by R S Surtees
“The strange confusion of the vale below,” where in the bright clear light — for it was turning to frost — we could descry a tail of at least two miles, scattered in all directions, and increasing every instant. The fox had been pointing for Sywell Wood, but making a sweep to the west, threw out several, myself among the number, who had ridden on the wrong side of a little spinney near the turnpike, and made the field with hounds very select. They turned, however, and I never shall forget the beauty of that closing scene. The brightness of the day enabled us to see everything, and as we were now on the road with the pack running towards us, we had nothing to do but hold hard and look on.
“Now!” said Stevens, standing erect in his stirrups, his clear blue eyes glistening with delight at the lucky turn, “we shall see who rides up to our bitches on a good scenting day! Yonder they go! By G — , the hounds are running away from them! That’s Mr Bagshawe leading, on the grey. Waters is alongside of him, and now he’s passed. That other dark coat is Mr Isham, for a pound. Now he has the lead!”
“They are coming,” said a young farmer who had just caught the sound to which Stevens had been listening for some seconds.
“Coming!” said Jack. “I should think they are! I’ve got no great ear for music, but I can hear them at all events.”
Just then the fox, dead beat, crept through the hedge at the corner of the field and crossed before us, still pointing for Sywell Wood.
“Here he is!” was the cry.
“Kill him before he gets into cover!” exclaimed a gentleman.
“No, by G — !” said Jack, “give him fair play! Clear the course!” and he called to the people on the road to let the fox cross it.
In another instant the pack, clustered together like bees, flew over the hedge, making it crack again; and just as they cleared it Mr Waters, the veterinary surgeon of Northampton, in his low-crowned hat topped it after them on his good clipped horse. Mr Bagshawe on the grey was next, Mr Vere Isham third, and Captain Tathwell, an officer quartered at Northampton, came after him, he being the first scarlet coat up. The fox had lain down in the hedgerow, and the pack had him before any others got over.
Nothing could be finer or more stylish than the manner in which the hounds did their work on this day. During the latter part of the run they were left entirely to themselves, Stevens being thrown out, and Mr Osbaldeston stopped by a man with his horse in a ditch; but the pace they went precluded the idea of being ridden over or pressed beyond the scent. Still, they were well ridden up to, and no man went better or straighter than Captain Tathwell who had a pretty severe fall in the early part of the run.
This was a day that satisfied every one — but how seldom such a day occurs in the course of a season!
III. THE PYTCHLEY — Continued.
SIR CHARLES KNIGHTLEY — A BAD SCENTING DAY — THE DUKE OF GRAFTON’S — JACK STEVENS — HIS FAITH IN HIS HOUNDS — THE BRIXWORTH KENNELS — VIOLET AND VIRGIN — MR WOOD’S BEAGLES — MR OSBALDESTON IN THE FIELD — A HOUND KILLED.
THE PYTCHLEY HUNT is not in its glory this season — at least it was not during the time I was in Northamptonshire. I do not think I ever saw above twenty red coats in the field, and that number only when we hunted within distance of the outlying Quomites. One day ought never to be forgotten in the annals of fox-hunting. It was about the turn of the year, in the height of the holidays, on as fine a hunting day as ever dawned; and Mr Osbaldeston’s hounds met in as good a country as exists, and one red coat was all that graced the field.
Mr Osbaldeston had gone to his place in Yorkshire, taking with him some of his hunting friends to finish the shooting season, and the meet was Badby Gate, two or three miles beyond Daventry, but there are surely residents in that district, and it is handy enough for the Warwickshire men — indeed our solitary scarlet bird did come from Rugby. I had no intention of hunting, well knowing that if I sent a horse on the hounds would go slap away, and leave me about three times as far off as the meet, which was quite far enough. But it is tame work sitting in the house when hounds are come-at-able, so I thought I would ride down in mufti to see them find, and get Jack Stevens to tell me the locality of a Warwickshire meet; and, after losing my way once or twice, and being misdirected by a great hawbuck in Daventry — for a man in trousers is fair game for anybody — I came upon the hounds just as they had drawn Badby Wood and were trotting down to Sir Charles Knightley’s at Fawsley. Here was an opportunity of seeing a park in perfection! The worthy baronet was out, riding a neat clipped horse, accompanied by a son, a fine, gentlemanly-looking young fellow on a beautiful dun pony, which he seemed well inclined to put along. Indeed, I had observed him one day before, when we had a bit of a scurry from Welton Place gorse to Crick, and thought he would prove one of the right sort; for, say what you will, blood will tell in men as well as in horses. What an admirable description of Sir Charles Nimrod gave in his ‘Crack Riders of England’! If I had been placed in the middle of the hunting field with all Northamptonshire before me I could have picked out Sir Charles Knightley by that sketch. He has laid aside the scarlet coat, but no man can look at him without being satisfied that he is a thorough sportsman.
