by R S Surtees
Writers who avow their partiality for harehunting may be expected to advocate propriety in appointment and appearance; even Mr Beckford, despite what he says about the 3-mile walk, seems to have considered that what was worth doing at all was worth doing well. The idea of having 20 couples of hounds in the field shows that, as do his remarks as to heading and tailing a pack.
The great mistake people generally commit with their harriers is making them too great a feature of their establishment. We don’t see why, in a good hare-hunting country, a man should not keep 12 or 14 couples with as little fuss or trouble as he would a kennel of pointers or greyhounds; but somehow it is almost never done except by farmers, and then the hounds are generally kept at large and only collected the night before hunting, if even then. Many men commence with the resolve to take the thing quietly — going out when it suits their convenience; yet once get the hounds in the kennel, and first one person, then another, will send to ask when they are going out, till it becomes necessary to have regular hunting days; and the harriers become almost as great a care as a pack of fox-hounds. As time steals on the owner keeps breeding them bigger and bigger till he thinks them a match for a fox; and perhaps finishes the season by hunting foxes, or rather, by hunting hares or foxes, after which, like most things which profess to serve a double purpose, the hounds become neither one thing nor the other, and hunt neither hare nor fox well.
We have seen it stated, we think by Nimrod, that the necessary expenses of a pack of harriers need not exceed £100 a year. This presumed the existence of a certain establishment to begin with, one in which the groom most likely acted as huntsman, and a stable-boy, or one of the field, as whipper-in. Conducted in this manner with a residence in a good open country (for hare-hunting is not a sport for which to travel far from home) a pack of harriers is a great acquisition to a neighbourhood.... Near towns they undoubtedly are a nuisance, many who turn out with them, especially at holiday time, being no great judges of the crops they trample upon. As trainers of young horses for fox-hunting harriers are truly invaluable, as the horses have the benefit of the introductory music, jump without being crammed or frightened at their fences and do not run the risk of dropping in for severe runs. Not that good runs are unknown with harriers, far from it; nobody can read the sporting chronicles of the Vale of Blackmore without wondering where such stout hares come from. It is the knowledge that he who rides inside the ring, or maybe that the man on foot on the hill, will see as much of the hunt as, if not more than, the horseman who lies alongside the pack, that makes hare-hunting so desirable a school for young horses.
Give us then the 12 couple of harriers with such a steady-looking old file of a huntsman as Richard Fairbrother is depicted in the old Sporting Magazine in 1794. Look at the docked and cropped horse (Jolly Roger), the solemn aspect of the rider and the tadpole rotundity of the hounds! The latter look uncommonly like harriers....
When a man thinks his hounds perfection there is no hope of improvement; and masters of harriers, perhaps more than masters of foxhounds, may be excused for not wishing to be put out of conceit with their own. A man often takes to harriers late in life when even the luxurious transit afforded by railways fails to make leaving home enjoyable;... but it is only by leaving home and seeing other packs that a man can be made sensible of the deficiencies of his own.
All writers and practical men advise him who sets up a pack of fox-hounds to buy established packs; not to increase the difficulties by gathering drafts; and this advice is equally applicable to harriers. Fox-hounds exhibit amazing fluctuations in value, occasioned, perhaps, by caprice or the chance of the moment, but harriers somehow have never run up to an unreasonable figure. Indeed, the majority of people think they do very well if they can get them off their hands when they are tired of them and before taxing time comes round. The Indian market has long been a great assistance to southern huntsmen with drafts to sell, the purchasers not being very particular about character or points; but harriers are in little request anywhere except in the British Isles. It is said that each couple costs the hunt £30 by the time they are landed in India and that many do not survive their first hunt. How keen must be the spirit of hunting under such circumstances!
