Part 6

From a painting by Mr. Heywood Hardy.]

Since penning this sentence I have turned over my Beckford. He says: “The hounds most likely to show you sport are between the large, slow-hunting harrier and the little fox-beagle. The former are too dull, too heavy, and too slow; the latter too lively, too light, and too fleet.” He thinks that if the day is long enough you might kill with the first species, and if the country was deep and wet, the others might be drowned. Beckford bred for many years an “infinity of hounds” before he got what he wanted, but at last he had the pleasure to see them “very handsome,” “small yet bony,” after which, he cynically remarks, “when they were thus perfect, I did as many others do, I parted with them.”

Again, the hounds of those earlier days were not, in point of pace and quality, equal to hunting such wild foxes as there were. It was only as the small harriers were improved into the type of what we call fox-hounds, that hunting-men realised that fox-hunting was a high-class sport. Harriers were first turned into regular fox-hounds about the year 1740. From this date, then, we can begin to class hounds into two divisions: the harriers, kept small, active, but slow, and, above all, sure with their noses; and those improved in size, gradually acquiring the dash and pace necessary for pursuing the fox. Success in hare-hunting depends more on perseverance; that in fox-hunting, on pace. It is curious to note that the old harrier type is being destroyed. The slow, deep-mouthed southern hound, the beagle, and the light, active, snipey-nosed harrier are going out before the modern craze to have harriers dwarf fox-hounds. My own idea is that no sport can be obtained equal to that which was afforded by harriers of the stamp that distinguished the pack until lately hunted by Mr. Robert Fellowes, of Shotesman,--little beauties, all quality and activity, not too fast and flighty to hunt a cold line or a doubling hare, and yet able to drive along when the opportunity arrived, and requiring a good hunter under one when they meant going. It may be replied that in adopting the dwarf fox-hound type, present Masters are reverting to a still older standard. I readily admit it. Indeed, I was recently looking at a print of Mr. Astley’s harriers in 1810, in which they are something like “dwarf fox-hounds,” but they are “dwarf,” and, behold, a terrier accompanies the pack, telling the tale that they hunted the fox as well as the hare. If the old type of hound had answered its purpose, those generations which were hare-hunters rather than fox-hunters would not have abandoned the dwarf fox-hound type for that which was properly regarded as pure harrier. It is more than doubtful if harriers ought to be more than eighteen inches high; and beagles, for following on foot, should not exceed fourteen inches.

Certainly hare-hunting affords the greatest scope for the huntsman’s craft and the finest exhibition of hound work. The hare is really a much more rusé animal than the fox; she can steal away better, and, once started, there is no end to her wiles and dodges. She runs craftily and cunningly, doubling back on her own foil, pricking her way down watery furrows, or lobbing along the high road. She will “squat” or “clap” just as hounds are carrying a head, or turn out a fresh hare; if her pursuers overshoot her, she will sneak back in the least expected direction. Hare-hunters are fond of talking about straight-necked hares. My experience has been unfortunate. I have not seen many good points made by hares, and it is not in the straight run that the art of the huntsman and the virtues of the harrier are tested and brought into play. To enjoy the regular sport with a pack, you must have a keen appreciation of all the niceties of the game, and be able to watch with pleasure all the ins and outs, the windings and twistings so neatly unravelled with such a pretty hubbub of bass and treble music from the busy little hounds. There is a joy quite of its own in the cry of harriers and beagles (I am not speaking of dwarf fox-hounds). A minute’s silence at the fault, the competition of all the little beauties casting round--a sight delightful to the eye;--then a full note of the pure truth, the rush up to the speaking hound, the chorus of consent from a score of throats, swelling to the full cry of the whole pack as they go driving away as if possessed by one soul--a sound delightful to the ears, and not exactly described to me by a farmer as “joost like a flock o’ craws gettin’ out ov a tater field.”

Every man has a right to his own opinion, and mine is that the perfection of hare-hunting is with beagles. The average hare is overmatched by the modern harrier. The beagle is not too fast, his nose is finer, he far excels the harrier in vigilance, energy, and persistency, whilst the music of a pack of beagles is unequalled. But we live in fast times; we have not the leisure even to enjoy the time it takes for a pack of 10 or 11-inch beagles to trace and puzzle out the course of a hare with beautiful exactness till their perseverance is at length rewarded. We must find a hare at once, and kill her in a few minutes, and, if she is lost, find another without waste of time. This, however, is not the spirit of hare-hunting, but the fever of our day. As a spectacle, as a wonder, and an exhibition of the marvellous senses and powers with which nature has endowed both hare and hound, give me a pack of beagles at work. The present generation of followers of harriers are scarcely aware of the perfection to which beagles can be brought, and how undefeated even a 10-inch pack can prove itself to be with the best of hares. I do not suppose there exists to-day a pack like that of Mr. Honeywood’s, fifty or sixty years ago, not a hound above 10 inches, all level, and every one pure white, a perfect little lot. One contemporary writer said: “It is quite beyond credence the number of hares they kill in the course of a season. When running with a good scent, they might belong to the Fairy Queen, so small, fast, and handsome are they.”

