History has been lavish in a casual sort of way with hounds and hunting
during the last century. “Nimrod” in early days initiated descriptions
of our most fashionable and best countries, as well as their denizens,
and did a leading part to bring sporting literature into popularity; yet
he was in no sense a hound man—he loved the horse and his rider, and
was, _par excellence_, their historian. “Cecil,” who followed him, was,
on the contrary, a hound man, his happiness lay in the kennel, and in
his descriptions of the countries through which he toured, his pen ever
hung on the treasures of the kennel, and its management in breeding.
“Druid,” in his unique and gossiping way, gathered his facts and
hound-lore from fireside chats with huntsmen—the best of his day. To him
sketches of hunting countries mattered little; he simply delighted his
readers with fragmentary touches, so pithy and telling, of men and
hounds, and their manners, which, however, added little to the general
history of hounds or hunting throughout the country. It has been left to
Sir Humphrey de Trafford in this twentieth century to initiate the idea,
and carry it out, of gathering together all the threads of bygone days,
and weld them together in a comprehensive form, showing what our
foxhounds throughout the United Kingdom are at the present time—their
early history, their main features, their chief supporters, and their
hound-lore. To bring all this into the compass of one volume was no easy
matter, where so many interesting facts had to be garnered into a given
space, and that by those best versed in their subject; yet the task has
been accomplished in a way which I venture to think its readers will
appreciate as eminently practical and useful.
Whether you take this historical sporting book as a whole, or in the
light of individual packs and their countries, you cannot fail to be
struck by the landmark that it is for us to-day. Here we find one
hundred and ninety-nine English packs of foxhounds in England and Wales
(and I have failed to discover one that is missing), twenty-four packs
in Ireland, and eleven in Scotland; and it needs little research to see
how they have one and all grown and flourished through good and bad
times, fighting and encompassing difficulties, spreading, subdividing,
increasing in numbers and in importance, ever onwards, until it can
hardly be said that there is a square mile of country outside large
towns or manufacturing centres where the foxhound is not honoured and
welcomed. This is veritably a proud thing to say in the year 1906, yet
it brooks no denial. It will surprise many readers to find with what
authenticity some of our great packs can carry back their history to
bygone centuries. Of these the Berkeley bears the palm, for did not a
Lord of Berkeley so far back as the fourteenth century establish a
metropolitan pack with kennels at Charing Cross? His descendants had so
fostered and spread their hunting that in 1770 the then Lord Berkeley
held all the country from London to Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire,
a distance of 124 miles, with kennels at Cranford, Gerrard’s Cross in
Bucks, Nettlebed in Oxon, and at Berkeley Castle. Thus arose the old
Berkeley Hunt, which became a separate country in the year 1800, only to
be since sub-divided into an east and west pack. The Berkeley also
annexed at one time nearly the whole of Gloucestershire, and founded the
Cotswold when they built kennels at Cheltenham. The noted Harry Ayris
was huntsman at Berkeley from 1826 to 1857.
[Illustration:
SIXTH VISCOUNT GALWAY IN 1875, WITH HIS FAVOURITE HOUNDS, BRIDESMAID
AND RUBY.
(_From “The Foxhounds of Great Britain and Ireland,” by permission of
the publishers._)
]
The Belvoir also claim a very old heritage, viz., from the reign of
James the First, and the first Duke of Rutland hunted about the year
1650. The Bramham Moor pack was instituted in the reign of Queen Anne,
and will ever be associated with the family of Lane Fox. The Burstow owe
their origin to Sir Thomas Mostyn, who migrated from North Wales. The
Burton will always be coupled with the name of Lord Henry Bentinck. The
Badsworth claims 1730 as its date of origin, while the Badminton
commenced its unbroken reign of ducal mastership and signal success in
1762, including as it then did the present Heythrop country and nearly
all Wiltshire. The long service of their huntsmen has always been
phenomenal. Philip Payne served as huntsman under four dukes, and Will
Long, who succeeded, served as whip under him for seventeen seasons; and
now Will Dale is continuing the _rôle_, in succession to Charles
Hamblin, although as huntsmen themselves the last three Dukes of
Beaufort have had no compeers.
The Bedale is inseparably associated with Lord Darlington and the
dukedom of Cleveland; while the Old Berkshire country is, curiously
enough, indebted to the Church for its early history; the Rev. John
Loder being its founder in 1760, only to be succeeded by his son-in-law,
Mr. Symonds, another clergyman, in 1850. This would seem to be a fitting
history for a pack kennelled so near Oxford University; but indeed, as I
have had occasion to mention in a former article in your Magazine,
foxhunting owes much to its patronage by the Church from time
immemorial, and surely this is not its most inglorious tradition.
We cannot help being struck with the number of packs that come under the
letter B in this volume, no less than twenty-three of them, including
the Duke of Buccleuch’s, in Scotland; and the letter C comes next with
over twenty.
The Earl of Yarborough has the proud distinction of being the owner of a
pack that through eight generations has been handed down lineally as a
private pack to the present day, and from 1714 its kennel book has been
maintained carefully. It is, indeed, hard to say how much foxhunting
owes to such splendid sportsmen as the Pelhams have been in their care
and breeding of hounds. The Yarborough pages in this book are a
revelation to sportsmen who appreciate what a landowner can do with
60,000 acres within a ring fence, and able to indulge to the full in
hereditary tastes.
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn’s pack, the Wynnstay, is another instance of
the success of a territorial magnate successfully forming an historic
pack and country.
