Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

It is necessary that these figures should be stated, because they are useful as a standard to compare the pike caught in the early months of 1905. The record for the season weighed 33½ lb. Quite a number over 30 lb. were caught, more so than for a number of years past. But, to my mind, the two facts of greatest importance which emerge from a study of my pike records are these: first, that February is the very best month of the year for catching pike; and second, that spinning is the deadliest method. Take the first of these propositions. In February last Mr. Oliver Procter and two friends had a day’s pike fishing on a private water in Nottinghamshire. The name of the place was not given, but internal evidence in their narrative tells me that it was the private lake at Clumber, the Duke of Newcastle’s place. In one day these three rods caught, by spinning, fifty-six pike, weighing 468½ lb. The best fish weighed 31 lb. and the smallest was actually 6 lb. One rod got 32 fish, weighing 275 lb.; another rod had 17 fish, weighing 119½ lb.; the other rod, Mr. Procter himself, had seven fish, weighing 74 lb. The latter average is very high, but it included the best fish of the day, the 31-pounder. As each rod could only keep three fish, all the rest were safely returned to the water. I have asked the reader to note that this was a February catch and that they were caught spinning. A few days later, in the same month, three Nottingham anglers had a day on this same water. By spinning they accounted for 52 pike, weighing 425 lb. The heaviest was 33½ lb., was the record pike of the year, and was caught by Mr. F. W. K. Wallis, of Nottingham. I have not yet done with February, nor with spinning. In the same month two Wolverhampton anglers, one of them a clergyman, fishing a water not named, caught 52 pike between them, all by spinning. The total weight was not recorded, but they gave away over 2 cwt. to the deserving poor of Wolverhampton. Another February case was that of Mr. R. C. H. Corfe and Mr. M. R. L. White, of the Fly Fishers’ Club. Spinning, they caught 55 pike in a day’s angling. The largest was only 18½ lb., but they touched bigger fish, for as they were landing a four-pounder it was wrenched off the hooks and carried away by a pike which Mr. White estimated at 30 lb. or thereabouts. They were all caught by spinning dace or sprats on an Abbey Mills spinner. Again, in that same February, a college student reported to _The Field_ how, in two hours’ spinning, during a snow-storm, using a silver Devon on the Wye near Hereford, he caught four pike, 27½ lb., 15 lb., 8 lb. and 6 lb. These records, all from 1905, surely establish February’s claim to rank as the premier pike month of the year. Going further back, I find that other years substantiate this claim. Mr. Jardine, in his book on pike-fishing, gives a list of sixty record fish, and thirty of them belong to the end of January and the month of February.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the angler who defers his pike fishing till the winter is nearing the end has the root of the matter in him. There are some waters in Lincolnshire, the home of big pike, where you are not thanked to go a-fishing till near the Christmas holidays. The old couplet about winter “driving into madness every plunging pike” was founded upon very close observation. The dying away of weeds and the consequent loss of shelter to the pike, and the hibernation of the small fish upon which he preys, added to the frost, give him a keen appetite, and it is then that the angler has his best chance, for, after all, you are likelier to catch any fish when he is hungry than when he is lazy and fat and has no need to bestir himself to find a meal. This very naturally brings me to the second of my propositions, that spinning is in winter the deadliest method of capturing pike. In the early autumn live-baiting and paternostering are, to my thinking, the more effective. The pike is then in his lair. He is lying up in his weed bed, grimly watching all that goes on in the watery world outside. You take your live bait, either on float-tackle or on a paternoster, and you drop it right in front of his nose; and he is a very sulky pike indeed who allows it to pass him by without a protest. If you are spinning you may cover acres of water and never have the luck to get near enough to him to attract his attention, but in winter the conditions are altogether different. Cold and hunger have driven him out of his summer fastnesses. He is roaming hither and thither in search of food. Every faculty is on the alert, and woe betide the hapless creature that comes within the range of his vision. It matters not whether it is a rat swimming across to his hole on the opposite bank, a dab-chick aimlessly swimming about, a water-hen or a duckling, it is all the same to Master Pike. What more natural, therefore, that a well-spun bait drawn across his very eyes should in a moment rouse him to anger? All the records I have already given were the result of spinning. Now in the Badminton volume on Pike Mr. Pennell, who is a confirmed pike-spinner, rather suggests that the biggest pike are generally caught with live-bait and not by spinning. True, Mr. Jardine’s 37-pounder was on live-bait, but the Irish 38-pounder, according to my clerical correspondent, was on a spinner. This year’s record, a 33½ pounder, was on a spinner, and so was Mr. Procter’s best fish, a 31-pounder. The record of 1903, a 34-lb. pike taken in the Wye, was caught by spinning a dace on Abbey tackle, and in February, it may be added. That same year Canon Dyke, of Ashford, Kent, wrote to _The Field_, saying that spinning had always brought him good results. He instanced several pike up to 28 lb. he himself had caught while spinning. More conclusive than this, however, was a remarkable diary published in _The Field_ in 1903. In 204 days’ fishing the diarist caught 1,665 pike, an average of about eight fish per day. The gross weight was 2 tons 10 cwt. 62 lb., and it works out at an average of nearly 3½ lb. per fish; but the most striking thing about the record is this, that all were caught by spinning. About a dozen were taken on a spoon, the remainder fell victims to spinning a five-inch dace. The moral of this is obvious. If you want to catch large pike and many of them, you must spin. If you merely want an isolated fish, if you set your mind on some monster whom you know to inhabit a certain hole, you may adopt the method of the dry-fly man and stalk him with a lively roach of ½ lb. weight, but if you are in earnest and wish to make a big bag, you most assuredly will have to arm yourself with plenty of spinning tackle. I can give instances without end of good pike which have fallen to the spinner. Here are a recent few at random: a 27-pounder, 1903, from the Irish Blackwater, caught by spinning a trout; a 34½-pounder, caught with a spoon, by a Bolton angler, in 1903, at Lochmaben, near Dumfries, and so on. And here are other fine records to the credit of the spinner. In September, 1903, two members of the Palmerston Angling Society, fishing two days in a Cambridgeshire water, landed 127 pike, all of them falling to pickled sprats and dace.

