
In Joe Hogg, moreover, he had a capable first whip, a man who would
follow wherever the master or the hounds led. One day the fox made for a
bog and crossed it, the hounds, of course, following in pursuit, while
behind them came Lord Elcho and Joe Hogg, the latter entering as keenly
into the spirit of the adventure as his master. Next day some one said,
“Joe, how did you feel when you were following his Lordship over the
bog?” “Lord, sir,” he replied, “I did expect to be swallowed fairly up
alive every time my horse jumped, but nothing else could be done, for
the hounds were running right into him.” The bog was a mile and a half
across, and the frost was just enough to make firm the driest parts,
which admitted of the horses jumping from one tussock of grass to
another.
Lord Saltoun, again, was an excellent rider, and with pluck enough to
ride down the jagged steep of Berwick Law. He shone, too, with equal
light at the festive board, where his rendering of the “Man with the
Wooden Leg,” and other comic songs of the day, always “brought down the
house.” He fought with his regiment at Waterloo, where he greatly
distinguished himself in the defence of Hougomont, and afterwards
remained in France with the army of occupation. And thereby hangs a
tale.
While in quarters at St. Denis, Lord Saltoun, Lord William Lennox, Sim
Fairfield, and one or two more, when they got to their billets in an
hotel one night, found all their beds occupied. A French cavalry
regiment had ridden up, and the officers had taken possession of every
bedroom and locked themselves in. What was to be done? The Britishers
were by no means disposed to submit tamely to this unceremonious
invasion. They held a council of war. A bright idea suggested itself to
Lord Saltoun, he propounded it to his comrades; it met with their
enthusiastic approval, and they forthwith proceeded to carry it into
execution. First, the waiter and ostler were bribed to secrecy. Then the
conspirators went softly to work and changed all the boots which stood
outside each door. When this was done, Sim Fairfield, who could play any
instrument from a Jew’s harp to a trombone, got hold of a trumpet and
sounded the French “Boot and Saddle.” In an instant every Frenchman was
out of bed—doors were opened, boots eagerly snatched, and _then_—the
band began to play! Never was there heard such scrambling and swearing:
the air reeked with blasphemy. Men with large feet had got hold of small
boots, men with small feet found themselves lost in “jacks” a world too
wide for their shrunk shanks. Some tugged and cursed, others stumbled
and swore, till they all got outside and finally galloped off. Then Lord
Saltoun and his brother-plotters quickly took possession of the vacant
beds, barricaded their doors, and slept the sleep of the just.
Another great Scottish foxhunter was brought to my mind not long since
when I was skirting the coast along the Sound of Kilbrannan. About four
miles from Campbeltown, in the Mull of Kintire, I passed the beautiful
bay of Saddell, the graceful sweep of which attracted my attention, and
as I let my eye wander upwards over the strip of creamy white beach I
was struck by the singular charm of the landscape. Right up into the
heart of the wooded hillside runs a lovely glen—in the foreground among
its trim lawns, stands Saddell House; close by are the ruins of a grim
old castle-keep, and one can trace the venerable avenue of stately
beeches which leads to the ancient Abbey, where the old monks of Saddell
enjoyed themselves six hundred years ago. It is a place which has a
peculiar interest for sportsmen, for it was the home of John Campbell of
Saddell, one of the greatest foxhunters of his day, whose hunting songs
have won for him in Scotland a reputation as great as that of Whyte
Melville or Egerton Warburton in England. A man, too, who could not only
write good songs, but sing them as no one else could.
“Johnny” Campbell was a welter-weight, scaling something like sixteen
stone, yet he was always in the first flight. He chose his horses more
for strength than appearance, and was seldom seen on one over fifteen
hands, but they were all short-legged, well-bred, steady and strong. He
thought a good deal more of the safety of his horses than of his own.
When he was at Melton Mowbray in 1832 English foxhunters looked upon him
as the maddest of Scotchmen, because, in trying to save his horses, he
would jump _into_ the hedges instead of _over_ them, quite regardless of
the consequences to himself; for, like Assheton Smith, the Laird of
Saddell did not mind how many falls he got. He was a tall, fine,
handsome man, and when dressed at night in his scarlet coat with green
facings and buff breeches (the uniform of the Buccleuch Hunt), his equal
would have been hard to find in the three kingdoms.
It is not often that the qualities of poet, singer, _bon vivant_ and
sportsman are found combined in one personality as they were in “Johnny”
Campbell, and, consequently, it is not surprising that the Laird of
Saddell was immensely popular. Both in England and Scotland he was voted
the best of good fellows, and was the life and soul of the convivial
parties to which every host was eager to invite him. He would sometimes
astonish and delight the company by improvising a song, setting it to an
air and singing it the same evening. One memorable feat of this kind he
achieved when he was a guest at Rossie Priory, the seat of Lord
Kinnaird, in Perthshire, in 1831. They had had a famous run that morning
with Mr. Dalzell’s hounds, and, taking that for his theme, he rattled
off a parody of “We have been friends together.” Beginning with “We have
seen a run together,” he described the run throughout, and concluded
with:
“By Auchter House we hied him
Still haunted by their cry;
Till in Belmont Park we spied him,
When we knew that he must die.
