"registered" horses were commandeered by Government, fox hunting in
counties where it is not the main business of life might be supposed to
languish. As a matter of fact, it did not; and if the fields were smaller
than usual, and a good many familiar faces missing, the master very
properly felt that as he had his pack and there were plenty of foxes, he
might as well employ the one and hunt the other, and keep up the spirits
of the county by good, sound sport and plenty of it. Masters who take this
view, and there are very few who do not, are public benefactors and
shining examples; for it is not only the men who hunt who benefit vastly
by the change and exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The
whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the
hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the
village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts
every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow
of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not,
considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack
trots up to the green before the old grey church at eleven on a February
morning. Wittenham Wood lies on the very edge of the Old Berkshire
country, and as the river blocks all one side of it is naturally not one
of the favourite meets. But at the time of writing, early in February a
meet was duly advertised, and punctually to time the hounds were there.
Some people seem to think that modern fox-hunting is not so thorough as it
was in the past. We know better, and without imitating Mr. Jack Spraggon,
or reminding every one present of that "two thousand five
hundred--twenty-five 'undred--pounds a year" which Lord Scamperdale did or
did not spend on his pack, are very well aware of what our master and the
servants and the hounds had done that morning. The meet is on the edge of
his country, sixteen miles from his house, and he has ridden over all the
way, rising before the sun has got through more than the outside layer of
the mists. There is no special honour and glory awaiting him in return.
The cover to be drawn is surrounded for miles by deep and holding land now
soaked with rain. A run of any distinction is most improbable. On the
other hand, there will be plenty of hunting of a certain kind, and the
chance of seeing it, for the wood is overlooked by lofty hills. Therefore,
though the meet is small, the neighbourhood as a body expect to see plenty
of the hounds, and turn up expectant, the farmers on their cobs, the young
ladies on ponies and in dog-carts, and all the village who can be spared
for an hour on foot, while the small boys regard each other with rapturous
grins, and practise "holloaing" to improve their lung-power when the fox
breaks. When the hounds appear--they have come nearly as far from the
kennels as the master has from home--they are covered with road mud from
foot to head. The gritty splashes have changed all the white and tan to
grey, and made the black badger-pied. While some roll on the grass and
push themselves along sideways to get clean, and others attempt the
impossible task of licking the mud off their legs and feet, the older
hounds, who are less self-conscious, poke their heads into the hands and
against the chests of their ready-made friends, the village children, who
rush in while the master and the field and lookers-on are exchanging
courtesies, and embrace all the pack whom they can reach. Meantime the
"assets" for the day's sport, the material complement on which this
present assembly must rely for its day's hunting, lie in the cover and its
contents. A hundred acres of wood, in all stages of growth, from the high
thickets which the woodmen were felling yesterday, to the teazle and
stump-studded slope which they cut last year, with the deep river below
and the swelling hills above, is the cover.
[Illustration: FOX AND CUB. _From photographs by Charles Reid_.]
