CHAPTER XVI

INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS

By Sir Charles Frederick, baronet

AN old friend of my own, the late Crawford Wood (Hyme), whose letters and sketches used to delight the fox-hunting world of pre-War days, related a curious accident that befell him once. It originated, if my memory serves right, in the attempt to lead his horse over a footbridge spanning a deep “bottom.” Losing its footing the animal became straddled across the narrow planks and the only method of release that could be devised was to tip him over sideways. The “tipping” process landed the horse into the branches of a tree that grew below and the rescuing party into worse trouble than ever. However, saws were procured, and in due course my friend’s steed touched terra firma again little or none the worse, so far as I remember, for the adventure. Hyme was wont to say that judging from the mass of advice that was subsequently tendered to him such occurrences must be by no means unusual and that for rescuing hunters from tree-tops there was a proper procedure with which every hunting man should be familiar. It is the element of comedy, not of tragedy, as some may suppose, that dominates the mishaps of the hunting field. Read the account of a gallop with hounds where the chronicler had “spread” himself a little. He will tell you of the saddles that were emptied by the score, of loose horses by the dozen, and will measure the day’s enjoyment by counting the number of mud-stained backs when hounds have killed their fox.

And each of these catastrophes, mind you, that he dismisses with such levity, implies a human frame hurled into the arms of Mother Earth with a force for which Nature had not, presumably, designed our anatomy. How often is anyone the worse?

A, B, and C are, on balance, much the better for their day’s hunting, fall included, their respective valets being the only dissentients. Here someone, being either a grandfather or at all events qualified by age for that dignity, lacking the blessed elasticity of youth, fell somewhat harder and is dissuaded by his family, maybe if the case warrant such deprival, from hunting on the morrow.

A friend of mine who went on a hunting visit to Ireland the other day told me, and I have no reason to doubt his veracity, that the Master of the Hounds, with which he had enjoyed an excellent day’s sport, was on the point of saying “Good night” to his followers. Before starting kennelwards, however, he volunteered to draw one more covert if there was anyone present who had not had a fall! Apparently there was no one to hold up his hand and hounds went home.

In the course of our experience of the hunting field we are bound from time to time to have witnessed serious and distressing accidents, the risk of these being inevitably part and parcel of any game which is fit, as we all remember reading, “for a rational man to play.” I have emphatically no intention of indulging in any harrowing reminiscences here. After all, the highways and byways of England levy a higher toll of life and limb in a year than the hunting field (with the emphasis on the field) exacts in the course of a generation, and at the present rate of increase in the motor casualty list, comparison will soon be meaningless.

Unfortunately the fox-hunter cannot turn away from the modern traffic problem and its implications with such self-satisfying reflections. He falls beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut too. Hunters must get to the meet and motorboxes are not yet part and parcel of every establishment. Plenty of worthy people who had reached a time of life when the advantages (much appreciated by Mr. Jorrocks) of the ’ard ’igh road seemed no longer to be despised as an aid to fox-hunting, have had to readjust their view. In short they have come to realise that in all the mishaps incidental to crossing a country in the wake of hounds there is nothing to compare in unpleasantness with the threat of the road and its glass surface. Subsidence into the deepest of ditches, the muddiest of brooks is a laughing matter, to the sickening crash when a horse’s legs fly from beneath him on the hideous tarmac.

In the variety of the fox-hunter’s adventure by flood and field the former element seems to make the greater appeal to popular imagination.

Who has not been thrilled by the incident at Hoby Mill on the Wreake described by “Brooksby” in his delightful book, The Cream of Leicestershire. We read of the collapse of the bridge which the Quorn field are endeavouring to cross, of the crash of Lord Grey de Wilton and two companions into the river, horses and all, and we read of them in the words of the text “all struggling together, the water dashing over their prostrate forms” and, thanks to Mr. Sturgess, we see them thus depicted in colour. Frequently in my younger days I have gazed on the spot in awe and the picture has a mesmeric attraction for me to this day. “The strangest part of the whole proceeding,” says “Brooksby,” “was that not one of the performers was the worse for either fall or immersion— and the drop on to the almost bare rocks should be seen to be realised.” We cannot all of us (and for this let us be duly thankful) play a part in such stirring scenes, but our local watercourse, be it the historic Whissendine, the Smite or Leme or the humbler streamlet of less advertised hunting-grounds, is pretty sure to engulf us each and all in its waters, muddy or otherwise, sometimes. We emerge from them neither sadder nor wiser but merely wetter and probably, like Lord Grey de Wilton, not an atom the worse.