Through the hedge he made one double,
As his sinking soul did droop;
’Twas the end of all his trouble
When we gave the shrill _Who-whoop_!
Oh, now then let us rally;
Let us toast the joyous tally,
And a bumper to our ally,
The gallant John Dalzell.”
But there were times when “Johnny” Campbell was not altogether a
desirable companion to those who valued their lives and limbs, for he
had a strong smack of Jack Mytton’s devilry in him, and when the demon
of mischief possessed him he did not care a rap for his own skin or that
of any of his companions. One night—or rather dark morning—a party of
four gentlemen, including “Johnny” Campbell and Sir David Baird, who had
been dining at Marchmont House, started to drive home to Dunse in a
post-chaise. After passing through the park gates the post-boy got down
to close them. Campbell thereupon leaned out of the window, and with a
terrific “Who-oo-op awa’,” set the horses off in a panic. There was an
open drain in front of them, a big mound of earth to the left, and a
lake to the right. What the fate of the chaise and its occupants would
have been had not the post-boy, who was a particularly smart young
fellow, sprinted to the horses’ heads and stopped them just in time, one
shudders to conjecture. Campbell laughed heartily, and thought it was an
excellent joke. Sir David, who was a dare-devil himself of a different
kind, preserved a saturnine indifference; but the other two were scared
almost out of their senses. Never again would either of them trust
himself in anything on wheels with Campbell of Saddell, for, as one of
them remarked, “Johnny Campbell is one of the most agreeable
companions—_anywhere but in a post-chaise_.”
Lord Eglinton, who for five-and-twenty years was, I suppose, the most
popular man in the United Kingdom, was another notable hunting
contemporary of Campbell of Saddell and Lords Elcho and Saltoun. He was
then only twenty-four years of age, and the classic triumphs of Blue
Bonnet, Van Tromp, and the immortal Flying Dutchman were yet in the
future. But he had already proved himself an exceptionally bold and
skilful horseman, both across country and on the flat. His half-brother,
Charlie Lamb, too, was another of the right sort, who could hold his own
with the best on the racecourse or with hounds. But Charlie had, what
Lord Eglinton lacked, a dry humour, which gave a racy flavour to his
personality. An anecdote of his earlier years will suffice for a
sample:—
“Why don’t you send Charlie to sea?” an old friend and a right
honourable old maid one day said to the Countess, his mother. “It is
very bad for a young man to be idling away his time at home.”
After a short pause, Charlie, who was present, furnished the answer
himself.
“Do you not think,” said he, “the stomach pump would answer as well?”
But enough of Scottish sportsmen for the present; let me turn to England
and her foxhunters. The name of John Warde is, of course, familiar as a
household word to every one who takes the slightest interest in
hunting-lore, for was he not one of the greatest among the “Fathers of
Foxhunting”?
Well, there are some stories of John Warde which will, I dare say, be
new to many readers of BAILY. Richard Tattersall, the then head of the
famous house, always gave a “Derby Dinner” late in the week preceding
Epsom, to which some of the most distinguished men of the day were
invited. John Warde never missed this function; indeed, the festive
occasion would have been nothing without him to represent foxhunting.
Sure as the dial to the sun, a few minutes before six his portly form
would issue from his yellow chariot, in his silver knee and shoe
buckles. The pipe of port which the host and his brother Edmund laid
down annually had to pay a heavy tax laid on it, for each man had to
drink “John Warde and the noble Science” in a silver fox’s head, which
held nearly a pint, and admitted of no heel taps. None stood the ordeal
better than “glorious John” himself; he would rise from the table steady
as a rock, and before he left always made a point of going up to the
drawing-room in the small hours to bid Mrs. Tattersall good-bye, for
that good lady never went to bed till she had seen her husband precede
her.
His mother lived to a great age, and became very deaf, but she always
had her page-boy in every Sunday to say his Collect and Catechism, and
although she could not hear a word he said, yet from the earnest
expression of his face, and his never hesitating, she took it for
granted that he repeated them properly, and invariably gave him a
shilling. John, however, getting a hint that the young rascal imposed
upon the good-natured lady, one Sunday morning hid himself in the room.
As usual, young Buttons was called up, and requested to commence his
religious exercise; then, with a perfectly solemn face, he began, “Hey
diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon,”
and so on to the end of the old nursery rhyme.