“Those who like to rise early have amusement in seeing the hare trailed to her form,” writes Mr Beckford; “it is of good service to the hounds, and also shows their goodness to the huntsman more than any other hunting. But I confess I seldom judged it worth while to leave my bed a moment sooner on that account.” On this subject of trailing up to a hare Zenophon, who may be called the Father of Hare Hunters, says that “the trail, which is the path the hare takes going to her seat, is long in proportion to the length of the night. In the winter there is no scent early in the morning when there has been either a hoar or hard frost. The hoar frost by its force contracts and contains all the warm particles in itself; and the harder frost congeals them; in these cases dogs with the most delicate noses cannot touch before the sun dispels them, or the day is advanced, when the trail leaves a scent as it evaporates. The trail is also spoiled by much dew and by showers after a long drought.”
Mr Beckford, it seems, was quite a luxurious hare hunter; he was for having everything cut and dried to his hand — nothing to do but get on his horse, trot away with his hounds to where they had a hare sitting, whip her up, hunt her, kill her, up with another or go home as he felt inclined. Certainly the trying for a hare — the wide scattering of the hounds and dispersion of the silent horsemen, the fallow crossing and recrossing, eyes on the ground, the flop, flop, flopping of every bush and tuft of grass, have few charms, and present a sorry contrast to the excitement of the throw-off of fox-hounds, the cheering voice of the huntsman in cover and the anxious watching of points lest the fox steal away unseen. Hare-hunting has none of this, and unless it is to see hounds hunt by the trail it is just as well perhaps to be provided with the game — to have her “sitting,” in short.
And if it is good with regard to the first hare it is still better with regard to the second, for the reason Mr Beckford points out:— “If you are warmed with your gallop that waiting long in the cold afterwards is, I believe, as unwholesome as it is disagreeable. Whoever does not mind this had better let his hounds find their own game; they will certainly hunt it with more spirit afterward, and he will have a pleasure himself in expectation which no certainty can ever give. Hare-finders make hounds idle; they also make them wild.”
For all this he leaned to the hare-finders as having one great use: they hinder hounds from chopping hares, which they otherwise will not fail to do.... Hare-finding seems to have been a pretty good trade in Mr Beckford’s part of the world; he talks of making up half-a-crown a day to each man, and this in a country where labour is supposed to be cheaper than in most parts of England. With regard to the proper time for ceasing hare-hunting Mr Beckford says “you should be guided in that by the season. You should never hunt after March, and if the season be forward you should leave off sooner.” All things considered, this (1848-49) has been as bad a season as we have had for many years; not by reason of frost and snow, but owing to that worse element which tempts hounds out when frost or snow would have kept them in; namely, wind. “Take not out your hounds on a very windy day,” said Mr Beckford; and many masters — many sportsmen too — must have echoed the advice while, with hounds wild and horses fractious, they endeavoured to make head against a hurricane and fancied themselves to be hunting though in reality thinking more of their hats than the hounds.... Many gentlemen who cannot manage the whole season persist in taking the spring portion regardless of the experience which proves that the months before Christmas are more to be relied on for both sport and foxes. November and December are rarely interrupted by weather, and what the dandified ones call “the provincials” ride half as well again before Christmas, the land not being broken up by the plough.
Mr Beckford is emphatic in his advice against hunting foxes with harriers as a practice that cannot be too
severely condemned, whether we look at it with reference to the injury it does the hounds themselves, or the ill-will it too frequently breeds among fox-hunters, as well by the disturbance of covers as by the stealing of foxes. “Harriers to be good,” he writes, “must be kept to their own game; if you run fox with them you spoil them. Hounds cannot be perfect unless used to one scent and one style of hunting.” Hunting foxes in countries drawn by regular fox-hounds is unjustifiable; it interferes materially with a sport that is open to all and procurable only at vast outlay and trouble. It is sometimes urged in palliation that the covers where these doings take place are seldom drawn by fox-hounds; but this matters not so long as the covers are within the limits of a hunt. It must always be left to the discretion of the master to visit his covers often or seldom as he thinks most conducive to sport. In extensive countries — and a country must be extensive to support fox-hounds four or five days a week — there will always be places less often visited than others, and masters can never tell how soon their neglected covers may be wanted....