Though interest and incident are never absent from the hunting field, it is not so easy as might seem to pick out from memory happenings sufficiently conspicuous or unusual to be worthy of special record. Often enough one has witnessed the sight of two packs joining up in the course of a hunt, but I, for my own part, have never seen them jointly kill. Such a scene should indeed be worth describing. Imagine the senior huntsman taking the fox from the hounds and handing the mask with courtly ceremony to his confrère! All that it has been my fate to witness is the more commonplace business of sorting out the respective packs. I have seen two packs from the same kennel join up and the incident is sufficiently unorthodox perhaps to justify the passing mention here. The dog-pack had gone out hunting on a certain October morning, the meet being about six miles from the kennels. About an hour afterwards the kennelman had the bitch-pack in the yard, the door of which happened to have been left ajar. In an instant the whole pack were outside in the road and no power that was available could recover them. They knew their brothers had gone out hunting, and finding themselves free to join them, their noses had not been given them for nothing. Canute himself was not more impotent to stay the flowing tide than the kennelman and his boy were to prevent it ebbing from beneath their feet. In a few seconds the poor men were left to themselves. At precisely what moment these mischievous ladies left the kennel I do not know, but I can vouch for it that they covered the last four miles of their self-imposed journey in under twenty minutes. Imagine the huntsman’s perplexity at seeing his pack growing bigger and bigger beneath his eyes. You can imagine too (or perhaps you can’t) the interview between the huntsman and his faithless henchman when the two subsequently met face to face!

Another and a very different scene is called to mind. Anyone passing through the beautiful park of Fawsley in Northamptonshire will see in the shrubbery near the old mansion a stone slab bearing this inscription:

ANNALY M.F.H.

On the morning in question after the break-up of a long and severe frost hounds had met at Daventry, a name then without the world-wide significance that it bears to-day. In due course they proceeded to draw the big woodland of Badby, which lies a few miles to the south, and disturbing several foxes therein, the pack divided. The establishment as it chanced was short-handed that day, Frank Freeman being minus the services of his first whipper-in. But for this the subsequent tragedy in all probability would never have occurred. As it was, part of the pack slipped away across the deer park of Fawsley and came to the edge of the lake still frozen over. The fox had apparently crossed it and hounds were proceeding to follow him. Near the middle was a pool of open water in which the swans had been swimming during the frost and into it went the unfortunate hounds. Their efforts to get out were frustrated all the while by the surrounding ice giving way and although brave attempts were made at rescue, these met with little success and five couples perished.

The stone above-mentioned marks the spot where the poor creatures were buried.

Some of the sporting artists of the last century whose work is discussed in a subsequent chapter used to depict an aspect of the hunting field which is almost unintelligible to us to-day. At least one of them was accustomed to introduce the figures of prostrate horses (dead or dying presumably) as inevitable features of any noteworthy run which they chose to depict. If, as I refuse to believe, their drawings were really characteristic, a poor compliment would be paid to the stable management of those days and to the instincts of those who figured as sportsmen. While clipping machines, we must remember, had yet to be invented, and the land was not drained as is the case to-day, I do not think we need take such presentations too seriously, and we are probably justified in dismissing them as the product of a rather morbid imagination. What I am concerned to emphasise in my chapter of accident is that such scenes are foreign to the hunting field of to-day. The atmosphere is different and public opinion would deal unkindly with anyone guilty of such offences as our forefathers are supposed to have condoned. If a horse falls dead in the course of a run (and such things are bound to occur) the post-mortem, which the owner promptly calls for, has, in every case that has come within my own knowledge, found some organic disease accountable.

One thing is certain. All the good luck in the world, coupled with the best of horsemanship, cannot avert accident. Stake and thorn, ditch and binder will exact their toll, and there is in most countries besides the risk, great or small, of an encounter with wire. Everyone who goes out hunting, therefore, should possess some knowledge of first-aid to man and horse, seeing that life and limb, which in the case of our equine friends are one and the same thing, may well be endangered, for the lack of it.