For the sport of the month past we have nothing but praise. It has been
one of those months which live in the memory of hunting people. The
principal chases of which we have to write are notable alike for pace
and for duration, the Cottesmore on three consecutive weeks having
enjoyed runs which were of the kind which for want of a better word we
must call “old-fashioned,” in that they lasted over an hour and covered
a great variety of country.
I may repeat here, because it is a remark which cannot be gainsaid, and
is not without its moral, that those countries have much the best sport
which have the largest stock of foxes. The reasons for this are clear
and I think easy to see on reflection, that where foxes are numerous
hounds have plenty of blood, and there is a wider field for natural
selection in improving the breed of foxes. Sport, as might be expected,
steadily improves as the season goes on, the bad foxes are weeded out,
and their places are often taken by more mature animals from other
countries. Whether foxes are or are not bred in a covert it will never
want foxes if suitable in the shelter and food it affords. The best of
the Cottesmore runs which must be placed on record, was the one from
Prior’s Coppice on Tuesday, January 23rd. There have been longer points
and straighter runs than this, but none where a better pace was
sustained over a beautiful but not easy country for a prolonged time.
Many days have threatened fog or frost in the mornings, and yet have
been pleasant enough before the day was over. So it was on January 23rd.
The morning fog was cold and discouraging. How true is Whyte Melville’s
saying, that “Courage is a question of caloric.” Prior’s Coppice was
reached, and though hounds left some at least of their followers at a
disadvantage, yet when once clear of the covert it was clear that hounds
were bending left handed. By the time Cole’s Lodge was reached the pack
had started to hunt at a good pace, and the field were in their places.
Those who had galloped to reach hounds had now to sit down to ride to
keep with the pack. A slight turn helped. Then came a climb that made
one feel the advantage of after-Christmas condition. Before Christmas a
horse that had climbed the Hog’s Back would have needed a pull, now we
can ask him to gallop freely.
The fox worked as if Wardley Wood was his point, but his strength began
to fail, and he turned away before he crossed the road. Hounds swung
round with him, and it was the pressure they exercised that defeated
him. Now he began to turn and twist, but still keeping out of the way of
hounds in the most gallant fashion. He was actually in the brook with
the hounds, and at last crawled into Manton Gorse, from which he came
out to die. An hour and three quarters of the best country, and at a
pace that found out the weak points of many horses. Those who rode it
fairly on one horse knew that they had to quote Whyte Melville once
more, “not merely a good hunter, but a good horse.”
To find any run equal to this we have to go back to the Pytchley hunt
after a meet at Weedon Barracks, on Friday, January 12th. In this case
hounds hunted a fox which has, it is believed, run before them once at
least before this season. This great hunt lasted at least for two hours,
and there was just that amount of difficulty and hindrance for followers
in the early stages that enabled hounds to settle down to their work.
There was much heavy going, too; horses began to stop before, near Ashby
Ledgers, hounds on the grass began to run away from them. Near Daventry
wire cut the huntsman off from hounds, and with a beaten fox crawling in
front hounds lost him after all.
The best Wednesday was at Yelvertoft. The fox an out-lier, hounds laid
on in a grass field over which the fox had run a minute or two before.
Fences that held up the boldest, while hounds settled down, made a hunt
a certainty. There were a good many casualties at the flooded streams.
Never touching a covert and running fairly straight hounds ran on by
Naseby Covert; there were two lines here, and hounds no doubt took up
the fresh one. An eight-mile point in an hour tells of a first-rate
hunting run. Another half-hour and the fox that intervened paid the
penalty with his life. One of the great events of the hunting season is
the Quorn Hunt Ball. This year more than 300 people gathered in the Corn
Exchange at Melton, a gathering which included hunting people from many
parts of the world and all parts of England. It often happens that show
days are below the average of the sport usually shown. But Captain
Forester, who was hunting the hounds, was fortunate in finding a fox
which, if it made no great point, showed to the visitors a fine
selection of the famous riding grounds of the Quorn hunt.
The fixture after the ball, on Friday, February 2nd, was at Egerton
Lodge, which has been with so many generations the social centre of the
hunting world. This was appropriate, and so was the drawing of the
Hartopp coverts at Gartree Hill, and the visit of the fox to the Punch
Bowl, his timely excursion over the Burton Flats, which is, perhaps, to
the stranger the simplest form of Leicestershire. After running through
Adam’s Gorse the fox led the visitors into an almost perfect region of
grass and fences.
Altogether it was a day of which one could remark that anyone who rode
the line faithfully would have a fair idea of what hunting with the
Quorn meant.
On Saturday, February 3rd, Tom Bishopp once more carried the horn after
being laid by with influenza. The Normanton Hill coverts held a
traveller. For an hour and forty minutes hounds drove their fox over a
country which is for Leicestershire rather given over to arable. But
scent and a fairly straight line helped them, and when the end came at
Broughton Station they were nearly eleven miles from their starting
point, and had been going for an hour and three quarters. Thus the pace
must have been good. This was the straightest run of the whole week if
we except the Duke of Beaufort’s two gallops after meeting at
Cherrington on February 2nd in the Tetbury country. Hounds dashed away
for four miles. They were stopped and brought back. A third fox proved
equally good, for he led them right away into the choicest of the
V.W.H., the followers enjoying a variety of fencing, beginning with
stone walls, and including the rough hedges sometimes set on banks, and
the wide ditches of the vale country. The Duke’s country and the V.W.H.
ride deep in wet weather, but they also carry a scent under such
conditions. Hounds had come some nine miles in a direct line before they
turned and came back by Charlton Park. But in point of distance the run
of the month was in the remote district of East Cornwall, where hounds
are hunted by Mr. Connock Marshall, and Mr. Philpotts Williams controls
the field. It was in Torr Brake the fox was found, and a ring was worked
out without any extraordinary promise. On leaving the covert again the
scent improved, and from that point onwards hounds were well served.