Fawsley is situate in the most picturesque part of Northamptonshire, on the line of hills that separates it from Warwickshire; and the landscape presents a greater variety of hill and dale than most of the parks in the county. The parks and grounds are studded with woods and well-grown timber; and in front of the mansion, which appears to be very old, there is a fine expanse of water in the shape of a lake which abounds with wild-fowl. The country about is very beautiful, and must once have been magnificent. A gentleman told me that when Sir Charles came into possession there were some grazing grounds in the neighbourhood, 200 acres in extent; and the boundaries can still be traced among the newly planted hedges with which they are divided. I need hardly say that the Fawsley covers are sure finds; and though we were very unlucky on this day, it was owing to the atmosphere and not to want of foxes.
We did find one which the field would inevitably have driven into the jaws of the pack had Sir Charles not used all his energies, almost to throwing his leather breeches into convulsions, to persuade the unruly ones to let him break from that little spinney. The fox accomplished it at last, taking along a grassy ridge, into the ditch in which nothing had passed to foil the ground; and though hounds came out close at his brush they could not carry the scent ten yards. By dint of lifting they worked him into the woods, but the scent was worse in cover than out, if possible, and though repeatedly viewed they could make nothing of him; and after an hour’s badgering, during which the scent gradually became worse, Stevens whipped off and went to draw for another.
A storm came on shortly after, but whether the badness of the scent was due to the impending storm or to the lack of it in the fox himself — he was beautifully clean and glossy — I must leave others to determine by what I am going to add, though I think there cannot be a doubt that some foxes have a much stronger scent than others.
When we whipped off from this delicate gentleman we went to some small covers below Fawsley, but did not find; and Stowe Wood, formerly, I believe, belonging to the Pytchley, but now neutral between Mr Osbaldeston and the Duke of Grafton, was at length the order of the day. Many then went away, leaving about a dozen of those in whose homeward line the draw lay. We went below hill to give the hounds the wind, and just as we were turning up to the cover the blast of a horn and a slight cheer were heard from within, and presently out came a great thumping pack of hounds into the fallow, followed by eight or ten horsemen in dark coats, going at a sort of ‘galloping — dreary — done’ as though they had had about enough. The scent appeared to be a good holding one, and as hounds made it out very well across the fallow the chances were that they would do better when they got upon grass. I cantered up the hill, and found myself alongside Jack Carter with the Duke of Grafton’s hounds. They had met at William’s Bridge near Towcester, and had run their fox for three hours, c
overing some five-and-twenty miles of country, a run severe enough to tell out four-fifths of the field. Besides Carter and the second whip, Colonel Fitzroy was there, a youngster in a green jacket, and ten or a dozen more, three of whom were in the hunt uniform.
Of course, there was not much dash left in men, horses, or hounds when I joined them; but the sombre hue of the green coats, the heavy appearance of the hounds compared with the sprightliness of the Pytchley bitches I had just left, and Carter’s quiet, easy, matter-of-course style compared with Stevens’ brisk eagerness, carried the mind back to the earlier days of foxhunting. The Duke’s are a fine shapely pack, well adapted to a woodland country, of which they have a large proportion. They ran for about half an hour more, either in cover or crossing from one to another, and at last ran him to ground as it began to grow dark.
I like Jack Stevens. In my mind he is just what a whipper-in ought to be. He is not one of your fine, talking, half-gentleman, half-servant sort of fellows, but a man who knows his place and keeps it; speaks of his master as his master, is civil and obliging to every one; and though admittedly one of the very first-rate hands with horses and hounds in England, is as quiet and unassuming as if he had never entered a kennel or crossed a horse in his life. This has been observed by many who have seen him. I remember one of our oldest and best masters of hounds who had gone several miles out of his way to visit the Brixworth kennel, saying how pleased he was with Stevens’ manner, adding “such a celebrated fellow as he is might have been expected to give himself a few airs!”
