by R S Surtees
Mr Beckford is silent on all these matters of minor detail — he says little, indeed, about the expense of a fox-hunting establishment, possibly feeling, what we all feel at the present day, that the expense depends a good deal on the way the thing is done. We have seen a country hunted four days a week for £1400 a year, while Leicestershire is reported to cost more than two-thirds of that sum for covert rent. Mr Beckford says nothing about cooks, either one or two; but he maintains that no pack of fox-hounds is perfect without two whippers-in. The Belvoir were a long way in advance of him here with six! The one huntsman and five peers would doubtless make six huntsmen also, unless the lords were restricted from interfering with hounds save during their respective weeks of management.
But to our text — the “Beauties of Beckford.” To estimate the merits of this work aright it must be remembered that he was writing on an almost entirely new subject, and that his opinions and instructions have stood the test of time having received the stamp of approbation from all succeeding sportsmen. Mr Beckford was born in 1741, and wrote the first of his “Letters” in March 1779, when he was thirty-eight years of age. From the great experience displayed it is most probable that he succeeded to his property on coming of age, and immediately began to keep hounds — harriers, it would appear. He lived in a good old-fashioned country house called Stapleton, in Dorsetshire, a few miles north of Blandford, on the road to Shaftesbury; and hunted, we believe, the whole of the country now hunted by Mr Farquharson.... The world seems to have been indebted to an accident for the appearance of the book; and there is so much evident honesty about the whole that we have no doubt the reason assigned is a true one, and not a mere graceful apology for being found with a pen in his hand....
We feel assured that it is in the experience of every sportsman that hounds can be accommodated at a trifling outlay; that “comfort” is the word that comprises everything required in the matter of the kennel. Give the hound his bellyful and let him he warm and dry and he wants nothing else; clean straw within is far better than freestone or external decoration without — besides, it is not seemly to see hounds lodged better than human beings. Mr Beckford’s kennel was evidently not of the magnificent order; he tells his friend that it had been originally built for a pack of beagles. He advocates space, with a due regard for the maturement of a plan before the building is commenced. “The architecture,” he says, “may be conformable to your own taste; useless expense I should not recommend, yet as I suppose you will often make it a visit, at least in the hunting season, I could wish it might have neatness without as well as cleanliness within, the more to allure you to it; I should, for the same reason, wish it to be as near your house as you will give it leave.”
Whether it has been owing to Mr Beckford’s precepts and example, or that people have something else to do with their money, we know not; but fine kennels have never been the characteristic of the west of England. The great John Warde’s Kennel — indeed his whole hunting accommodation at Hungerford — was of a very mediocre description, and yet Mr Warde’s hounds sold for more money than had ever been given for a pack before....
Whatever care parties may take and to whatever expense they may go, they cannot be sure of exemption from kennel lameness. A kennel resembles an icehouse in one respect. One man builds a magnificent freestone edifice, everything apparently perfect, and yet the first time the place is filled he finds that it will not keep ice. Another man cobbles up a wood and straw hut, perhaps from Cobbett’s Cottage Economy, for £5 or £6, and it supplies him with ice all the year round. So neither does a fine kennel ensure a sound pack of hounds. His Majesty’s kennel at Ascot has been peculiarly affected with kennel lameness; the New Forest hounds have been dreadful martyrs to it; and if we mistake not a great master in Hampshire had to change the site of his very complete one in consequence of the malady....
Mr Beckford, it may be observed, does not reduce size to any particular standard, though indeed with a hound as with a horse it may truly be said that their height has nothing to do with their size; he does not give us any data to go upon, and we all know that the hounds of one pack appear large until we come to contrast them with the hounds in another. Mr Warde had hounds in his kennel 26 inches high, and large in proportion; the late Duke of Cleveland had them large also. Twenty-one or -two inches for bitches and twenty-three or -four for dogs, will be about the average height of packs of the present day.... Of the size of hounds Mr Beckford writes: “I perfectly agree with you that to look well they should be all nearly of a size; and I even think they should all look of the same family. If handsome withal they are then perfect.” He quotes Somerville with regard to their being sizeable; all of which shows how clearly this great sportsman limned out in his mind what we have realised. We question whether that equality of size, levelness or evenness, as it is called, was attained — at least in the majority of packs — until the separation of the sexes was adopted, a system certainly introduced within the last twenty years. The “family likeness,” too, is a thing very observable in packs of any standing....