What the master would like would be that it should hold but one fox, that
that fox should get away over the hills and on to the downs beyond as
quickly as possible, and that he should never come back, but be killed
three parishes away. But no one believes in such luck; and the local
lookers-on do not in the least desire it. They want to see "a day's
hunting" in the wood, and a fox to every half-dozen hounds. As a fact
there are five foxes, not one, in the wood; and, passing from the general
to the particular, we may explain how they came there. The heavy rains of
the end of January filled all the drains, in which many foxes lie, so full
of water that they abandoned them in sheer disgust, and took to the warm
lying of the wood. Among these was a most attractive vixen, whose society
kept the rest from leaving when the weather improved; consequently, the
wood seemed full of foxes, none of which were disposed to leave it. When
the pack trotted up to the main ride, and the huntsman's ringing voice
sent them crashing into the four-years' growth by the river, a brace were
lying snug and dry in the old ash-stumps. One slipped into the river at
once and quietly swam to the opposite bank, while the other crept all
along the outside hedge and curled up in the corner waiting on events. The
vixen slipped into a badger earth under an old oak and stayed there, and a
couple more dog-foxes moved on into four acres of low slop, brambles,
shoots, and blackthorns, where they were winded by half the pack, while
the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and
music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills
above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to
tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds--surely
all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox
has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a
"slimness" all his own. The first fox doubles back along his tracks,
crosses the big ride, twenty yards lower, just as that part of the pack
which is hunting him flings on up the fence, and waits again till he hears
them break out where he first stopped. From outside, where the field are
waiting on a knoll which gives a downward view into the rolling acres of
the wood, the rest of the pack are seen forcing another fox upwards
towards the hills. The sight is as pretty as our woods can show. Down
below the red coats of the master and huntsman move up the rides, and the
heads and sterns of the broad line of hounds, now all clean and bright
after brushing through the wood, rise and fall, appear and vanish, as they
leap over or thrust through the low slop and brambles. In front, where a
goyle runs up to a hollow of the hill, the ground has been cleared of
wood, and the forest of tall teazle-tops is full of goldfinches, flying
from seed-head to seed-head, too tame to mind the noise or care for
anything but their breakfast. Yet even they gather and fly before the
approaching tumult. Hares come hurrying out, and dash over the smooth
hillside; magpies rise, poise themselves, slue round, and dive backwards
into the wood; and then circumspect, lopping easily and lightly along, a
fox crosses through the teazles, and slips down to a drain in the hollow;
and see! another fox behind him, along the same path, and on the same
errand, for each trots up to a covered drain, looks at it, and finding it
stopped, pauses a second to think, and takes his resolve. One slips back
into the wood, the other canters to the fence, rising the hill, looks out,
whisks his brush and is off--across the turf, over the fifty-acre field of
growing wheat, and away to the back of the hills. Half the pack are
running the first fox, who has slipped back to the river, but with the
other half every one gets clear off, and does his best over the awful
ground. The mud explodes like shells as the hoofs crush into it, but
somehow every one is across and away, and on to the green road and a line
of sainfoin much sooner than could be expected. The fox can be seen
crossing the back of the hill, looking big and red, and full of running;
but after twenty-five minutes over all sorts of ground, from medium bad to
"downright cruel," for the soaking rains have made a very pudding even of
the pasture, the fox is run into and killed close to the Thames. No one
need be sorry for him, for he had lived by theft and violence for the past
two years, and was duly eaten himself by his natural enemies. Then back to
the wood again, where the rest of the pack had been whipped off their fox,
and were waiting dolefully to begin again, by which time the other foxes,
of which two elected to stay, had resolved that come what might, they
would stick to the wood, of which they knew every inch by heart; and by
keeping under the river bank, sneaking under layers of felled brushwood,
dodging along drains, and other devices, postponed their fate for two
hours, when one was "chopped" and one broke away and was run till dark.
This is not the kind of thing that keeps hunting alive, but it is the kind
of day which occurs in most ordinary counties in February, and at which no
one greatly grumbles. But if a slow woodland day is unattractive, the man
who hunts in a modest way from London and wishes to be sure of a run has
no lack of choice. Try, for instance, a day on the South Downs, five miles
from the sea, on the vast uplands and among the furze-covered bottoms
behind Beachy Head, when the snow-clouds are rolling in from the Channel
and dusting the summits of the downs with white. There is at least the
certainty of foxes, and of a gallop over the highest and soundest land in
the South, and even "February fill-dike" cannot make the going heavy.
EWELME--A HISTORICAL RELIC
At the head of one of the smaller Thames tributaries, a few miles from the
river, lies Ewelme, the ancient Aquelma, so called from the springing
waters which rise there. There are trout in the brook and excellent
water-cresses higher up, which are cultivated scientifically. Also there
was a political row in Gladstonian days over an appointment to the living.
But the real interest of this exceptionally beautiful Thames-valley
village is that it is a survival, almost unchanged, of a "model village"
made in the time of the Plantagenets. As such it deserves a place in any
history, even a "natural" history, which deals with the river.
