Part 6

There are as many ways of hunting a country as there are styles of riding a horse. The object of one huntsman is to kill foxes, of another to give his field a run, of another to see hounds work. The character of the country itself decides in some degree whether hounds are to be left to themselves or handled. The great points and fine runs are for the open countries where coverts are few and foxes sufficient, but not too plentiful. In wild or rough countries, or in high-banked counties like Devonshire and Cornwall, hounds must to a great extent be made self-reliant and left to hunt themselves. But fox-hunting, to be the real thing, must have dash and go. To spend half your life standing by a gorse watching a huntsman sauntering about, evidently equally pleased if he can catch a fox within its precincts as in the open; to march leisurely from one draw to the next; to see hounds kept to the skulking fox when old Cæsar has taken the open; to follow a pottering hunt through hand-gates and across fences, when the huntsman’s course is pioneered by timber-felling and gap-making servants, is not hunting.

There are few ideal huntsmen. There is many a good kennel-huntsman, many a good rider to hounds who carries the horn; but they mostly fall into two categories, hound-men or horsemen. What is wanted is the combination,--the man who can get anywhere with his hounds, who can infect the pack with his fire and dash while holding them in hand, who can throw their heads down or lift them, who never leaves them there at the critical check to mark the place where they had it last, and who, whilst rejoicing in the race for blood, can, when scent is catching and fallows are cold, keep himself in hand and enjoy the slow and patient unravelling of the puzzle. Swift and sure when he has the chance, slow but sure when needs must. A pack takes its cue from the huntsman, provided always he has a knowledge of his craft, for a pack will never heed a fool. A fast huntsman will make a fast pack; a pack handled by a dashing huntsman, if he be a huntsman, will drive; the slow huntsman will have slack hounds,--but there is less danger that a cautious and deliberate huntsman will spoil hounds or mar sport more than the man who is for ever galloping his hounds. Do not imagine that when I speak of a dashing huntsman I mean a noisy, hollering, horn-blowing, harum-scarum Hotspur; but one to whom hounds rush, knowing he means to give them sport; who goes sharp to cover, and into it as if he meant business; who expects, as soon as the clear view-halloo tells that a fox has “gone away,” that, as he flies to the open, his whips will look sharp and get every eager hound to him; who intends that every man who wishes to go shall have the chance if he can give it them; and that till his fox is accounted for, his place is with his flying beauties.

Much of the comfort and pleasure depends on the Master; and if huntsmen vary, how various are the types of Masters! There are the jolly familiar ones, and the “speak-to-me-if-you-dare-sir” sort; there are the military precision, and the no-discipline-at-all kind. There is the M.F.H. who notices none but his intimates, who does not take the trouble to recognise his field, or say “good-morning” to the farmer, or “thank you” to the man who opens the gate. There is the damning cursing, swearing species--with varieties: the one that swears from bad temper; the one that swears thinking it is professional; and the one that swears from pure excitement. The first sort is always offensive, the second makes a mistake, and the last is sometimes amusing. I have heard remarkable language proceed from the mouths of M.F.H’s., and heard them scream, bellow, and yell, sometimes with some cause, sometimes without. We can forgive it when it is the froth of enthusiasm. A friend of mine told me he heard a Master say to himself under his breath, while he watched his hounds eating their fox after a good run, with keen longing in his eyes, “Lucky devils. Now why the ---- can’t I do that?”

When following the same hounds, I heard a whip slanged by one of the field for not getting a gate open quicker. “Well, you are a blank fool,” said the critic. “And so would you be a blank fool if you was called one every ten minutes.” But unhappily the expressions used by M.F.H’s., when they throw their tongues, cannot always be considered fit for print. I heard a story once of a mail coachman who had been using such frightful language to his team that the passenger beside him at last remonstrated and said, “My friend, you should not use such language. Remember the patience of Job!” The coachman replied “Yes, sir; but did Job ever drive three blind ’uns and a bolter?” There is no doubt that a M.F.H. requires the patience of Job. His office at home, in the kennel, in the field is no sinecure; and few things try the temper more than to have worked hard to show sport, and then to see yourself defeated, and the enjoyment of your field spoiled by some individual act of thoughtlessness, ignorance, or idiocy. I am always much more struck by the patience and forgiving disposition of masters than by their rough words. It is hard for the eager and impetuous, with every desire to give room to hounds, to have his forbearance rewarded by seeing some less scrupulous rider take his place. It is hard sometimes on a tearing flyer to get him pulled in at a moment’s notice. But a follower of hounds knows when he has done wrong, and seldom does a man catch it without deserving it; and if he is a sportsman, whose zeal only has outrun its discretion, he may be sure of forgiveness.

