FOX-HUNTING
CHAPTER I
FOX-HUNTING IN THE PAST
By Sir Charles Frederick, Baronet
SOMETIME MASTER OF THE PYTCHLEY
THERE was recently placed in the parish churchyard at Creaton, Northamptonshire, a memorial to the late Mr. Willie Wroughton, one whose life assuredly typified all that is best in an English sportsman and gentleman. Dr. Norman Lang, Archdeacon of Northampton, and incidentally a brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a beautiful little address at the dedication service, and I venture to make a brief quotation from it as it was reported in the local paper.1 His words seem to me singularly appropriate to the somewhat ambitious heading of my chapter—“Referring to fox-hunting, he observed that it was a priceless heritage of English life and one felt always that if in the course of economic change there was any threat of the extinction of that life and service it would be a bad thing for England and the Empire. It was no mere pastime, but something that went much deeper into English life and brought out and expressed that which was best in the life, heart, and soul of English people—something that was clean, straight, energetic, and unselfish.”
Here then is my text, and now let us rein up and take a glance back.
When the New Year dawned in 1914, that fateful year which was destined to bring so many chapters to a close, fox-hunting probably stood as high in popular estimation as at any time in its history. One supposes that there were then more horses, more hounds, and more foxes in these islands than had ever been the case, and the amount of money spent on this sport had for years past been increasing by leaps and bounds. All the leading packs were in good hands, the organisations which had been formed to deal with the menace of wire which had given rise to apprehension in some countries were working successfully, and, in short, the times compared not too unfavourably with that golden age which every fox-hunter sees reflected in the past.
Studying the history of fox-hunting and comparing the old days with the present, one is inevitably struck by the fact that there is so little that is really new. The problems that confront the hunting world to-day are only those that agitated the minds of our ancestors a hundred years ago translated into somewhat different terms. As for the fox-hunter himself, he never seems to change. He has generally looked back on the past with respectful admiration, detected some signs of deterioration in the conditions of the moment, and regarded the future with unconcealed apprehension. The coming of railways foreshadowed, it was feared, the beginning of the end, just as in the opinion of many do the motor roads of to-day. Agricultural depression and the changed status of landowner and squire, small holdings, wire fencing, motor cars, have all given rise to fears and forebodings. Sporting writers in the past have descried in the political tendencies of their time portents every whit as disturbing as those which cloud our horizon to-day. Listen again to the fox-hunter’s reception of the railway when proposals for the construction of these first began to take practical form.2 “How far or in what manner this trebly accursed revolution of railroads may affect the breed of horses and fox-hunting generally it is impossible to say. The speculation on the subject is of too painful a nature.… It must be sufficiently obvious to the most narrow-spirited that unless they are the objects of fresh legislation these railroads must become the most oppressive monopoly ever inflicted upon a free country. When all the inns and roadside houses shall be tenantless and gone to decay, their present occupants being lost in the abyss of inevitable ruin which is now open for them; when not only posting and post-horses but the roads on which they travelled shall be with the Turn-pike Acts themselves matter of history, the means of locomotion will be at the mercy of the most merciless of all human beings, a class actuated by cupidity and beyond the reach of that salutary correction, that only security for the public against the abuse of private privilege, competition.
“To us as sportsmen the intersection of any country by canal or railroad furnishes food enough in itself for lamentation; we bewail the beauty of the district spoiled and as an obstacle to our amusement: we denounce the barrier hostile to our sport. It is not, however, in such light only that we view the case. We willingly admit that the diversions of one class of society are but as feather in the balance when weighed against the practical utility of any work tending to the advancement of the general good; that it is the duty of a Government to promote to the utmost all feasible enterprise and undertaking proved to be conducive to the interest of the State, and we reconcile ourselves to any changes which the condition of the community to which we belong may demand, but when we consider the magnitude of the convulsion which this mighty railroad delusion will effect, the fearful extent of its operation, the thousands of human beings thrown out of employ, the incalculable diminution in the number of horses; and the consequent deficiency in demand for agricultural produce, not to mention the enormous deduction from the revenue consequent upon the abolition of the post-horse duties; when we think of its varied and multitudinous bearings upon the state of society; and add to all this the fact that in no quarter of the globe were the means of travelling established on so admirable a basis as hitherto in this country; that like the dog and the shadow, we are about to cast away the substance of good for the sake of catching at a change of problematical good in the opinion of some and fraught with positive evil in the estimation of many—when we reflect on these things we cannot but wonder at the blindness which has countenanced the growth of a monster which will rend the vitals of those by whom it has been fostered.”