The village lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, not far from
Dorchester. The persons who made it a model village just before the Wars
of the Roses were William de la Pole, the first Duke of Suffolk, and his
Duchess, Alice, the grandchild of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Duke, as every one
knows, was for years the leading spirit in England during the early part
of the reign of Henry VI., whose marriage with Margaret of Anjou he
arranged in the hope of putting an end to the disastrous war with France.
His murder in mid-Channel--when his relentless enemies followed him out to
sea, took him from the ship in which he was going into exile, and beheaded
him on the thwarts of an open boat--was the forerunner of the most ghastly
chapters of blood and vengeance in civil feud ever known in this country.
But the grace and dignity of his home life in his palace at Ewelme, with
his Duchess to help him, are less well known, though the evidences of it
remain little altered at the present day.
[Illustration: EWELME POOL. _From a photograph by Taunt & Co_.]
Of course there was a village there long before the Duke of Suffolk became
possessed of it. It was such a perfect site that if any place in the
country round were inhabited, Ewelme would have been first choice. The
flow of water is one of the most striking natural features and amenities
of the place. It is a natural spring, coming out from the chalk of the
Chilterns, and forming immediately a lovely natural pool, under high,
tree-grown banks. This is still exactly as it was in the ancient days. No
water company has robbed it, and besides "The King's Pool," which is the
old name of the water, there are overflowing streams in every direction,
now used in careful irrigation for the growth of watercress, one of the
prettiest of all forms of minor farming. Fertile land, shelter from gales
by the overhanging hill, great trees, and abundance of ever-flowing water,
are the natural commodities of the place. It was of some importance very
early, for it gave its name to a Hundred. This hundred contains among
other places Chalgrove, where Hampden received his death-wound. Ewelme
belonged to the Chaucer family. The last male heir was Thomas, son of
Geoffrey Chaucer the poet, who left an only daughter Alice, destined to
become the greatest lady of her time. She married first the celebrated
Earl of Salisbury, who was killed by a cannon-shot while inspecting the
defences of Orleans during the siege which Joan of Arc raised. William de
la Pole, then Earl of Suffolk, was appointed commander of the English
forces in the Earl of Salisbury's place, and not only succeeded to his
office, but also married his Countess, who now became Countess of Suffolk.
It was long before either the Earl or his Countess could revisit Ewelme,
where the Earl must have had some property before his marriage, for his
elder brother, Earl Michael, was buried at the public expense in the
church of Ewelme after his death at Agincourt. For seventeen years the
Earl never left the war in France; but when Henry VI. was grown up he
arranged the marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and did his best to promote
peace. At this time Suffolk was the most powerful subject in the kingdom.
He was made a Marquis, and finally a Duke, and his Duchess was granted the
livery of the Garter. In 1424 they built a palace at Ewelme, and in due
course rebuilt the church, founded a "hospital for thirteen poor men and
two priests," and added to this a school. Palace, church, hospital, and
school were all of the same period of architecture, and that the very best
of its kind. Thus in the fifteenth century Ewelme was eminently a "one
man" place, like most of the model villages of to-day. The palace was
moated, and used as a prison as late as the Civil War. Margaret of Anjou
was kept there in a kind of honourable confinement for a short time, for
long after the Duke's murder the Duchess was in favour once more, in the
triumph of the Yorkists, and Margaret, who had been her Queen and
patroness, was given to her keeping as a prisoner both in her palace and
later at Wallingford Castle. Henry VIII. spent his third honeymoon there,
with Jane Seymour, and Prince Rupert lived in it during the Civil War.
Later, only the banqueting hall remained, which was converted into a manor
house.
