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 [Pg 186] 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 [Pg 187] 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 [Pg 188] 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 [Pg 189] 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 [Pg 190] 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 [Pg 191] 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’?uvre 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 [Pg 192] 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 [Pg 193] 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, [Pg 194] 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 [Pg 195] 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 [Pg 196] 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 [Pg 197] 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 [Pg 198] 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 [Pg 199] 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 [Pg 200] 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 [Pg 201] 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 [Pg 202] 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 [Pg 203] 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.