Most of his foreboding and prophecy seems laughable to-day, and though a hunting country is certainly none the better for being intersected by railways, it may be doubtful whether sport has suffered to any very serious extent. John O’Gaunt may have been, and probably was, a better covert before the adjacent railway was built, but as every Leicestershire man knows, it does well enough to-day. Foxes from Braunston Gorse do not run to Shuckburgh Hill with the frequency that they did before the Great Central Railway was made, nor do the Warwickshire foxes cross the Rubicon into Northamptonshire so often as those who know and appreciate that beautiful vale would like. But it may be doubted whether the vulpine race pay much attention to railways at all, and the main objection to these from a hunting point of view lies in the danger they constitute for hounds. From this there is no getting away, and no one who has witnessed the sight of hounds feathering along a railway with an express approaching at full speed is likely to forget the nerve-racking experience.
Hardly had the first of these railways been constructed when the sporting writers of the day were expatiating on the new convenience at their disposal and were setting themselves to enumerate the packs which could be reached in the morning from “Euston Square” and other termini. Were I called upon here to quote an instance of what the rail has made possible for fox-hunters, I should not look beyond the case of a friend and contemporary who, lacking any residence in what Mr. Bailey calls the “best centres” for following the Pytchley Hounds, hunted with that famous pack entirely during one season from his own castle in the Highlands of Scotland. The Scotch Express was his covert hack and both bed and board were at his nightly disposal.
Looking back into the distant past, it is plain enough that Reynard the fox did not always enjoy the proud and privileged position which he holds by right in the present year of grace. Prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, and in many districts very much later than this, he took humble rank among wild beasts of England, enjoying nothing of the prestige which is his to-day. His subsequent rise to fame and honour was largely due no doubt to the bare fact of his survival when other beasts of the chase such as the wolf and the boar had disappeared, and altered conditions had localised the hunting of the buck. Go out hunting Englishmen must, since the habit was bred in their bones, and when in due time (with all respect to Somerville) the limitations of the hare as a beast of the chase came to be realised, the superior claims of the fox began, rather slowly perhaps, to find recognition. A writer in the New Sporting Magazine (1832) unearthed from the accounts of the Comptroller of the Wardrobe of Edward I for the years 1299 and 1300 some facts and figures from which he says: “We may form some estimate of the small degree of repute in which fox-hunting, if indeed hunting it can be called, was held at that period. The fox-destroying establishment of that monarch consisted of twelve ‘fox-dogs’ (terriers not unlikely) with one man and two boys. The master of these fox-dogs and his two assistants were allowed 6d. a day or 2d. each; and 3d. a day for a horse to carry the nets was allowed from the first day of September to the last day of April, while ½d. a day was paid for the keep of each of the dogs. From these items it appears that the expense for men and dogs was the same all the year round except that the huntsman and his two whippers-in received each a new suit as an expense for the three of 34s. 4d. The horse provided for these worthies and their nets appears to have been a hired one for there is no account given of the cost of his keep except when engaged on active duty.” The writer opined, and one can but agree, that the whole concern savoured of rat-catching and it certainly bears little relation to the matter of serious fox-hunting. The latter was, he deemed, “generally neglected by the noble and wealthy of this country until towards the latter part of the seventeenth century, when it seems to have come into repute as hawking and deer-hunting declined. The disafforesting of the Royal chases and the destruction and sale of the deer by order of Parliament during the time of the rebellion, and the gloomy spirit of fanaticism which pervaded this country during the Protectorate of Cromwell, did much towards extinguishing that passion for the chase which was formerly so characteristic of the lordly noble and knight and squire of gentle blood.” In fact he says that the years 1640 to 1660 might be considered as a blank in the sporting annals of this country.