This is not the time to debate whether fox-hunting has a long life before it in crowded little England. Its existence depends on its popularity. As long as an Englishman loves a horse and a hound, as long as hunting-men maintain the principles of equality and fraternity in the hunting-field, are generous to those who afford them the sport, are willing to give when they take, are considerate and kindly in their behaviour to all and every class with whom they associate--so long will the country be proud of its packs, and its people enjoy the sight of the scarlet coats coming by road and bridle-path, and public opinion will check the gin and gun of those who have a vulpicidal tendency. Like all the best amongst our institutions, fox-hunting is secure so long as it is broad based upon the people’s will.

VII

CUB-HUNTING

VII

THERE hangs in the drawing-room of Skelton Castle, in Cleveland, a picture of Heywood Hardy’s, which illustrates to the full that artist’s wonderful power in combining the life and colour of a sporting subject with the poetry of English scenery. We are accustomed to many varieties of hunting pictures, but how few are worthy of the painter’s art. There is a dreadful family likeness amongst them--so many pink-faced sportsmen in tall hats and vermilion coats, so many white pairs of breeches, and so many tri-colour hounds. Sometimes we have these objects arranged standing at a meet, as if to be photographed. As we gaze, we are sad to think that they will continue to stand till time rots the canvas, and how long time will be about it; that those wooden hounds will never be thrown into cover; that the pink-faced huntsman in the scarlet coat will never get the horn, which he clutches in his dog-skinned hand, to his mouth; and that all those straight-limbed, clean-legged horses will never dash a speck of mud on to those spotless boots and awfully white breeches! But a more ambitious artist, wrestling with his difficult but popular subject, will make his red-coats leap over insignificant or impossible fences; he will have his hounds flying out of the picture to meet you as they dash over a rail or thread a fence; and will create not only a remarkable study in foreshortening of hounds, but one that fills the onlooker with amazement at the courage of the artist who, in order to make his study, must have placed himself and his canvas betwixt fox and hound, and braved the rush and charge of the yelling pack. The fox is often introduced upon the scene, that fox we so frequently hear about, “dead beat, with his tongue hanging out,” but so beautifully clean that one wonders where is that mudless country in which, instead of dashing at a draggled fox with his back up, the hounds follow this galloping and cleanly animal, with his mouth wide open and, of course, his tongue hanging; out. How different is the artist’s treatment of his subject in the picture at Skelton Castle. There is no fox, there is not a fence, there is not a covert, there is not even a picturesque top-hat or top-boot. The picture is called “A Summer’s Day in Cleveland,” and the scene is on the beach,--hounds swimming, splashing, and dashing out of a tidal pool on a sunny morning, accompanied by the old squire on a pony, the young squire (master and huntsman), and two servants in pink exercising coats, the picture combining the beautiful animation of the hounds with a wonderful harmony of colour and poetry of scene. Behind, the sparkling splash and spray, in the foreground are the breakers, whose white foam fades into the deeper grey of the North Sea and then into the pale blue of a summer sky, while beyond loom the rugged rocks of Huntcliffe Nab. As an admirer of the study, I can look long at this wonderful example of catching and fixing for ever the prettiness of a scene of a summer’s morning; but as a sportsman I begin to get impatient with the sun, and to wish that the hounds will be done splashing and “come on out of that”; that the master would change his straw hat (which certainly is better in the picture than a splash of black velvet) for his cap, and let us get up from the beach and go and find a fox.

As August draws to a close, we know that, now the reapers are silent and the stubbles are bare, we shall soon be once more astride of our equine companions in the chase, that we shall see the covert quivering and shaking, and sterns waving among the whins. Cub-hunting is a most excellent and pleasant introduction to the serious business of the season. We all--foxes, hounds, horses, and men--require the preparation and the bustling about that the early hours of September and October place within our reach. Much of the season’s success depends on how the pack is used during these two months. A pack, as someone has said, is made or marred in cub-hunting. After the 1st November there is comparatively little opportunity for educating either cubs or puppies.

A man does not go to covert side in September to ride across country; he goes to realise with his own eyes and ears the delightful fact that another hunting-season has begun, to inhale the fresh air of the early morning, to exercise his unconditioned horse, and to join those choice spirits who love the cry of hounds better than their pillows. He knows that it will be “Tally-ho back! tally-ho back!” all the morning, and if, by a lucky chance, a cub is followed into the open air for ten minutes, and he gets a gallop, it is but a _hors d’œuvre_ to whet his appetite for better and more substantial things to follow, and to serve as a reminder to his horse, when blind ditches entrap him, that a good hunter must take care where he puts his feet, and jump big when the boundary between fence and field is undefined. A master is seldom hampered by an unwieldy “field” when he meets at six o’clock. Those who are out at that time are likely to be sportsmen, and able to appreciate the fact that all are there for educational purposes.