Though Jack is so unassuming, he has an opinion of his own, and when he knows he is right he sticks by it. One day after we had lost our fox in rather an unsatisfactory manner, a young cleric told Jack they were running a hare at the time we thought they were getting on terms with their fox.
“A hare!” exclaimed Stevens with the utmost astonishment. “It’s impossible, sir!”
“I don’t know what you think possible,” said the gentleman, “but those men at work at the hedge said they viewed her.”
“It couldn’t be, sir!” said Jack. “The old hounds were working it, and I would rather believe them four-and five-year-old hunters than all the men in England.”
What a compliment to the canine race!
Stevens began life under Lord Middleton when that nobleman hunted Warwickshire, and has been with Mr Osbaldeston about ten years; consequently his career has lain in the three best hunting countries — or at least what were the three best, for Warwickshire has been sadly disfigured by that great wen called Leamington — viz.: Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Warwickshire — Mr Osbaldeston having had the Quom country ‘on and off’ for seven or eight seasons. Jack’s halloo is good and musical, and the sharp quick “yooi, yooi, yooi, yooi, yooi, yooi!” for calling hounds together is peculiarly his own. His seat and style of handling his horse are beautiful; it looks as if horse and rider were one.
Nothing can be better than the Brixworth kennel, whether we regard its situation in the country or look at it simply as a kennel. It is about six miles and a hah to the north of Northampton on the great road to Market Harborough, and stands on the rise of a hill to the south. There is no show or display about it — a plain brick building with blue roof; but the interior is admirably arranged: plenty of houses and yards, large airy lodging rooms; and I do not think I ever saw one better kept. There is not a speck of dirt to be seen anywhere, and the flags shine like polished marble. The feeder is a perfect professor in the art of condition; he lived with Lord Yarborough in Lincolnshire before he came to Mr Osbaldeston, with whom he has been, I understood, some eighteen years.
They have in this kennel a practice which I never saw in any other — viz.: that of washing the hounds after hunting with the broth in which the flesh was boiled. The hounds are put into high wooden troughs, and well washed over and rubbed with the broth in which they stand, after which they are turned into the lodging-houses, where they lick one another dry. This is said to be a capital preventive against lameness, and a good cure for bruises.
We learned in a recent number of the old Sporting Magazine that in the Cheshire Hunt they feed the hounds before hunting; a system of which the writer “highly approved”! The pack must present a very interesting appearance leaving the kennel after what Jorrocks would call a “good blow out,” and would be admirably calculated for a burst over a good scenting country. If the writer of that account were to pay a visit to the Brixworth kennel he would say they adopt the same system; for he would find hounds feeding at nine in the morning, and of course set down these to be the hunting hounds of that day, never supposing it possible for them to fast from that time until they return from hunting the next evening. I do not know what Sir Harry Main-waring’s hounds may do, but I know Osbaldeston’s would stand a very poor chance with their Northamptonshire flyers were they to go to work with full bellies. After feeding in the morning his hounds are looked over again about four o’clock when delicate feeders and such as are poor have a little more given them, but in very small quantities.
Without parading the whole pack, I would mention one “dog’s wife” called Violet that I think peculiarly deserving of notice, being one of the most perfect animals I ever saw: symmetry personified, and with the finest head and neck imaginable. Some people like better her own sister Virgin, for whom, I understand, Sir Richard Sutton offered 100 guineas. Virgin is larger than Violet and hunts with the dog pack. But the kennel is superb! We may look in vain for fifty couples of finer hounds than those in it at the present moment. There is only one faulty (flatsided) hound in the lot; and the good qualities of this one atone for his imperfections. I understand that the Hon. Henry Moreton who bought so largely of the draft at the sale in the autumn, after picking out as many of the best hounds as he wanted, sold the rest for a sum that covered the cost of the whole. That’s the way to do business!
I must not take leave of Brixworth without mentioning the pack of beagles kept by Mr Wood whose mansion stands in the village, his property lying round it. They are a very pretty lot; small, but even, and the most musical little things I ever heard. They hunt three times a week in the neighbourhood of Brixworth, Gilsborough, Spratton, &c.; and though they have hardly speed enough to press a hare off her foil they are so persevering that they generally manage, on the worst scenting days, either to run or walk their quarry to death. Mr Wood himself does not frequently hunt them, but is always willing to lend his pack to those whom he knows will not do mischief. On these occasions the beagles are hunted by a lad named Charles, mounted on a very extraordinary old horse; one of the best “has beens” in the country; now, owing to some infirmity in his legs, he is kept out, winter and summer; consequently there is no great look of “Stable Management or Condition of Hunters” about him. The pack consists of real beagles, 16 or 17 couple, and is well worthy the attention of a man who likes to see what may be termed the rudiments of the chase.