Then there is a remarkable catch by Mr. F. Shroeder, a York angler, who, fishing Hornsea Mere, near Hull, in 1902, caught 65 pike in a day, weighing 348 lb. The heaviest was 13½ lb. Another day Mr. Shroeder tells me he caught ten pike in the same water before breakfast, weighing 110 lb., including a 23-pounder and a 20-pounder. I asked Mr. Shroeder how he got them, and his reply is, in the morning by spinning a dead bait on an ordinary flight, and in the afternoon by live-baiting, but principally by spinning. I have just tracked another remarkable catch to the credit of the spinner. Mr. Albert Shlor, of Worksop, wrote in October this year to the fishing papers, stating that he had just caught twenty-one pike, in a private lake, in five and a half hours, of a total weight of over 149 lb., the heaviest being 13 lb. 11 oz. I wrote to Mr. Shlor, and he tells me he caught them all by spinning. Fifteen were taken on a Colorado spoon. Then he put on a dead gudgeon, on an ordinary flight made by himself, and having no flanges or spinning arrangement, the spin being obtained, as in Mr. Shroeder’s case just mentioned, by bending the tail of the fish. Well, out of seven runs with this tackle Mr. Shlor, who is only twenty years of age, landed six pike. That is something like fishing, and it is something like spinning. For, as Mr. Shlor tells me, his brother, who was fishing with him and using live bait, only landed two fish, and only had three runs altogether! But if this is not enough, Mr. White, of the Fly Fishers’ Club, says in a letter that he has frequently had up to forty-five pike to his own rod in a single day by spinning, and once, in company with another, they took seventy-five in a day’s spinning, though they “shook off,” all under about 10 lb. or so. Had they retained all, their total would have been fully 100 pike for the day. And while this is in the printer’s hands, I have a letter from Mr. O. Overbeck, of Grimsby, the champion carp fisher, who tells me that it was spinning dead roach that he caught, at Clumber in 1903, thirty-one pike in four hours, of a total weight of 187½ lb.