Beckford says: “I find I have mentioned a small head as one of the requisites of a hound; but you will understand it as relative to beauty only; for as to goodness I believe that largeheaded hounds are in no wise inferior.” Upon this point Nimrod writes: “As Beckford recommends the small head, we may presume that the form and fashion of this point began to be changed in his time, and has, we think, been carried to too great an excess in the fox-hound of the present day, particularly in one or two kennels (the Belvoir, for example) where very short as well as small heads are a leading characteristic. For ourselves we like some length of head in a fox-hound, not being able to divest ourselves of the idea of a cross with a pointer when we see him with a short head and a snubbed nose.”
Mr Warde’s, afterwards Mr Horlock’s, hounds were heady enough, and there was no blood in greater repute, especially for crossing. “The colour I think of little moment,” says Beckford, “and am of opinion with Foote respecting his negro friend that a good dog, like a good candidate, cannot be of a bad colour.” Despite this, we like to see a lively-coloured pack; their richness adds brilliance to the scene. In colour, however, there should be a sort of resemblance or family likeness, as Beckford calls it, as well as in shape and make. A pack of the old black and tans are handsome as a pack, but they do not look well or in keeping with when mixed with the red, blue, or lemon-pie of modern times. The badger pie is a good, serviceable, sporting-looking colour, and wears better in dirty sticky countries than the more gaudy mixtures of the other pies. There was a pack of hounds in Ireland, long in the possession of the same family, entirely white....
There are two things about which men are sensitive and jealous — their clubs and their hounds. It is not enough for a man to belong to a good club himself; he must underrate all others.... Mr Beckford had very much this idea in his head when he wrote: “Those who have been used to a sharp-nosed fox-hound will hardly allow a largeheaded hound to be a fox-hound, yet they both equally are. Speed and beauty are the chief excellences of the one while stoutness and tenderness of nose in hunting are characteristic of the other.” Though Beckford had not gone much from home to gain information or to see other hunts, he had a capital idea of the way the thing should be done....
We think the following one of his best passages: “A great excellence in a pack of hounds is the head they carry; and that pack may be said to go the fastest that can cover ten miles soonest, notwithstanding the hounds separately may not run so fast as many others. A pack considered in a collective body go fast in proportion to the excellence of their noses and the head they carry, so that traveller generally gets soonest to his journey’s end who stops least upon the road. Some hounds that I have hunted would creep all through the same hole, though they might have leapt the hedge, and would follow one another as true as a team of cart horses. I had rather see them, like the horses of the sun, all abreast.”... Beckford held that “from 20 to 30 couples are as m
any, I think, as you should take into the field.” A pretty handsome complement too, say we! It is more than nineteen out of twenty masters take at the present day. It shows, however, that Mr Beckford was for doing the thing well, as indeed is apparent throughout his Letters.
“The propriety of any number must depend upon the strength of your pack and the country in which you hunt.... It is not so material what the number is as that all your hounds should be steady and as nearly as possible of equal speed.” He might have added to this excellent truth that the number of days a week hunted should also be taken into consideration.