Those who, when the season is in full swing, are crowding and watching for a get away and a good start, and causing throughout the day untold anxiety to the huntsmen, are now in shooting-caps and leggings, chatting and indulging in gossip and chaff in a manner that would be regarded as unprofessional when in tall hats and top-boots. Probably nothing exasperates a hunting-man more than when, on the tip-toe of expectancy, as hounds speak in covert, he is compelled to listen to some bore who thinks the occasion suitable for airing his views on local or Imperial politics, or for relating his own exploits of valour the day you were not out. Business and politics should never be permitted as subjects of conversation in the hunting-field, not even during cub-hunting, when any other topic may certainly be tolerated, if not encouraged. One of the secondary pleasures of the chase is social intercourse, the cementing of friendships, and the opportunities of better acquaintance with neighbours which it affords.

These opportunities are not always taken advantage of, for though we all can point to fields where most of the regular followers are on such terms as to make it almost a happy family circle, we probably all know one or more hunts where jealousy, pride, or pure foolishness spoil much of the comfort and pleasure of all. In most fields there is, however, at least one individual whom all agree in desiring to avoid,--some cad, some snob,--to escape whom we hang back in covert, jump some appalling place, or, if in a crowd, endeavour to get our worst enemy or most unselfish friend between him and us. If one of these objectionable persons, or well-meaning bores, comes out cub-hunting, we are at his mercy; he can get at us, and the music of the hounds is mingled with his ceaseless jabber; our only escape is the road home to breakfast. Oh, gentle reader, have you not often, at covert side, endeavoured to stay the torrent of “shop” poured into your ear, by assenting to any opinion, acquiescing in every view put forward, no matter at what violation to conscience and conviction? Have we not all, in the dread that an objection or divergent view, however gently expressed, might open another floodgate, been false to our creeds, and thrown our most cherished prejudices overboard? I wonder if Egerton Warburton had some particular man in his eye when he wrote the following stanza in his famous song, “Quaesitum Meritis.” I am certain that many a man who has sung this verse has thought of some one to whom the words particularly applied--

“For coffee-house gossip some hunters come out, Of all matters prating save that they’re about; From scandal and cards they to politics roam, They ride forty miles, head the fox, and go home. Such sportsmen as these we good fellows condemn, And I vow we’ll ne’er drink a _quaesitum_ to them.”

The master, huntsman, and servants are, during the cub hunting-season, free from many of the annoyances that a large and mixed field too often brings in its train, but they have need of the liberty which a small following and early hours afford. Some M.F.H.’s do not make known their intentions as to when and where they hunt, and small blame to them, for at the very beginning of the season the fewer there are out the better, as thirty, forty, or more couple of hounds, including entering puppies, will require their undivided attention. Yet if they meet at 5.30 or 6 a.m. there is little to fear; for the men who hunt to ride, the men who follow the ladies rather than the hounds, the men who come out to display their attire, and even the horse-breakers who like to educate their young ones at the expense of the hounds, are all most likely still in their earths. A kindly Master who takes a pleasure in seeing the schoolboy on his pony, and a pride in seeing these youngsters enter well, will give them a chance to put in a day or two before the summer holidays end, and will let every regular and trusted member of the hunt have an opportunity of being present. It is to the genuine Nimrod a pleasant thing to get up in the dark, and, after a light breakfast, hastily swallowed, to mount in the dawn and once more find himself jogging beside the hounds along the road on an autumn morning. His mind is easy and his temper unruffled by struggles to get into leathers and top-boots, or by the memory of letters unanswered on his table; any clothes will do, and he will be home again in time to attend to pressing matters of business. There are no lurking fears as to whether his mount is equal to the task before him; there is no waiting at the meet, and hounds are busy in the covert as soon as it is reached. The sound of the horn, the opening pack, the view-halloo from the whipper-in, the crack of the men’s whips, and the rattling and rustling in the gorse, are pleasanter because of the interval that has passed since last they woke the woodlands, and for the stillness of the outside world at this early hour. Soon after the first brace of cubs have been killed, and hounds are being taken to the next cover, the labourer going to the field and the horses to the plough remind him how young the day still is; and a little later the sun on his back, and the “had enough” appearance of the five or six couple of hounds trailing behind the huntsman, tell him that it is still only cub-hunting, and time for all to be going home. There are, on these days, reminders that one year has gone and another begun, and you miss some of the old veterans with grizzled and scarred muzzles, and hear that a few of those you welcome, as you have welcomed them for half a dozen seasons, when work with cubs began, are there only till the young ’uns have been entered; and you see the new entry, with their as yet unfamiliar forms, answering to unfamiliar names. In October many a run takes place that would do credit to the open season, and these fast spins across the country, when the ground is hard and fences and ditches horribly blind, can test the mettle of horse and rider, and make any man feel very comfortably satisfied with his performance, if, by luck or good management, he negotiates the hidden dangers that lurk on one side or the other of most October fences. In a run at this time of the year, gates are as yet fastened up, the gaps of a past season are undiscoverable, the weak places and the strong blackthorn branches are covered with the leaf and bramble. The fastest twenty-five minutes I ever saw was run on a certain 14th October, hounds getting away together in a bunch from Seamer Whin, and killing their fox in ground now covered by the suburbs of smoky Middlesborough. It was not cub-hunting, yet one of those delightful “things” that is the well-earned reward of the constant follower, the envy of the absent one, and ten times more enjoyed for being unexpected.