“There’s a good boy,” said the old lady, putting into his hand a
shilling. But just as Master Hopeful was departing, jubilant, whack came
a whip, with which John had provided himself on spec, down upon his
shoulders. The welting he got made him remember Collect and Catechism
for many a day.
Warde attained the patriarchal age of eighty-five. Like all sportsmen of
the “golden time,” he was a _bon vivant_, but in his last days he had to
give up wine.
By a strange irony of fate, he died of water on the chest.
“This is a pretty business,” he said. “Here is a man dying of water, who
never drank but one glassful of that nauseous liquid in his life.”
Hunting has its enthusiasts—its almost fanatical enthusiasts, I may
say—and probably most readers of BAILY have met with one or more of
them. For my part I have come across many, but neither in my experience
nor my reading have I encountered a more thorough hunting enthusiast
than the hero of the following anecdote.
Many years ago a Mr. Osbaldiston, younger son of a gentleman in the
North of England, was foolish enough to fall in love with one of his
father’s maid-servants, and quixotic enough to marry her. As soon as the
news came to the parental ears the imprudent Benedict was turned out of
doors, his only worldly possessions being a Southern hound in pup. He
and his partner in disgrace started for London, and after a while the
young man succeeded in obtaining a clerk’s situation in an attorney’s
office at £60 a year. As time went on olive branches gathered about him
to the tune of half-a-dozen, from which it may be supposed he had enough
to do with his small pittance to keep eight pairs of grinders in work.
Yet he not only discharged these onerous domestic duties as beseemed a
good husband and father, but he also enjoyed his favourite sport, and
kept a couple of horses and two couples of hounds!
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.
The “Iron Duke” himself was a keen lover of the sport. Mr. Larpent, who
was Judge-Advocate of the British forces during the Peninsular War,
relates, in his private journal, some anecdotes which prove how hard a
rider and good a sportsman the conqueror of Napoleon was. For his own
personal service Wellington kept fifteen horses, and paid high prices
for them; and when one reads of such galloping to and fro as Mr. Larpent
records, one is not surprised at the number of the Duke’s stud.
Here is an extract from the journal which illustrates both the tireless
energy and the keen sportsmanship of the Duke:—
“Lord Wellington is quite well again; was out hunting on Thursday, and
being kept in by rain all yesterday, is making up for it to-day by
persisting in his expedition to the Fourth Division. He was to set out
at seven this morning for the review of General Cole’s division, on a
plain beyond Castel Rodriques, about twenty-eight miles from hence; was
to be on the ground about ten, and was to be back to dinner to-day by
four or five o’clock. This is something like vigour, and yet I think he
overdoes it a little; he has, however, a notion that it is exercise
makes headquarters more healthy than the rest of the Army generally is,
and that the hounds are one great cause of this.”
Of these hounds Mr. Larpent gives the following details: “We have three
odd sorts of packs of hounds here, and the men hunt desperately.
Firstly, Lord Wellington’s, or as he is called here, ‘the Peer’s’; these
are foxhounds, about sixteen couples; they have only killed one fox this
year, and that was what is called mobbed. These hounds, from want of a
huntsman, straggle about and run very ill, and the foxes run off to
their holes in the rocks on the Coa. Captain Wright goes out, stops the
holes overnight, halloes, and rides away violently. From a hard rock
sometimes the horse gets up to his belly in wet gravelly sand; thus we
have many horses lamed and some bad falls. The next set of hounds are
numerous. The Commissary-General, Sir R. Kennedy, is a great man in this
way, and several others. And thirdly, Captain Morherre, that is, the
principal man of this place, has an old poacher in his establishment,
with a dozen terriers, mongrels and ferrets, and he goes out with the
officers to get rabbits. Lord Wellington has a good stud of about eight
hunters. He rides hard, and only wants a good gallop, but I understand
knows nothing of the sport, though very fond of it in his own way.”
[Illustration:
MONAUL PHEASANTS.
]
[Illustration:
KOKLASS PHEASANTS.
]
The Duke, as most readers of BAILY are no doubt aware, was a warm friend
and admirer of that great king of the hunting field, Thomas Assheton
Smith, whom Napoleon introduced to his officers as “le premier chasseur
d’Angleterre.” And it was always a subject of regret to the hero of
Waterloo that Assheton Smith had not joined the Army; “For,” said the
Duke, “he would have made one of the best cavalry officers in Europe,”
and he frequently remarked that many of his own distinguished cavalry
officers in the Peninsular War owed their horsemanship to the example of
Assheton Smith.
I have said that the Duke took a keen interest in hunting, and I may add
that he gave practical proof of his genuine love of the sport; for when
he was once asked to subscribe to a pack which was in financial
difficulties, he said, “Get what you can and put my name down for the
difference.” The “difference” was £600 a year, which the Duke cheerfully
paid for many years.