The Quorn, the head and front of fashion, that has led the way among the
daring hard-riding spirits of Great Britain for more than 200 years, is
most ably dealt with in this volume. From the days of John Boothby in
1700, and of old Hugo Meynell, who succeeded him in 1753 up to 1800,
there have been twenty-five masters of the Quorn who have one and all
handed down their names to posterity as worthy of note, and have earned
the gratitude of many thousands of men who have in their time satiated
their ambitions over those Leicestershire pastures, where the oxer still
holds its own, and wire is treated as a noxious weed. The picture of old
Hugo Meynell and his old huntsman, Jack Raven, is inimitable; you can
see there the characters of those two aged sportsmen discussing the
_pros and cons_ of the day, and can fancy how fully they are entering
into it. Let us leave that Meltonian chapter with all its particulars
and prints to the full appreciation of its readers.
The Cottesmore is scarcely a less interesting chapter. Founded by the
Noel family at Exton Park in 1753, that adjoins the village of
Cottesmore, from which it takes its name, it soon came into the Lowther
family, and was hunted for a long series of years by the first Earl of
Lonsdale. Then we find Sir Richard Sutton at the head of affairs,
followed by Sir John Trollope, afterwards Lord Kesteven, and Mr. Henry
Greaves—always in high feather—with its glorious sweet-scenting country,
its grand woodlands, strong foxes, and expansive acreage of upland
pastures. Surely, if any country in the world is made for the sport of
kings, that country is the Cottesmore, which now enjoys the acme of
sport, and worthily so.
We long to dwell on the Atherstone, the Meynell, the Oakley, the
Grafton, Lord Harrington’s, Lord Galway’s, and the Rufford, did our
space permit, but are not their stories all faithfully and succinctly
told there?
Cheshire stands out well, and the old Tarporley Hunt Club is a lasting
tribute to the hunting instincts of that famed shire, where every other
sport stands aside to make way for it. Shropshire also is its goodly
neighbour, hunted as it is from end to end, right up into its Welsh
border, in a style worthy of its best traditions; and viewed from its
grand old Hawkstone on the north to gaunt Clee Hill on the south, is a
fair domain of sport.
Yorkshire, of course, is another leading feature in the book, as well it
must be, and so are our southern, eastern, and western counties; none,
indeed, escape all the notice that is their due; and as it is not given
to all sportsmen to revel in the realms of pasture, unalloyed by the
drawbacks of small enclosures, hills and dales, crags and boulders, mud
and marshes, or impenetrable woodlands, so we all accommodate ourselves
to locality, and are happy in our less ambitious surroundings and
histories. To these this book will not the less be a treasure. Whether
we happen to be east or west, north or south countrymen, we recognise a
friendly word, a well-known and honoured portrait on every page.
Neither Ireland nor Scotland has been forgotten, as it is well they
should not be, for as far as hunting is concerned, are we not united in
a bond of love and friendship, which it will indeed be hard to sever?
For is it not to those Irish horses that we owe our mainstay over here,
that so soon learn to jump our flying fences as easily as their native
banks? And do not we welcome some of our finest riders from across the
Irish Channel?
In dealing, however, with the historical side of our foxhunting book, we
must not overlook its value as regards the foxhound himself. Great pains
have been taken by the compiler of this work to define the combination
of blood which has been diffused into each individual kennel and has
contributed to its success. To hound-lovers this book must prove of
especial value, and we can picture the delight of our old friend, Mr.
Cecil Legard,—whose portrait is to be found in the introduction—when he
scans its pages, and the satisfaction he feels at having spent many
years in perfecting the Foxhound Stud Book. It would ill become me to
enter into much foxhound lore in this short review, further than to say
that, from the days of the old Corbet Trojan down to those of Brocklesby
Rallywood, and so on through the Belvoir celebrities and the Craven and
Warwickshire favourites, as well as others in profuse plenty, not only
are they made mention of, but the portraits of many of them adorn the
pages and speak for themselves as to the symmetrical beauty of the
modern foxhound—a fact that the success of the Peterborough Hound Shows
bears ample evidence to. When I look at these splendid specimens of
hound culture I cannot ever refrain from picturing what natural
perfection there must be in the grand attributes of that little animal
the fox, which for centuries right up to to-day has been enabled to
withstand the onslaught of his foes, and defy all their artifices.
A leading feature of this book is its illustrations. It will be evident
to all who study it that to gather such a collection of portraits of men
and hounds, as well as innumerable hunting groups and meets in almost
every country, has been a work that has taxed the energies of all who
have had a hand in its compilation. Such a thing has never been
attempted before, and its accomplishment will suffice for many a long
year. Turn over page after page as you may, you come across old and
young friends, the Nestors of bygone days, and our best young Nimrods of
to-day. This is in itself a theme on hunting, which I long to go away
“full cry” on, were it not that you, Mr. Editor, let fall the
threatening crack of the whip, warning me homewards. It concludes with
tabulated pedigrees of some of our most celebrated hounds that have won
the leading honours at Peterborough, such as Fitzwilliam Harper, V.W.H.
Damsel, Belvoir Dexter, Grove Druid, Puckeridge Cardinal, Zetland
Rocket, and Lord Middleton’s Cheerful, and winds up with a key plate of
the Quorn meet at Baggrave Hall.
Perhaps we ought to say a few words in commendation of those fourteen
sportsmen whose brains and pens have assisted the Editor in bringing
this great work on foxhounds before the public. They knew their subject,
and have striven hard and well to draw together all the cardinal points
of interest in each country with which they had to deal. How far they
have succeeded it will be for readers or critics to say. Inasmuch as I
am myself a helpmate in this matter to a small extent it will not become
me to say any more than that it has been a labour of love to me, and
that I feel sure that Sir Humphrey de Trafford will, as the Editor, hand
his name down to posterity in honour for this standard work.