Now, if spinning is the deadliest method, it is a fair question to inquire which particular form of spinner holds the field for the best results. Every pike angler has his favourite lure. Personally, I find the spoon the most effective. In an article in _The Field_ once I gave the tabulated results of my season’s pike fishing. I used two artificial baits, a Kill-devil Devon and a common spoon, and pickled dace on an Archer spinner. The spoon easily came first, then the Kill-devil. I obtained the worst results with the natural bait, but the local conditions and personal preference count in this vexed question. For instance, in the Lake district a spoon is always the most effective. Pike there feed on perch every day of their lives. There is nothing tempting or novel to them in the sight of a spinning perch. Put a spoon on, or a Phantom, and you will be into good fish almost immediately. There is even room for taste in spoons. You may fish half a day on Esthwaite Lake with a plated spoon and never touch a fish. Change it for a Norwich spoon, on which is painted the head and eye of a fish, and you may catch half-a-dozen good pike in the hour. Who shall account for this? There are other waters where the spoon is never looked at by a fish. You must have real fish for bait, or you will do nothing at all. My own observation leads me to this conclusion, that in the North of England the spoon is the best lure; in the Midlands and the South natural fish have the advantage as bait. Finally, a word as to size. It seems to me that in spinning for pike the very reverse holds good to the ascertained facts of live-baiting. In the latter form of fishing you must have large baits to catch large fish. Mr. Jardine’s 37-pounder was caught with a ½-lb. roach. Some anglers—Mr. Pennell is one—use and recommend jack up to 2 lb. as lively bait for their big brothers and parents, but in spinning you must use a small bait. If it is a spoon, or an imitation fish, anything over three inches and a half is a waste of money and a menace to good results. Pickled dace or roach should never exceed five inches. Mr. M. R. L. White has often emphasised this point. He says he has many times turned a bad day into a good one by changing to the smallest bait he had, and he tells of one occasion where, obstinately sticking to big bait, he hardly got a fish, while his friend, fishing the same water with him, but using smaller bait, landed thirty-five. A correspondent in the _Fishing Gazette_ last year drew attention to the fact that the three largest pike which had come under his personal notice were taken on small baits, one of 38 lb. on a spoon only an inch and a half long; another of 32½ lb. on a roach of three and a half inches, and a third of 30 lb., also on a very small roach. I am entitled to claim, therefore, that this rapid survey of some recent records of pike fishing demonstrates three facts which are worth remembering: that February or thereabouts is the best time to catch pike, that spinning is the deadliest method, and that a small spinner, whether natural or artificial, has undoubtedly all the advantages on its side.

It is with some diffidence that I approach the second half of my subject. For years the angling humorist has poked fun at what the newspapers all agree in terming the “voracity” of the pike. Let me say at the outset that the reader will find nothing here of that pike which chased an angler round a three-acre field in a snow-storm; nor of that other pike which leaped out of the water, seized the angler’s pannier and made off with its contents; nor of that other which, when an unfortunate rodsman fell into the river, kindly took him in his mouth and gently conveyed him to the bank again. The recital of these yarns must be sought for elsewhere. Still, I cannot help recalling the capital story told by Lord Claud Hamilton at the last dinner of the Fly Fishers’ Club. An Irishman had caught a big pike. Noting a lump in its stomach, he cut it open. “As I cut it open there was a mighty rush and a flapping of wings, and away flew a wild duck; and, begorra, when I looked inside, there was a nest with four eggs, and she had been after sitting on that nest.” The pike has always been fair game for the yarn-spinner, and some of the very best of his products have naturally come from Ireland. The most curious story of 1905 hailed from Pickering, in Yorkshire. Dr. Robertson, of that town, is its author. He tells how he was sent for by a farmer friend to see his son, who, so ran the message, had been bitten by a fish. On arrival, the doctor found that the lad’s foot bore unmistakable marks of teeth, and the wound was so severe it required stitching. The lad’s story was that he had been bathing. After leaving the river he sat on the edge of the bank, with his foot near the water, and while there a pike jumped up and bit him. His cries attracted a woman, who bound his foot up and assisted him home. To complete the story, a local angler was shown the spot, and on casting over it with a spinning bait he hooked and caught a 6 lb. pike. Now, there is nothing improbable in this, though a good deal of unkind fun was poked at Dr. Robertson. But the doctor was responsible for nothing beyond telling the tale; and remember, he had seen the lad and stitched up the wound, he had seen the woman who had carried him home, and he had seen the angler who subsequently caught a pike at the very spot. What we know of the propensities of the pike is sufficient to make us believe anything which throws light upon the ferocity of his nature. Most anglers have had their hands gashed by the snapping brutes during the operation of releasing tackle on waters where most of the fish have to be returned. I have seen an oar deeply bitten by a 10 lb. pike; and one of my heavy fishing boots has marks on the heel where a small pike once caught on like grim death. Indeed, my companion had to kick him loose. For my own part, I believe Dr. Robertson’s story. He had no motive to embellish it, and there were so many parties to it that exaggeration would sooner or later have been discovered. As it is, the incident is a striking corroboration of the remarkable stories collected by Mr. Pennell in the Badminton volume on Pike.