Doubtless a full pack looks well provided they are sufficiently manned; but a short pack is to be preferred to mere numbers where rating and cutting and noise show how ill at ease they all are. It is bad policy, for the sake of mere numbers, to bring out skirting, head-strong, resolute beggars that make the welkin ring.... A dog of all animals is the most sagacious, and it is amusing to see what a difference a high stone wall between some hounds and an irate whipper-in makes in the movements and manner of the former. We have seen a hound that would have flown at the approach of the servant armed with the well-accustomed whip, slouch along as if he were stone deaf when he knew the man could not get at him. One such obstinate brute would bring discredit on a whole pack in the minds of many people, strangers especially. This unbecoming independence often proceeds from want of work. “When packs are very large,” says Mr Beckford, “the hounds are seldom sufficiently hunted. Few people choose to hunt every day.” Times have changed, however; and a hunting quarter whence hounds can be reached every day is looked upon as quite indispensable. We imagine that hunting has become a “point of honour” with young men... and they qualify as sportsmen, as it were, by the frequency of their appearances at the cover-side.... Not that we blame any man for getting as much hunting as he can.
Beckford disliked bag foxes and gives his reasons: “The scent of them is different from that of other foxes; it is too good, and makes hounds idle; besides, in the manner in which they are generally turned out it makes hounds wild. They seldom fail to know what you are going about before you begin, and if often used to hunt bag foxes will become riotous enough to hunt anything.” As to the fox he “must needs stink extravagantly,” be weakened for want of his natural food and exercise, his spirit broken and his limbs stiffened by confinement; add to this that when turned out he does not know any point for which to make.
A far more painful picture, we fear, might be drawn of the sacrifice of many a gallant fellow before the riff-raff of a countryside: the meet at some low public-house, the landlord of which is in league with some fellow who can “yell,” and what he calls “hont a pack of hounds”; the field consisting of all the scamps in the country, and the hounds of all sorts from the calf-sized fox-hound to the pigmy rabbit beagle. The field having duly “refreshed” themselves for the good of the house, at length turn out about 12 o’clock, say, so that their brother ruffians of the district may get away from their work and join them. After due swaggering and strutting before the door, and no more “sportsmen” being likely to cast up, some circus-like imitation of a master proceeds to cap for him he calls the huntsman, while that worthy in the back-yard is ingratiating himself with the hounds, or the servant lass.
Then we are let into the mysteries. The imitation master, he of the green duck-hunter and breeches that once were white, having gone the rounds with cap, hat or glove, enacts the part of the street posture-master prior to balancing the donkey on a ladder on his chin—” Another shilling, please, ladies and gentlemen — just one more shilling and hup goes the donkey! Most wonderful performance!” So here: “Just half-a-croon more. I wants only another half-croon to make up ten shillings for Tom Sly, and then we’ll torn him out at once. Fine fox as ever was seen. Mr Benbow, ha’ ye given me a shillin’? Mr Not man, ha’ ye?” the imitation master’s memory being rather treacherous. At length the necessary capital is collected, the poor fox is brought out of the hay-loft in the sack he was in, his back rubbed with aniseed to prevent all chance of escape, and mine host, taking the sack over his shoulder, proceeds to enlarge reynard on the village common, followed by all the little boys and girls, who dodge him about from bush to bush and point to point, with “Here he is!” and “There he is!” just as the advance guard of stag-hunters dodge the stag. Meanwhile our friends at the “public” are pulling their steeds out of all the queer holes and corners that serve as temporary stables; and Tom Sly, having mounted a woe-begone, broken-down tit, and gathered up his reins, opens the coal-house door to the motley crew, who forthwith rush out full cry, and scour the neighbouring cottages in quest of something sweeter than fox, regardless of Tom’s horn and hunting noises, of which he is eminently prodigal.
The forty-shilling cavalry being now in motion — the riders all armed with serviceable whips — one quilts Jowler, another quilts Towler and a third lays it into Tapster; till, on reaching the common, a majority is at all events attained which being taken straight to the spot where the fox was turned down, open with such an outcry as to attract all the rest of the pack, and make the little boys and girls tremble for their own safety and the contents of their satchels. The hunt is now up, and most glorious it is. Jack Flashman, the self-appointed master, is throwing his dirty white breeches into convulsions on the line, followed by a score of country-men variously clad, on cart-horses, fleecy-coated ponies and donkeys. “Forrard!” cries Sly, raising his faded cap to denote that he views the varmint. “Forrard!” responds Flashman, a little behind, now rising in his stirrups and getting his ill-fed horse by the head as if determined “to do or die.” So they follow the tortuous windings of the chase through the common, and at length reach the fallow beyond. But there is a gate plump in the centre, and the field all ride like men with such a convenience in view. The foremost man, reaching the gate, views the fox rolling over the uneven fallow much in the manner in which many of the field will roll home towards night.