Hare-hunting ought to preserve an honoured place amongst our national sports. For the young on foot it is a manly and healthy pursuit; for those who have to ride, a pleasant and pretty pastime. It gives those whose stud is too limited for fox-hunting an opportunity of sharing the incomparable pleasures of the chase. The man on foot, if wind and limb will not allow him to be with them, can see much of the game from the hill-top, if not from the gate-post; while the man on his only mount may see every detail of the hunt and have his three days a week; he has, too, one advantage over the fox-hunter, that he is more sure of his entertainment. His disappointments are fewer, for he does not expect a 9-mile point or forty minutes racing across country. It is a sport for rich and poor, for tender youth and old age, and for all those who enjoy the niceties of the huntsman’s craft tested at its highest.

FOX-HUNTING

“Hunting is the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, with only five-and-twenty per cent. of the danger.”

SO John Jorrocks felt and said; but in his oratorical effort to glorify hunting he both over- and under-did his figures of rhetoric--for though stag-hunting, so long as we have the buck-hounds, may yet be a royal sport in Old England, the whole line of crowned heads that have done us the honour of sitting on our throne would repudiate fox-hunting as the sport of kings, while the people would claim it for their own. It is the privilege of no class; its constitution is republican, founded and living on liberty, equality, and fraternity. Fox-hunting has grown out of ill-repute during the last two centuries, and has long been placed first in popular affection. Good Queen Bess, by a statute (8 Eliz. cap. 15) “for killing of verming as foxes and such like,” gave expression to her people’s wishes, and provided a machinery of rewards for the head of every “fox” or “gray” (badger); whilst St. John, in his speech on the trial of Strafford, makes the blood of the modern sportsman run cold as he cries out: “It is true we give law to hares and deer because they be beasts of chase. It was never accounted either cruelty or foul play to knock foxes and wolves on the head as they can be found, because these be beasts of prey.” Mr. R. B. Turton, the editor of The North Riding Quarter Sessions Records (from whom I quote), truly remarks that, however shocking to our feelings, fox-hunting seems to have occupied somewhat the same position in this period that rat-catching does now. The statute of Elizabeth just referred to remained on the Statute-Book till 1863, and was actually in operation in Cleveland at least as late as 1847. There are in the Register and Churchwarden accounts for Lythe many entries of the rewards paid by the parish for “werment,” from 1705 to 1847. A few extracts will suffice for my object, which is to find some excuse for the illegitimate proceedings that have been continued even to my own day in certain outlying districts of the Cleveland Hunt.

1706.--Ugthorpe quarter--for 14 fullmor heads 0 04 8 Newton--for 11 fullmor and 3 fox heads 0 12 8 Barnby--6 fullmor heads 0 02 0 Lythe--3 fox heads and 6 fullmor heads 0 11 0 1787.--To 10 fox heads, 2 at Kettleness, 1 at Mickleby, 1 at Ugthorpe, 3 at Goldsbro’, and 3 catched in a trap at Mulgrave Castle 2 0 0

(We still know of the trap in which these foxes were “catched”!)

1846.--1 jackal head 0 8 0 5 fox heads 1 0 0 1847.--(Last entry) 1 fox head 0 4 0

From a study of the many entries similar to the above, it appears that the price set on a fox’s head in Cleveland was, in the earlier period, 3s., and in the present century 4s. The “jackal head” is a mystery that I cannot pretend to solve; the only jackal I ever heard of in Cleveland being a tame one that I imported from Africa, which is living and thriving to-day, after several years of domestic life in anything but an African climate. When I was a boy, I was told by a very old sporting yeoman farmer, that it was the custom in other days, after a kill with the “Roxby and Cleveland” hounds, to go to the parson with the head, get the head money, and then to adjourn to the nearest public-house and expend the price of blood over a bowl of punch, the flavour of which was heightened by the addition of a pad, the brush, or the whole head to the mixture. This, I have no doubt, might correctly be described as strong drink.