Now, the orthodox stories of pike “voracity” divide themselves into two clearly-defined sections. The first of these is concerned with its gluttonous appetite—its onslaught on smaller fish, its appetite for rats, ducks and kindred morsels. I have collected some thousands of these incidents. But why reproduce them? We all know that the pike has a fearful appetite, that his swallowing powers are enormous, and that sometimes, to use an expressive Americanism, he bites off more than he can chew. Thus, we read of a 3½ lb. pike choked trying to swallow a 1¼ lb. trout; of a 9 lb. pike containing a 1½ lb. perch; of a 28 lb. pike containing a 6 lb. grilse; of a 2 lb. pike taking a spoon when he was so full that the tail of a pound trout was protruding from his mouth; of an Irish pike of 3½ lb. containing a trout of 1¼ lb.; and of others containing ducks, rats, waterhens, and even stoats. The plain fact is, of course, that the pike is a creature of prey, and like all creatures of prey, he is savage and implacable. He eats till he is full, and even then he takes good care not to refuse any tempting morsel which comes within range of his fearful jaws. His destructiveness can hardly be estimated in figures. If he eats his own weight per week, which is surely under the estimate, he requires a fish colony for his own table purposes alone.

A pike of 25 lb. was this season netted in the Lune, a first-class northern trout-stream. By his look he was an old fish, and he was well fed. How many tons of trout had he got through in his long lifetime? It is bad enough when they confine themselves to big fish, but when they get among the fry it is even worse, for they are destroying the very sources of a stream’s productiveness. And, alas, they have a liking for young and tender fish, as the keepers of our best waters know to their cost. Last year a pike of 4 lb. 11 oz. was caught by a Birmingham angler, and on opening it at the clubhouse its stomach was found to contain no fewer than 274 small fish of an inch to an inch and a half long, the fry of roach and bream. No wonder that in trout and salmon waters the pike is regarded as a pest and is kept down by every method the wit of the harassed keeper can devise.

To my mind, the most interesting pike stories are those which centre round its capture. What must Mr. White’s feelings have been like when his 4 lb. pike was snatched off the hooks and carried away by a 30-pounder just as he was about to gaff it? Or that of the angler in Tyrone, who, reeling in an 8 lb. pike, had it attacked by a much larger pike, which, though it could not pull the fish off the hooks, scored it with wounds five inches long, and half an inch deep.

Most of us have had similar experiences, if on a small scale. In a trout stream where pike abound, it is a common thing to lose your trout just at the supreme moment through a pike thinking he has a greater right to him than you have. But it is not often that the angler is so fortunate as was a correspondent who wrote to the _Fishing Gazette_. His 2 lb. trout was seized by a 5 lb. pike. The pike held on while the angler reeled in towards the boat; then the attendant slipped his net beneath them and landed the pair. Thus was piracy adequately punished. Sometimes, ignoring the bait, a pike will seize the float or the lead, and his teeth becoming entangled in the line he will be landed.