But if the palace is gone, the church remains as evidence of the
magnificence of the Duke's ideas on the subject of a village place of
worship. He seems to have shared the apprehension felt by the Duke in
Disraeli's novel "Tancred," that he might be accused of "under-building
his position." In design it is very like another large church at Wingfield
in Suffolk, where his hereditary possessions lay, and where he was buried
after his murder, his body having been given to his widow. The same
architect possibly supervised both, but of the two Ewelme Church is the
finer. The interior is especially splendid, for in it are the tombs of the
Chaucers, and the magnificent sepulchre of the Duchess herself, on which
her emaciated figure lies wrapped in her shroud. This tomb of the Duchess
Alice is one of the finest monuments of the kind in England. The other
relic of the prosperity of Ewelme under the De la Poles is the hospital
and school they founded. "God's House" is the name now given to it, and it
is kept in good repair and used as an almshouse. The inner court is
surrounded by cloisters, and the whole is in exactly the same condition as
when it was built. The higher parts, constructed of brick, were the
quarters of the priest and schoolmaster. The ruin and subsequent murder of
the Duke, who adorned and beautified this model village in the early
fifteenth century, took place in 1450. Nearly all France was lost, and in
the hopes of conciliating the enemy, Maine and Anjou were given up by
Suffolk's advice. He was accused of "selling" the provinces, and a number
of vague but damaging charges were drawn up against him on evidence which
would not be listened to now in any court or Parliament, except perhaps in
a French State trial. Suffolk drew up a petition to the king, which shows
among other things the drain which the French wars made on the lives and
fortunes of the English nobles. After referring to the "odious and
horrible language that runneth through the land almost in every common
mouth, sounding to my highest charge and most heaviest slander," he
reminded the King that his father had died in the siege of Harfleur, and
his eldest brother at Agincourt; that two other brothers were killed at
the battle of Jargeau, where he himself had been taken prisoner and had to
pay L20,000 ransom; that while his fourth brother was hostage for him he
died in the enemy's hands; and that he had borne arms for the King's
father and himself "thirty-four winters," and had "abided in the war in
France seventeen years without ever seeing this land." The King's favour
secured that he should be banished instead of losing his head, for a State
trial was never anything better than a judicial murder. The following is
the letter written by an eye-witness to Sir John Paston, describing what
then happened: "In the sight of all his men he was drawn out of the great
ship into the boat, and there was an axe and a stock. And one of the
lewdest men of the ship bade him lay down his head and he should be fairly
ferd (dealt) with, and die on a sword. And he took a rusty sword and smote
off his head with half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet
and his doublet of velvet mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover;
and some say his head was set on a pole by it, and his men sit on the land
by great circumstance and pray." The writer says, "I have so washed this
bill with sorrowful tears that uneths ye shall not read it." The Countess
survived his fall and lived to be great and powerful once more. Her son
became the brother-in-law of sovereigns, and her grandchildren were
princes and princesses.
EEL-TRAPS
Fish and flour go together as bye-products of nearly all our large rivers.
The combination comes about thus: Wherever there is a water-mill, a mill
cut is made to take the water to it. The larger the river, the bigger and
deeper the mill cut and dam, unless the mill is built across an arm of the
stream itself. This mill-dam, as every trout-fisher knows, holds the
biggest fish, and where there are no trout, or few trout, it will be full
of big fish, while in the pool below there are perhaps as many more. Of
all the food fishes of our rivers the eel is really far the most
important. He flourishes everywhere, in the smallest pools and brooks as
well as in the largest rivers, and grows up to a weight of 9 lb. or 10
lb., and sometimes, though rarely, more. His price indicates his worth,
and never falls below 10d. per lb. Consequently he is valuable as well as
plentiful, and the millers know this well. On nearly all rivers the
millers have eel-traps, some of the ancient sort being "bucks," made of
withes, and worked by expensive, old-fashioned machinery like the mill
gear. Another and most paying dodge of the machine-made order is worked in
the mill itself, and makes an annexe to the mill-wheel.
I once spent an agreeable hour watching the making of barley meal and the
catching of eels, literally side by side. It was sufficiently good fun to
make me put my gun away for the afternoon, and give up a couple of hours'
walk, with the chance of a duck, to watch the mill and eel-traps working.