Even supposing, of which there is no certainty, that they came away from
Torr the second time with a fresh fox, it was a marvellous run and a
wonderful instance of endurance for fox and hounds. It was not till two
hours and a half were over that hounds began to run for blood, and near
Berry Tor the leaders caught a view, and ran into a most gallant fox
that struggled to the very last. It is said that twenty-five miles was
covered as hounds ran, and if this is correct the pace was fast, as the
run lasted under two hours and three-quarters from find to finish.
The Woodland Pytchley had what may be described rather as a very
excellent day’s hunting (on Feb. 5th) than as a great run. They were
stopped at the end of five hours, having been hunting all the time. But
there were several changes, how many it would be difficult to say, since
such fox-haunted coverts as Rushton, Pipewell, Brampton, and Dingley
Warren, were some of the coverts visited during the day. It was a
remarkable performance for the hounds, and, like the run last mentioned,
speaks volumes for the kennel management of the pack.
Staghounds have, like the foxhounds, had a capital month. Mr. Stanley
brought off a notable performance on the Brendon Hills. He found a hind,
and hunted her for four hours with a moderate scent. The hounds worked
well, and their admirable condition carried them through. But we know,
of course, that much in these cases depends on the combination of
patience and promptness in the man who hunts them. The point was that
there was no change in spite of the danger of this on the moorland at
this time of year. That the chase of the carted deer has some points of
resemblance with that of their wild kindred, is shown by the experience
of the Surrey Staghounds when visiting the Kentish side of their
country. They had two admirable runs, and in both the quarry ran into
herds of park deer, the second one having to be left in Knole Park after
a fine chase of two and a half hours. It seems as if there was no limit
to the powers of a red deer hind in the winter, so that as the old
huntsman used to say, “She can run so long as she have a mind to.”
The changes among masters which January brings are not very numerous.
None of the leading hunts are vacant, and some of those which were in
want of new masters have succeeded in finding them. The latest
resignations are from Hampshire, where Mr. F. L. Swindell and Mr. Yorke
Scarlett are resigning the Hursley and the Tedworth. In no county are
shooting and hunting more likely to clash than in Hampshire. Moreover,
the county is a difficult one to hunt, yet the various packs, including
the Hambledon, the H.H., and the Vine have had a good season on the
whole. No doubt the plentiful rain has helped to bring about this
result. But good masters and huntsmen such as Hampshire has throughout
its hunting history had quite its share of having helped this result
greatly. Mr. Long, the grandson of a former master of the Hambledon,
will, it is said, take the Hursley. In the north Mr. J. B. Pease
succeeds Mr. Alec Browne with the Percy. In the Midlands, Sir J. Hume
Campbell buys Mr. McNeill’s famous bitch pack with which to hunt North
Cotswold, to the great satisfaction of the country. Among huntsmen the
changes are neither few nor unimportant. It is said that Gosden will
leave the Meynell; it is certain that John Isaac retires from the
Pytchley after twenty-six years of faithful and efficient service with
that pack. He will be succeeded by Frank Freeman, a son of the Will
Freeman whom I recollect with the South and West Wilts. Gillson, a son
of George Gillson of the Cottesmore, who has been hunting the last-named
pack with great success, is to follow Freeman in the Bedale country. I
can recollect him a mere lad as second whipper-in to Shepherd, so long
with the South Oxfordshire. Gillson has not forgotten, I dare say, the
queer-tempered horse he used to ride, and the kicking matches which,
though unpleasant when he wanted to turn hounds, no doubt helped to make
him the horseman he is.
The death of Charles Littleworth, formerly huntsman to the fifth Earl of
Portsmouth, removes from hunting circles one of the best judges of
foxhounds and terriers, and a most admirable woodland huntsman. Of those
I have known in a lengthening experience none were better than the late
Lord Macclesfield and Charles Littleworth at hunting a fox in strong
woodlands. Both, I think, liked a big dog-hound for the work. The blood
of the Eggesford kennels, as it was in Lord Portsmouth’s time, runs in
the veins of many of the best packs of the present day, the Badminton
and the Four Burrow each owing something to the Eggesford kennel. Then
the famous pack with which Sir Richard Glyn and John Press hunted the
Blackmore Vale owed much to the lucky cross of the Portsmouth Commodore
with Mr. Villebois’ Matchless. But this is too large a subject for such
notes as these. As a breeder of working terriers Charles Littleworth had
no superior and few equals, as those who have had the luck to own one of
his strain will bear witness.
The death of Lady Howe removes one who as a sportswoman stood among the
first. It is only as a rider to hounds that I have to write of her in
these columns. It has been my good fortune to see all the leading riders
to hounds of the last twenty years, and among them there was none better
than Lady Georgiana Curzon. It used to be said that there were five
ladies who stood out as riders to hounds, and the late Lady Howe was one
of the best of these.