But to hark back on the line for a moment. I feel I must qualify my opening paragraph, for I have suddenly remembered a passage I lately read in one of the Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission, which both shows that royalty in the seventeenth century countenanced fox-hunting, and that it is of greater antiquity than some modern authors generally suppose. Here is the extract taken from a Newsletter, November 17, 1674: “11th, on Saturday or Sunday (!) next His Royal Highness and the Duke of Monmouth and divers persons of quality go to Chichester, where they are to lodge in the Bishop’s (!) Palace, and expect all the gentry of the neighbourhood to repair with their dogs for seven or eight days’ fox-hunting.” It must have been a curious sight on that Sunday morning to see His Royal Highness, the Duke, the Bishop, the divers persons of quality, with their dogs, at the palace--and one can picture the appearance of the “dogs,” collected from all parts of the country, of all shapes and sizes.

But I am hanging on the line, if not dwelling in covert, and all this was meant to be by way of saying that these old-fashioned ideas of fox-hunting seem to have penetrated, to some extent at least, to the days when I first hunted with the Cleveland hounds. I can testify that to many of the sportsmen on foot, even to many of the farmers on horseback, the fox was certainly in the class of “verming and such like,” and that they considered it a most magnanimous proceeding, instead of “to knock” foxes on the head as they can be found, because these be beasts of prey, “to shake him out of a bag and collect all the dogs,” and have a “hoont.”

The reader must not be too hard on them; they were hard-working farmers, with small means, who could not afford the serious depredations that they suffered from foxes amongst their moor sheep, and especially amongst their lambs in the spring. There was no M.F.H., in the modern sense. They kept a few hounds, one here and one there, which were collected or “blown up” on hunting days, and they managed their sport in a very homely and simple fashion, many of them never having a horse to ride, and following on foot. For the man on foot with fox-hounds I have the most profound respect and admiration. I mean, of course, the genuine article,--not the loafer with a club and a hare-pocket in the inside of his coat, nor the determined and ignorant sightseer, who stands in the middle of the field next the whin covert, displaying British independence when asked to “come in,” or who obstinately sits on a gate hallooing every time a fox attempts to break; but the dauntless man whose love of the sport and hound work is such that he counts as nothing aching limbs and blowing bellows, nor the weary tramp home, if he can only get a look in.

It is not the footman who alone sins through carelessness and ignorance--in some riding-men the latter quality seems invincible. I knew one, a regular follower of hounds, who went out with Lord Zetland’s and finished with the Hurworth, without ever discovering that he had changed packs. Such good fellows as the followers of hounds on foot ought to receive the fraternal welcome of their mounted colleagues in the field--whilst a kind word, instead of choice Billingsgate, will do more than restrain the ignorant sinner, and tend to his better understanding of what is required of him. Every man, as long as he respects the rules of the game, has a right to be there. It occurs to me, as I turn over the leaves of my hunting diary, that I was not always so patient with the footmen, as, for instance, on December 26, 1881, when I record: “Monday, Hounds at Paradise Farm. A most inappropriate name for a most unfortunate day--the country flooded with foot people. The sky-line black with them--a most horrible sight! We had soon a fox on foot, but, headed in every direction, he fell a victim to the mob’s thirst for blood. A like horrible fate awaited the second fox on Guisborough Moor, above Bethel Slack; the spectacle of the hundreds round the corpse of the poor murdered brute, clamouring for fox-skin, was heartrending. What added to the mortification was the fact of the day being an ideal one, soft, cloudy, scenting. Some of the remarks I overheard tended to relieve the dark melancholy of the day. One delightful ruffian, with an awful club, turned to another with a bludgeon in his hand. ‘The dogs never gav oos a chance, they moordered him, not killed him.’ Mr. ---- nearly rode over one of the crowd, and on the nearly overridden one remonstrating in forcible language, soothed him with the remark, ‘There’ll be plenty more left when you’re done for,’ which, however unfeeling, was the naked truth. Another scene of this unhappy day that gave a momentary joy was that of two men on bare-backed, hairy-heeled farm horses with blinkers on. One said to the other, ‘Blame it all! I wish we could get away from these foot people!’”

Years ago, when I was a boy, it was not a rare thing with the farmer’s trencher-fed pack with which I hunted to turn a fox down in the moorland district where grouse-preserving or sheep-farming made a find always uncertain and often impossible. Thirteen minutes was the law allowed, and when time was called, hounds were laid on. There is no denying that if pace and distance are the only desiderata, a stout old moor- or cliff-fox, turned down some distance from home, will give a better run than any you are likely to get by legitimate methods in a season. The blot on such a performance is not so much unfairness to the fox, for with thirteen minutes’ law a good fox was more than often a match for the hounds, even when aniseed or turpentine had been applied to his pads. He had at least as good a chance of saving his bacon as if he had been found in the whin covert, where many a good fox has been chopped before making his try for the open. No, it is not the pace of a run, the distance from point to point, or the perfection of the country, that make up the whole sport of hunting. The sport consists in the meeting of the hound and the animal hunted on nature’s own terms in a free field with no favour, and in being there to see the struggle. And to the man with real hunting instinct, no steeplechase after aniseed or a bagman can give the satisfaction and delight of the success in accounting for a wild-bred fox, whether the day be bright or dull, the scent hot or cold. And while no one could derive greater enjoyment from the fast good thing over the pick of the country, more than half his pleasure is due to the feeling that the reward of a red-letter day has been worked for honestly and is due to no resort to artifice.