It does not seem to be determined even now, in spite of all the time and trouble that the sporting writer has devoted to research, precisely when the first pack of fox-hounds was started. In 1666 we hear of Viscount Lowther taking his hounds down from Lowther (Westmorland) to hunt what is now the Cottesmore Country in Leicestershire and Rutland, and I believe that Lord Lonsdale possesses a picture of them about to start on their long journey. Mr. T. Boothby, who hunted Leicestershire for fifty-five seasons (1698–1753), hunted what is said to have been “the first pack of fox-hounds then in England.” He was the predecessor of Mr. Hugo Meynell to whom further allusion is made anon. Doubtless many of the packs maintained in the eighteenth century followed both hare and fox, and it was only gradually that it became the fashion to concentrate upon the latter. In the Treaty of Agreement dated 1727 between the reigning Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Tankerville, it was arranged that a pack of fox-hounds consisting of not less than forty couples should be maintained between these noblemen jointly, and the subsequent story of the sport shown by these hounds as set forth in The Records of the Charlton Hunt probably furnish the first continuous narrative of fashionable fox-hunting. “Frederick Augustus, the Fifth Earl of Berkeley,” says Cecil in his Records of the Chase, “who was born in the year 1745, hunted a most extensive country for many years distinguished by the title of the Old Berkeley.” Extensive it certainly was, for according to that writer his lordship kennelled his hounds from time to time at various places, such as Cranford in Middlesex, Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, and Berkeley Castle, moving them from one place to another as circumstances required. A few years later (1752) when Mr. Hugo Meynell was just about to enter upon a Mastership of the Quorn destined to last for close on half a century, there was born a great sportsman in the person of Mr. John Warde, of Squerries, in the county of Kent, who, says Mr. Viner in his Notitia Venatica, “enjoyed till his death the honourable title of the ‘Father of Fox-hunters.’ ” In one respect he eclipsed Mr. Meynell, having kept hounds for no less than fifty-six years, but since part of this time was devoted to hunting the fox in France the comparison might not be deemed a fair one. Though 1753 is regarded in Bailey’s Hunting Directory as the year of Mr. Meynell’s accession to the Quorn, it is unlikely that his Mastership commenced quite as early as this, since the date of his birth is given as June 1735, and he can hardly be supposed to have assumed the Mastership before he came to man’s estate. “He was designated by his friends,” says Delme Radcliffe, “the King of Sportsmen, the Hunting Jupiter. He had earned these titles,” his biographer continues, “by the success of his practice—by the sport which he had shown: but without an acre of land of his own in Leicestershire, the whole of his extensive estates being situated in remoter counties, he could not have carried on the war as a stranger in the very heart of the best hunting country in the world had not his conduct from the commencement to the close of his career been characterised by the deportment which distinguishes a thoroughbred English gentleman. He was as much the repandu of the élite of Grosvenor Square— as much at home at St. James’s as he was at Quorndon or at Ashby Pastures.” It was such men as these and Mr. Corbet, who played a great part in founding the Warwickshire Hunt, Mr. Osbaldeston and others who laid the keel of fox-hunting as we recognise it. These launched the vessel upon the pleasant seas unruffled by any adverse winds, where it was destined to sail in unbroken calm till the end of the Victorian era. Somewhere therein lay the golden age of fox-hunting. Whatever pride we may take in the hounds and horses of to-day, and no matter how high we value that sporting spirit in which the fox-hunter’s red coat is welcomed, we know in our heart of hearts that things are not quite the same and that they cannot be. With what has been called the Industrial Revolution much of the face of England has changed, and it is difficult to think of any respect in which the sport of fox-hunting has been the gainer. The advent of the motor car, though it has made hunting easier for us, has proved an unqualified curse so far as sport is concerned. The manufacture of motor hound-vans and horse-boxes might be cited as an advantage in that they facilitate the transport of hounds and horses and make for economy. Hounds, as was proved by the Lord Berkeley quoted above, whose country was over a hundred miles wide, could manage well enough without this aid to locomotion, and motor horse-boxes are generally employed purely and solely in self-defence. Roads of the consistency of iron with a surface of glass, crowded too with traffic proceeding at the speed of an express train, are no place for high-spirited horses, and if these were to arrive at a distant meet of hounds with their riders’ bones and their own intact something had to be devised. Not for one instant could any sportsman hesitate in his choice if it were permitted to rest between hunting in an age of motor cars or before them.