Once an account appeared in _The Field_ of a good-sized pike caught in a most remarkable fashion. A net of fish as bait was hanging over the side of a boat. A pike attacked these fish, and becoming involved in the mesh was drawn aboard and killed. I think there can be no reasonable doubt about the fact that pike do not feel pain. Else why do they repeatedly go for the same bait? I was once minnowing for trout and hooked a big pike. He broke me and sailed away with a yard of gut, to say nothing of three triangles somewhere about his jaws. I put on another minnow and resumed fishing. Two or three times that pike followed my bait to a yard of the side, irresolute. At last he took it. He was more than I could manage, and again he broke me, and again he sailed off with minnow, hooks, and half my cast. He had now two minnow tackles about him, representing six triangles, or eighteen hooks in all, and if they caused no pain they at least must have produced discomfort. But note what happened. In my bag I found by accident I had put in an old spoon on gimp. I put this on my trout line and cast again. Would it be believed, that pike came once more and took my spoon. Surely, thought I, he is mine this time. I played him ten minutes and then drew him to the side, but somehow, my line fouled and we parted company, myself minus a spoon and triangles. Altogether that pike had twenty-four hooks of mine in his possession. I returned next day with a pike rod and tackle, but he had had enough. Now, although this is an extreme case, it is almost paralleled by other experiences. An angler last season on Frensham Pond, Surrey, using two rods, hooked a pike and lost it on one tackle, the line breaking. Within five minutes the same pike took the other bait and was landed on the other rod, with the first tackle securely fixed in his jaws. A very curious instance was reported from the Thames. In March, 1903, a Mr. Wilton hooked a pike which broke away and took his Archer spinner with him. On February 28th, 1904, eleven months later, Mr. Wilton and his nephew were fishing in the same spot. The nephew hooked a pike, and, on taking it out of the water, Mr. Wilton’s spinner was found in his lower jaw. There was no doubt about it being the same spinner, as Brookes, the fisherman to the Guards Club at Maidenhead, supplied it and was there when it was recovered, and identified it by his wrappings. The lapse of a year had dulled the pike’s memory of the earlier encounter, but there are innumerable instances of pike going for bait twice within a few minutes. Thus a Thames reporter tells how a trout spinner, in March, 1905, saw his bait taken and his line broken by a pike. He put on another bait and tackle. At the very first cast he hooked and landed the same pike, and thus recovered intact his first flight. Obviously the fish had felt neither pain nor discomfort from his first experience, otherwise he would never have been rash enough to repeat it five minutes later. One other similar instance out of many. In August of this year an angler caught a pike of about a pound in the Medway. He put it back, but first cut off part of one of its fins to test its rate of growth if ever it were caught again. Then he baited again, and in less than a quarter of an hour caught that identical pike a second time. So I might go on telling of pike that have gone for two baits at once and been hauled in by a couple of rods simultaneously; of pike that—but hold, enough! Surely I have fulfilled the purpose with which I set out, and that was to demonstrate the interest and excitement of winter pike-fishing, and to show that no branch of the angler’s art is more surrounded by incident and anecdote than the quest and capture of the king of all the coarse fish.

ERNEST PHILLIPS.

A Gossip on Hunting Men.

I do not suppose that William Somerville, the poet of “The Chase,” is much read nowadays, though, doubtless, musty and dust-covered, his poems lie among the neglected classics in the libraries of most country houses. Yet he can lay better claim than any other bard to the title of “Laureate of the Hunting Field” and he was a royal good sportsman to boot. “A squire, well-born and six foot high,” is his own description of himself to his brother poet, Allan Ramsay; and among the squires of his native Warwickshire he held a foremost place. For his estates brought him in £1,500 a year—a rental equivalent to at least £4,000 in the present day. A jovial soul he was, too, with a heart as big as his body. Generous to a fault, and freehanded in his spending of money, William Somerville, like many good sportsmen of the same type before and since, ran through his patrimony before he was forty. His friend, William Shenstone, another almost forgotten poet, gives us a melancholy picture of the latter days of the sporting squire, whose verses won the high commendation of Johnson and Addison. “Plagued and threatened by wretches that are low in every sense, he was forced to drink himself into pains of the body, to get rid of the pains of the mind.” He died in 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley-in-Arden. In the churchyard there is a monumental urn erected to his memory by Shenstone, but “_Tempus edax rerum_” has made the inscription almost indecipherable.

I am reminded of Somerville in writing this rambling gossip on hunting men, because no one has depicted with more animation and spirit than he the opening of the hunting season; and there are at any rate three lines of his which are familiar to all educated sportsmen, if only through Mr. Jorrocks’s emendation:

“My hoarse-sounding horn
Invites thee to the Chase, the Sport of Kings,
Image of war without its guilt.”