Countries vary so much in the proportion of woodland they contain, and in the stock of foxes that may be depended upon, that the circumstances of each district influence the character of cub-hunting. Where coverts are extensive and numerous, and litters abound, cubbing may mean the deliberate killing down of a great number of cubs in the interests of the sport that is to follow, and far beyond what is required for blooding hounds. When foxes are well preserved, and in plenty, a Master does well to kill a large number, for there is this amount of truth in the saying, “The more foxes you kill, the more you will have,” that owners of game coverts and non-hunting proprietors are unwilling very often to encourage foxes or to have litters on their places if a fair proportion are not killed. In such a country as this, even when, owing to an early harvest or absence of arable land, a start is made in August, cub-hunting may be cub-hunting and cub-killing all the time up to the end of October. In other hunts, after a week or two’s cubbing, hunting may be very much the same as after the opening day, the scarlet coat and top-boot alone marking the transition. The conduct of the huntsman will not be so much actuated by blood-thirstiness, as by the wish to discover where there are foxes, to give the cubs a little instruction in going away, and hounds a few lessons of how to behave in the open. He will not, or need not, ask every time whether a fox is an old one or not, and many a run that would be considered good in the winter can be enjoyed in October in such a country as this. But for the great majority of hunting-men, these early days are but the time for getting their studs together, their horses and themselves into condition; and custom and tradition has consecrated the first hunting-day in November as the New Year for a follower of hounds.

VIII

THE GREATEST RUN I EVER SAW

VIII

IF anyone were to ask me which was the best run I ever saw, I should say the great run with the Cleveland hounds on Monday, January 9, 1882. Probably many, if not most, hunting-men would turn up their noses at it if they saw the country over which the most extraordinary fox in my experience took us, for I admit that nothing but the fact of having been bred in such a wild hunting country would make it in the widest sense a rideable one. I must further confess that the fact of being sole survivor of it makes its memory all the dearer, though I regret to this day that I had no companion during the last twenty-five minutes to support my evidence, or to discuss with me in after years its wonders. I trust that in attempting to describe it, if I seem to be utterly devoid of modesty and to be blowing loud blasts on my own horn, it will be remembered that every man has some day in a long life, in which he is conscious that he has had the best of it. This was my day, and I certainly felt at the end of it that it would have been worth risking one’s life for; it gave me the sensation that comes now and again in every life, of not having lived in vain. The following account is for the most part from my diary, written while I was still stiff from the previous day’s exertions.

Monday, 9th January 1882.--Hounds met at Ayton, where there was breakfast at the Buck. This was the most extraordinary day I ever had. I rode Queen Mab in the morning till she got an overreach, when I changed on to Faraway, on which horse I finished the first, and was there when Bob Brunton took the fox from the hounds in Hell Gill. I state this to correct the press accounts, which describe my getting my second horse in the great run--not to save my own credit, but to preserve the record of my horse’s marvellous performance. The first was a ringing run, fairly fast, on the hills between Roseberry Topping and Guisborough Banks, and for forty minutes I rode Faraway up and down the hills, over the moors, and in and out of the gills before we found the second and ever-memorable fox. My brother Jack did not have a second horse, but rode his mount (a blood Irish hunter called Sligo, that cost two hundred and fifty guineas, and was worth every sixpence of the money) all day, and “let him have it” in the first run. If we had both started from scratch, he might have taken first honours; as it was, he took the second place in a numerous field, as the sequel will show. I have no doubt that the competition between us ministered to my success, for we generally rode a trifle jealous, but were always best pleased when we could share the honours.