The late Lord Willoughby de Broke in his introduction to that fascinating work The Sport of Our Ancestors, devoted some space to the speculation as to when actually was the golden age of fox-hunting. After weighing the pros and cons he credits the sportsman who came to man’s estate about 1860 with having the best of it, and probably most of those who read that delightful chapter will agree. There was a work on hunting entitled Recollections of a Fox-hunter, by “Scrutator,” published in 1861, that is to say, at almost exactly the moment of which we are speaking, and when we turn to its pages for confirmation we find, strange to say, a very different picture painted. “The old race is gone,” we read, “and Hunting is now followed for fashion’s sake. Our Nimrods of the nineteenth century know little and care less about hunting and hounds. They go out for a gallop or to meet their friends at the covert side; and after a bit of a skurry (sic) trot home about two or three o’clock in the afternoon perfectly satisfied. Well, if they are satisfied so are we that they condescend to give countenance to the National Sport: and it is far better for them to ride even to the place of meeting than remain idle at home or playing at a billiard or card table in some fashionable watering-place such as Cheltenham or Leamington. My early experience in fox-hunting tells a very different tale —an early breakfast—hard work throughout the day—a late dinner at the fashionable hour of eight or nine in the evening. Scores of times I have been riding after my hounds when it was so dark that I could scarcely see my horse’s head before me, and when the moon rose we have been rattling about big woodlands from changing foxes till ten or twelve at night.”
The quotation is not given here with any thought of disproving Lord Willoughby de Broke’s deductions but merely as showing the fox-hunter’s tendency, mentioned above, to be for ever casting back and as proof that even the comfortable and care-free conditions of the sixties could be found wanting. What good purpose “Scrutator” served by hunting his woodlands in the middle of the night is hardly apparent. The recital of his Spartan life gives one rather the impression that the most delightful occupation in the world had with him become something of a labour. Despite his sneers, most of us, if we had our choice, would prefer the pleasures of a gallop and of meeting our friends at the covert side to the picture which he draws of his own experience.
The vision of hunting in the past, as it is likely to appear to the younger generation to-day, will not recall operations that were prolonged by the light of the moon, still less will our youth hanker after the rat-catching practices of the Middle Ages. The glorious past for them much more probably will be the days of which their fathers or their grandfathers talk, when the nightmare roads of to-day were unknown, when a man could ride at a fence without a thought of wire, and when hunting was not the costly business that it is to-day.