One of the greatest, if not the greatest, difficulties the managers of scratch, or “rough and ready,” packs have to contend with undoubtedly is the riotous, unsteady character of the hounds. We don’t mean the chance snapping and chopping of a few squealing hares or scuttling bunnies, for such accidents will happen in the best regulated packs; we allude to that formidable sort of riot which results in the downfall of — say £20 worth of mutton. Many grievous consequences attach to this form of riot; first the total want of sympathy in the country. Nobody says, “What a pity! Poor Mr Scourer’s hounds have killed a sheep. I fear they will be little the better for it”; or “I hope it won’t make them sick,” as the old maid said when her footman complained that her pug had bitten him on the calf. That moral axiom, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him,” comes into operation, and not an old ewe dies of the rot but “Scourer’s dogs,” as they are profanely called, get the credit of it. The very sheep themselves seem to have a spite against Scourer, and offer themselves up victims on the shrine of the anti-hunting party. They certainly aid their own destruction — stupid, staring, staggering, run-in-the-way creatures, always fussing and scampering, as if every sound and stir was directed against them. They can’t even let a fox pass without wheeling into circle. A hare, even, sets them staring. Is it to be wondered at, then, that a pack of hounds, hungry and frantic for blood, should when baffled perhaps by the greasy devils foiling the ground over which they have to carry the scent, turn upon them when they get a chance? We think not; the wonder is that it does not oftener happen; and doubtless it would happen more often were hounds not ridden up to so well as they are at the present day.
That is where the “rough and ready” gentlemen fail. They don’t ride up to their hounds — not from want of pluck, but from want of condition and ability in their horses; or from the impracticable nature of the country. Few packs, we imagine, are so depraved as to fall to in view of the field....
The worst of mutton-slaughter is that when hounds once begin they show no sort of moderation; they don’t join select parties of friends, four or five together, to have a fat sheep among them; each downs his own wether, and having very likely killed him, turns upon another, as if either determined to have his revenge for old grievances or intended to stock his larder well while at work. The fare is so tempting and the feat so easy of accomplishment that, once well in for a worry, they are never to be trusted afterwards. Riot and mischief are not confined to the powerful fox-hound. Harriers, we grieve to say, are sometimes so far forgetful of the proprieties as to indulge in what ought to be “meat for their masters,” as the renowned Charles Usher, Master of the Bath bow-wows, knows to his cost....
Having said so much about riot... we will conclude with Beckford’s humane suggestions as to the remedy; for not least among the “Beauties” of the work is the humane spirit breathed throughout. In recommending that some of the truest hunting draft hounds be kept to enter the young ones with, Mr Beckford says, “You thus preserve for your young hounds the best instructors, and at the same time prevent two evils which would necessarily ensue were they taught by the whole pack; one, that of corrupting and getting into scrapes such as are not much wiser than themselves, and the other, that of occasioning much flogging and rating which always shies and interrupts the hunting of an old hound....” Further on, speaking of entering hounds, he says: “When they become handy, love a scent and begin to know what is right it will be soon enough to chastise them for doing wrong; in which case one severe beating will save a lot of trouble.” Flogging hounds in kennel seems to have been the practice formerly. Mr Beckford condemns it most unequivocally, and most likely his censure was the means of putting an end to it....
Two great changes have taken place in modern times. We allude to “capping,” and what was called “brushing.” Formerly the whole field rode for the brush, and the first man up claimed it. This is quite done away with, and very well it should be, for besides leading to endless wrangling and contention, it was most dangerous to hounds — red-hot fellows in the excitement of the moment riding in amongst them as if they were made of cast-iron. Capping on a kill was equally common; some of the field, as soon as there was a sufficient gathering of the tail, went round and collected for the huntsman; and all who “paid” were entitled to consider themselves in at the death. The ceremony of “treeing” (laying the fox across a branch to be bayed by the hounds) was properly resorted to as a means of killing time until the stragglers came up.