The fallow does little for the fox, the aniseed completely neutralising any little advantage he might have gained in crossing it. “Forrard!” is still the cry. The hounds have now strung out into a long-drawn file, but still there is abundance of scent even for little Bubble, the beagle, who comes yelping and yammering last. On they go to the infinite delight of the lengthening field. Who shall say their hounds can’t run a fox as well as anybody’s? The next field is wheat, but as none of them are farmers they just plough up the middle of it. There is a wall at the bottom, and thrice reynard fails in his attempt to leap it. He effects it at last, tho’ at the cost of letting Thunderer, a great loose-jointed, lurcher-like hound, get a view. Thunderer dashes forward, expecting to grab him; the fox however quietly turns inside the wall; and, as Mr Beckford says, “it is the dash of the fox-hound that distinguishes him,” Thunderer goes roaring over three parts of the next field; till, having neither scent nor view, he returns to the yap, yap, yapping little Bubble, who, having turned short with the fox, is now leading the chase along the wall. Great is the pride of Bubble’s master as he stands trying to coax his antediluvian white pony over the nearly flattened gap in the wall. Lucky it was for Bubble that his master was up; for, pursuing the route with his usual undeviating accuracy, he comes upon the fox, who, exhausted, is now lying at bay among some rough grass by the wall, his widely open, panting mouth showing very formidable tusks almost long enough to meet in the body of the little bow-wow.
Bubble, wholly unused to such encounters, starts at sight of him; and there is no saying but the fox might have made bubble-and-squeak of him had not his master with a hammer-headed whip-stick, dealt a blow enough to fell an ox on the skull of poor reynard, who, the next minute is high in air, amid the uproarious plaudits of the field, all delighted at not having lost the fox, and making as much of it as if they had run him ten miles without a check.
Tom Sly puffs and blows at his horn; the prowess of the miscellaneous pack is extolled and comparisons drawn between their exploits and those of th
eir aristocratic neighbour: “Sir John’s dogs are nothin’ to theirs.” Bubble’s reputation is raised, and the owners of lurchers and curs and colleys vow they will have a cross with this redoubtable dog. The unbroken fox is laid across Sly’s saddle, and paraded back to the public-house, whence the sportsmen came with all the honours of war and laudations of triumph. A pretty evening ensues.
But we have devoted more space than we ought to such ragamuffin work.
CHAPTER II.
STRENGTH OF HARRIER PACK — PROPER USE OF HARRIERS — CHEAP TO BUY — ZENOPHON ON HARE-HUNTING — HARE-FINDERS — THE BEST PART OF THE SEASON — FOX-HUNTING WITH HARRIERS CONDEMNED — SHEEP-WORRYING — ENTERING YOUNG HOUNDS — CAPPING AND ‘BRUSHING.’
MR BECKFORD OPENS his Letter X. abruptly with, “I thought that I had been writing all this time to a fox-hunter, and hitherto my letters have had no other subject; I now receive a letter from you full of questions about hare-hunting, to all of which you expect answers”... “You ask, he says, “how many hounds a pack of harriers should consist of, and what kind of hound is best suited for that diversion? You should never exceed 20 couples in the field; it might be difficult to get a greater number to run well together.”
We think 20 couples too many — 12 or 14 are ample, and the more there are to breed and keep up, the more of a business and a trouble they become. Besides, as Mr Beckford adds, “the fewer hounds you have, the less you foil the ground.”