Captain Spencer also has a very pretty pack at Althorp: he and Mr Wood chop and change together when they have hounds that do not suit. One day when I was out with Mr Wood near Ravensthorp the two packs were running close together, but did not join.
This season, it is said, will be the last for Mr Osbaldeston as a Master of Hounds. I trust it is not, and by very many. A universally popular master is almost an anomaly; for though there are such men, if we look round, mix with our brother sportsmen and hear the conflicting opinions that are delivered respecting the same man, how very few we shall find in that enviable position! Masters are not fairly dealt with nowadays. The majority of men who follow hounds make no allowance for their feelings, vexations and anxieties. If the Master in the agony of his mind lets drive a hearty oath at any one for overriding his hounds, some lisping hermaphrodite sets him down as a “terrible, coarse, vulgar fellow,” and wonders the gentlemen of the hunt countenance such a man. These fine gentlemen would have a Master act on the suggestion of the polished middy who reproved one of his crew for hallooing to the sailors
with a hitch of his breeches and roll of his quid, “Lend a hand, you lubbers!” when he wanted something done; asking him if it would not be quite as easy to go up to them, and, taking off his hat, say, “Gentlemen, may I request your co-operation?”
Now, to my mind no man is fit to be a Master who cannot give a fellow a good rowing when he deserves it, and this may be done in two ways, either by dignified remonstrance, which best becomes the man of rank and standing, or the laughing, joking style that Osbaldeston adopts; this latter, while it affords amusement to the field instead of acting as a damper to spirits — for no man likes to hear another bullied — cuts with tenfold force against the offender, for he gets well laughed at by the whole field. One day I saw a gentleman on an unruly horse ride slap against the Squire and nearly knock him into the next county; recovering from the shock, he merely exclaimed as he eyed the man tearing away down the ride, “My God! What a tailor!”
I think Mr Osbaldeston a very pleasant man in the field. There is not an atom of ill nature in his composition, and if he does now and then cut his jokes, why he can take one as well as any man, and what more can we expect? It is true that he sometimes launches out when he sees fellows riding like fools and endangering the safety of his hounds, but this is a natural consequence of his knowledge of hunting. If he were less alive to what is doing he would never have been able to show the sport he has done. Looking at it from the pecuniary point of view, what an immense risk he runs every day his hounds take the field from the heedless riding of injudicious sportsmen. Supposing him to take out twenty couples a day, for many of which he would not take 100 guineas, and for none, I daresay, less than fifty, we have at least £2000 worth of hounds in the field; and let any man go into Northamptonshire and see the reckless riding of some of the young farmers, graziers, and horse-dealers; and then say whether he would always be able to keep his temper. If a hound is killed by unavoidable accident — for instance when one slips between a horse’s legs at a fence and is jumped on — no man takes the thing more philosophically than the Squire. Many will remember our bad luck on the last day of the year; it was a chapter of accidents; the whole thing so unsatisfactory that it is the only day of last year I have no wish to live over again. We met at Buttocks Booth on the Kettering road, and after drawing the gorse behind the inn blank, a fox was viewed away from the plantation on the other side of the road; and just as the hounds were laid on there came one of the most tremendous downpours of rain I ever experienced; it drenched every one in an instant, destroyed the scent and obliged us to whip off in Overston Park and go to that delightful cover Sywell Wood, deep at any time, but then more like a quagmire than anything else. When the storm subsided the wind got up and blew a perfect hurricane. In cover it was almost impossible to hear anything; but a fox being found, by separating through the rides we telegraphed him from quarter to quarter; and after trashing about for an hour and a half a halloo away was heard from the outside, and away went about a dozen of us with the hounds, but without either Mr Osbaldeston or Jack Stevens. The scent failed over a fallow; and hounds, after making their cast, threw up without anybody to assist them. Presently Jack Stevens came up; but just as he got within hallooing distance, away went hounds like the wind, down a hedge-side; and after running at a slapping pace for half a mile, during which we thought we were in for a run, a young hound named Fugleman who had directed the operations of the pack, imbedded his fangs in the back of a great jack hare.