Contrast the pleasure that the man with no idea beyond his boots, coat, tie, galloping and jumping, extracts from a day’s hunting, with that which the man who is a genuine “hunter” obtains. Putting aside the social pleasures of the chase, the meeting of friends by the covert side, and the incidents of interest and amusement in the field, the pleasure of the one is dependent on being well mounted in a good country after a straight-necked fox; and he is an exacting and hypercritical follower of hounds. The other feels the longest day too short, and can enjoy hounds puzzling out a line, bustling a fox through woodlands, or driving him over a moor, with one idea uppermost --to be there to see every detail of their work as if he were a hound himself. Weather, indifferent scent, bad countries, ugly fences, and even an imperfect mount, are but to him difficulties he can delight in fighting with. He rides to hunt; but he who hunts to ride will, as years pass by, find the bad days are too many, the good days too few, the country too familiar to ever taste the rapture and expectation that charmed his younger days: either he abandons the chase or comes out for air, exercise, and gossip. But from youth to age the other’s interest never flags. When a boy the hounds are a wonder; the country is an immense and mysterious paradise; the hard man is his model; the huntsman his hero; and in every fox he sees the possibility of the run of the season; truly the life with horse and hound is his ideal of earthly bliss. For him, as for us all, time brushes away the mysteries, and the scene loses its fresh enchantment. Hope is the richest treasure of warm-blooded youth, gilding each day with glorious possibilities, but the old enemy is gentler with him than with the other. He may no longer spring lightly on to the hunter with the wild eye and winging quarters, feeling equal to sending him along, no matter where, no matter how far--his eye kens each corner of the once unknown land, he has tasted all the joys and triumphs that the chase can give. The red-letter days, he knows, are few and far between, and when they come they but jog his memory of a better. But if his heart no longer beats with the hot anticipation of the long ago, his experience gives him a conscious power, and an ability to appreciate niceties unnoticed by the crowd; his memory is a storehouse in which he delights to rummage. The melancholy that must accompany age, he, like others, may not escape from--the moments when he re-peoples his country with those who have gone, and remembers the voices that are heard no more. But the landscape from the covert side is all the dearer to him for the echo of voices long since stilled, and the cry of those hounds whose blood still flows in the streaming black and white and tan with whom he still holds a place.

Well, then, if it was almost like a habit in some districts, where foxes were systematically kept down, for a past generation to save the day’s sport by resorting to a bagman, the reader must not be shocked if I confess to being a living witness to what in charity we may ascribe to an hereditary tendency. After all, there was more excuse for them than for some noblemen. They at least dug out the wild fox from the sea-cliffs, while the fashionable game-preserver, or the titled vulpicide, purchased his fox in Leadenhall.

I have just turned up an old ballad which I have never seen in print, and as it touches on the subject, I may as well give it a place here, premising, however, that I cannot but think it is libellous, looking to the way in which subsequent bearers of the title of Lonsdale have associated themselves with the best interests of real sport.

LORD LONSDALE’S HOUNDS:

1849-1850.

It was an Earl of ancient name Who hunted the fox, but preferred him tame, Though his sire had been a hunter free, As bold as e’er rode o’er a grass countree.

The sire would mount his high-bred horse, And view the wild fox from the hillside gorse; The son goes down by a second-class train, Worries a bagman, and home again.

’Tis half-past twelve by the railway clocks, And the Earl has called for his horse and his fox; And behind the Earl there rides the Earl’s groom, And then comes a man with a long birch broom, Clad in the Earl’s discarded breeches, Who will tickle the fox when he comes to the ditches.

The Earl’s admirers are ranged in Brown’s yard, They all wear top-boots and intend to ride hard; Whether “wily fox” or timid hare Be the game to-day, none of them care. Well was it the Earl had called for his fox, And brought it from Tring in a little deal box, For three hours and more they drew for a hare, But drew in vain! All was blank despair. Then said the Earl to the elder Brown, “Open your box and turn him down.”

So they turned him down in Aylesbury vale, In front of a fence called a post and a rail, To suit the views of a certain gent, Who rather liked “Rails,” and thought he went. Over the rails the first to fly Was the gent of course, but the fox was shy, And would have declined, but the Earl and his groom, The huntsman and whip, and his man with the broom, Two boys in a cart, and the Browns, Sam and John, Wouldn’t hear of his shirking, and drove him along.