They were both in a perfect old-world bye-end of the Thames Valley, in the
meads at the back of the forgotten but perfect abbey of the third order at
Dorchester, under the tall east window of which the River Thame was
running bank full, fringed with giant poplars, from which the rooks were
flying to look at their last year's nests in the abbey trees.
The mill was, as might be supposed, the Abbey Mill; but on driving up the
lane I was surprised to see how good and large was the miller's house, a
fine dwelling of red and grey brick; and what a length of frontage the old
mill showed, built of wood, as most of them are, but with two sets of
stones, and space for two wheels. Only one was at work, and that was
grinding barley-meal--meal from nasty, foreign barley full of dirt; but
the miller had English barley-meal too, soft as velvet and sweet as a
new-baked loaf. Stalactites of finest meal dust hung from every nail, peg,
cobweb, and rope end on the walls, fine meal strewed the floor, coarse
meal poured from the polished shoots, to which the sacks hung by bright
steel hooks, and on both floors ancient grindstones stood like monuments
of past work and energy, while below and beside all this dust and floury
dryness roared the flooded waters of the dam and the beating floats of the
wheel. "Have you any eels?" I asked. "Come and see," said the miller.
He stopped his wheel, unbolted the door, and we looked up the mill dam,
two hundred yards long, straight as a line, embanked by double rows of
ancient yews, the banks made and the trees planted by the monks five
hundred years ago. Then we stepped into the wheel-house, where the water,
all yellow and foaming, was pouring into two compartments set with iron
gratings below, on which it rose and foamed. Seizing a long pole with
prongs like walrus teeth, the miller felt below the water on the bars.
"Here's one, anyway," he said, and by a dexterous haul scooped up a
monster eel on to the floor. In a box which he hauled from the dam he had
more, some of 5-lb. weight, which had come down with the flood--an easy
and profitable fishery, for the eels can lie in the trap till he hauls
them out, and sell well summer and winter. It pays as well as a poultry
yard. Once he took a 9-lb. fish; 2-1/2 lb. to 4 lb. are common.
The eel-trap on the old Thames mill stream is imitated in other places
where there is no mill. Thus at Mottisfont Abbey on the Test an old mill
stream is used to work an hydraulic ram, and also to supply eels for the
house; the water is diverted into the eel-trap, and the fish taken at any
time. Another dodge for taking eels, which is not in the nature of what is
called a "fixed engine," is the movable eel-trap or "grig wheel." It is
like a crayfish basket, and is in fact the same thing, only rather larger.
They can be obtained from that old river hand, Mr. Bambridge, at Eton,
weighted, stoppered, and ready for use, for 7s. 6d. each, and unweighted
for 5s. They are neat wicker-work tunnels, with the usual contrivance at
the mouth to make the entrance of the eels agreeable and their exit
impossible. The "sporting" side of these traps is that a good deal of
judgment is needed to set them in the right places in a river. Many people
think that eels like carrion and favour mud. Mr. Bambridge says his
experience is different, and his "advice to those about to fish" with this
kind of eel-trap is suggestive of new ideas about eels. He says that "for
bait nothing can beat about a dozen and a-half of small or medium live
gudgeon, failing these large minnows, small dace, roach, loach, &c.,
though in some streams about a dozen good bright large lob worms, threaded
on a copper wire and suspended inside, are very effective, and should
always be given a trial. Offal I have tried but found useless, eels being
a cleaner feeding fish than many are aware of; and feeding principally in
gravelly, weedy parts, the basket should be well tucked up under a long
flowing weed, as it is to these places they go for food, such as the
ground fish, loach, miller's thumb, crayfish, shrimps, mussels, &c. When I
worked a fishery near here, I made it a rule after setting the basket to
well scratch the soil in front of the entrance with the boathook I used
for lowering them, and firmly believe their curiosity was excited by the
disturbed gravel. Choose water from four feet to six feet deep, and see
basket lays flat. Every morning when picked up, lay them on the bank, pick
out all weed and rubbish, and brush them over with a bass broom, keeping
them out of water till setting again at dusk."