“Brooksby,” though he lived late enough to fall over wire before his day was done, surely saw hunting at its best, and I am tempted to hark back, since the heading of my chapter permits it, and enjoy a gallop as he told it in his delightful way.3 “I have a run to tell,” he says (the day being November 8th and the year 1876), “so let us join this sweet middle pack of the Belvoir as they trot down to Burbage’s Covert this sunny Wednesday morning—Gillard on the confidential grey meaning business, and ourselves confident or careful as our mount or nerves determined us.… Thus one o’clock finds us basking in the meadow below Mr. Burbage’s invaluable covert—Melton represented by Colonel and Miss Markham, and Messrs. Lubbock, Creyke, Behrens, Younger and Parker, and Captains Smith and Atkinson; the Ducal country by Messrs. Welby, Moorhouse, Burbage, Thorold, Mr. and Miss Turner, etc.; the Cottesmore by Mr. Heathcote, and the world in general by a body of men by whom hunting is regarded as almost a sine qua non to enjoyable existence and as a component part of a well-governed Empire. Hounds are scarcely in covert before a farmer and a rustic are to be seen gesticulating on the hillside beyond the river. They appear to be engaged more in disputing as to the identity of some strange beast that has shown itself to them than bent on attracting the attention of the huntsman and his followers now penned up in the triangular field by the railway. At length someone ventures to suggest that a fox has been seen, whereupon Gillard takes hold of the suggestion and his hounds together and gallops to the spot. True enough a fox has gone away as freely and readily as may be.…
“Hounds spread keenly right and left, as if conscious of the emergency; and a skirmisher on the right, catching a guiding whiff under the warm hedgerow, soon brings his comrades to the line. Quickly they swing to the echo and the ball is now set rolling over the turf.… Hark holloa forward at the Burton toll-bar a mile ahead. This should put us on better terms and we hurry eagerly up to the point to start afresh. The pack now take it up merrily: we try to believe that we are in for a quick thing and a brilliant one and scuttle up the green lane alongside whose convenient track hounds are now really running to a head. Sharp to your left now and follow Gillard over the post and rails that bound the lane. Hold up, young one! If you do mean to hit the post you needn’t make such a disgraceful clatter over it and for ever ruin your reputation as a timber jumper! There is beautiful grass in front—Gartree Hill and the Quorn country opening its arms before us.… A few minutes over the turf brings us to cold plough and hounds scatter every way baffled and beat. Taking no heed of a deceptive holloa over the Burton Vale, Gillard quietly and cleverly helps them to work it out till they have crossed the brow above Gartree Hill covert and embarked on the stout-fenced pastures of the Great Dalby lordship. The beautiful vista of the valley of the Melton steeplechase course now stretches invitingly below. Sheep may even be seen dashing aside on the opposite hill, proclaiming the passage of the harmless terror-striker. Reynard has nothing but his own safety to think about—even had the silly creatures a thousand new-born lambs to offer—and safety is gradually becoming a very embarrassing consideration to him. He has still a couple of miles to the good; but in a few minutes his pursuers have crossed the valley.”
So the engaging tale continues till hounds are pulled up short at a drain between Burrough and Twyford at the end of an hour and five minutes. Let me add, since no one will be satisfied till he has heard the last word, that the fox was finally bolted by the aid of the blacksmith’s terrier “to run for his life with a hundred yards start of a truly racing pack … and though he had the fairest of chances for his life, they coursed him to death in a couple of fields.”
How much better this than paddling round the woodlands with “Scrutator” by the light of the moon! Here is something to make the pulse quicken, something to make us feel that the story is really worth while. We hear the single hound throw his tongue under the hedgerow, watch his comrades fly to the summons, while Frank Gillard’s cheer rings in our ears, driving out the sounds and distractions of the moment. In making comparison between past and present let us-consider that there is something to the credit of the latter even if we cannot have things all our own way. Judging from what we read in the papers, there is nowhere any dearth of foxes. We have horses as good as those that carried our forefathers, and if present expectations of the distemper cure materialise, shall soon have hounds distinctly better than those which they could breed. The old spirit survives; old tradition still holds good; we have weathered the Great War and the enemies of fox-hunting wield no more power for evil than was the case half a century ago. So let us not worry too much about what the future shall bring. Let us set foot in the stirrup on the hunting morning with a determination to enjoy what is ours. So may we in due course hand on to those who come after us the legacy that has been bequeathed to us from old times.