Capping has gradually gone out; it is now many years since we saw it done with anything like an established pack of fox-hounds.... The practice was undoubtedly open to objection; it made a huntsman anxious to get blood at any price, and might occasionally lead to the turning out of bag foxes. Still, when done in moderation, there was something to be said for it as a means of enabling the followers of hounds to show their satisfaction with the day’s sport.
Mr Beckford speaks of capping as quite a matter of course: “I have always thought a huntsman a happy man. His office is pleasing, and at the same time flattering; we pay him for that which diverts him, and he is enriched by his greatest pleasure (the field money which is collected at the death of a fox). Nor is a general after victory more proud than is a huntsman who returns with his fox’s head.”
Capping has been objected to on the ground that it is improper for a gentleman to allow his servants to take money from any one but himself. Granted that a Master ought to pay his own men, how many establishments are there in which the servants are prohibited from taking fees — or rather in which vails are not regarded as a matter of course?...
Mr Beckford concludes Letter IX. with his ideas about scent; and it is worthy of remark that modern science has supplied us with but little additional information. With the exception of the fact that a burning scent is the frequent precursor of a hard frost, Beckford tells us everything that we know about it....
CHAPTER III.
CHANGES IN HUNTING — SOME LONG RUNS — BECKFORD AND NIMROD COMPARED — THE FIELD-MASTER ADVOCATED — HUNTING V. RACING IN THE FIELD — BECKFORD AND NIMROD CHARAC TERISTIC OF THEIR TIMES.
NOTHING, PERHAPS, MARKS the change that has come over hunting than the diminished notice that is taken of the hounds and the increased importance attached to the rider and his horse. Mr Beckford never mentions either in his ‘Imaginary Chase’; it is hounds, hounds, hounds, nothing but hounds. Later writers, or chroniclers, evidently thought far more of their own performances. The horse, indeed, in former times seems to have been looked upon as a mere auxiliary for seeing the hunt. Runs, too, in former days were runs; an hour and twenty minutes was nothing; nor was one of two hours, three, four, five, or six. Here is one, though, taken from Daniel’s Rural Sports:— “In January 1738-39, the Duke of Richmond’s hounds found at quarter before eight and killed at ten minutes before six, after ten hours’ constant running. Many of the gentlemen tired three horses each.”
Found at quarter
before eight! At what time did they meet, we wonder! In January too! Ten hours’ work! No wonder the gentlemen tired their horses; though the fact of many of them tiring “three each” shows that the run was anything but straight, or how could they have got fresh mounts? Short and defective as the record is, it nevertheless shows that it was the performance of the hounds that was thought of. Here is another, also from the pages of Daniel; this run took place near Boroughbridge in Yorkshire in 1783. Fourteen gentlemen signed the following certificate: “We declare that the hounds found at 27 minutes past nine, and except the space of near half-an-hour taken in bolting the fox from a rabbit-hole continued to run till five o’clock when we had an en tapis, and after repeated views we killed him at 14 minutes past five by the different watches.” That account has the same defect — want of information as to pace, distance and points; but it bears out our contention that it was the performance of the hounds sportsmen of those days looked to.
Some of them, it is true, could stretch a point as well as any of us now: take that 1775 run of 30 miles in an hour and three-quarters without a check, mentioned by Daniel. Hounds were supposed to have run near 30 miles. The supposition destroys the credibility of the story; it is an utter impossibility, as all sportsmen know.... There was never, and in all probability never will be, a more accurate describer of runs than Nimrod; he was almost painfully exact; he would question and cross-question everybody till he got full particulars; and reference to any great run described by him shows that ten miles an hour is rather above than under the mark of the best. The time, we believe, is often more accurately given than the distance; the time goes to the credit of the hounds while the distance goes to that of the horse. A run, as we all know, may be extremely severe and trying for hounds, yet very easy for a horse — a horse with a rider, at least, who knows the country and uses his eyes instead of his spurs....