It is to Somerville, then, that we owe the phrase, “the sport of Kings,” more often, with better reason, nowadays, applied to the Turf.

Indeed, the Chase no longer merits the designation in its literal sense, for Royalty is conspicuous by its absence from the hunting field. I note, too, that English statesmen are no longer so keen to ride with hounds as they once were. Golf seems to have more charms for Ministers than hunting. Time was when Premiers and Secretaries of State were as familiar figures at a meet of hounds as at a meeting of the Cabinet. Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Earl Granville, were all hard riders to hounds and loved no sport better than the Chase. Even Mr. Gladstone, though not much of a sportsman in his later life, was, I am told, in his earlier days sometimes to be seen in Nottinghamshire, mounted on his old white mare, galloping after hounds with his friend and Parliamentary patron, the Duke of Newcastle. And I have met those who remember seeing the “Grand Old Man” at a still earlier period of his career, in Berwickshire, keeping close up to Willie Hay, of Dunse Castle, during a hard run.

And this, let me tell you, was no mean feat, for Willie Hay, when mounted on his famous hunter, Crafty, despite his welter weight, was hard to beat. In fact, he nearly always led the field with Crafty under him; and after a bursting hour and twenty minutes the horse seemed as little the worse for the going as his master, for both were thoroughbred ones. Willie, to distinguish him from others of his numerous clan, was known as “Hay of Drumelzier.” He came of an old Border stock—for he was of the Tweeddale blood on his mother’s side—and there was a touch of the ancestral reiver about him—the lawlessness, the recklessness, the boldness of the Border cattle-lifter, were latent in Willie and found vent in the hunting field. He was present at Waterloo as a spectator, like the Duke of Richmond, but tradition has it that, unable to control himself at the sight and sound of battle, he dashed incontinently into the fray and rode right through one of the cavalry charges unhurt, more fortunate than his younger brother, an officer in a Highland regiment, who was slain on the slopes of Mont St. Jean.

The late Earl of Wemyss, then Lord Elcho, was another Scotsman of that time who had a reputation for dare-devil riding. Indeed, he was known all over the country, not only as a splendid horseman, but as one of the finest all-round sportsmen of his day. As a youngster he had gone the pace and “made things hum” to such a tune that his father found it necessary to screw him up tightly.

But this did not prevent him from getting a pack of hounds together in 1830. He had the misfortune to lose his huntsman at the commencement of his first season—the man broke his leg and died from the effects of the accident—and Lord Elcho hunted the hounds himself. In this capacity he showed that he could combine with hard riding a creditable amount of Scottish canniness and caution.

In Joe Hogg, moreover, he had a capable first whip, a man who would follow wherever the master or the hounds led. One day the fox made for a bog and crossed it, the hounds, of course, following in pursuit, while behind them came Lord Elcho and Joe Hogg, the latter entering as keenly into the spirit of the adventure as his master. Next day some one said, “Joe, how did you feel when you were following his Lordship over the bog?” “Lord, sir,” he replied, “I did expect to be swallowed fairly up alive every time my horse jumped, but nothing else could be done, for the hounds were running right into him.” The bog was a mile and a half across, and the frost was just enough to make firm the driest parts, which admitted of the horses jumping from one tussock of grass to another.

Lord Saltoun, again, was an excellent rider, and with pluck enough to ride down the jagged steep of Berwick Law. He shone, too, with equal light at the festive board, where his rendering of the “Man with the Wooden Leg,” and other comic songs of the day, always “brought down the house.” He fought with his regiment at Waterloo, where he greatly distinguished himself in the defence of Hougomont, and afterwards remained in France with the army of occupation. And thereby hangs a tale.

While in quarters at St. Denis, Lord Saltoun, Lord William Lennox, Sim Fairfield, and one or two more, when they got to their billets in an hotel one night, found all their beds occupied. A French cavalry regiment had ridden up, and the officers had taken possession of every bedroom and locked themselves in. What was to be done? The Britishers were by no means disposed to submit tamely to this unceremonious invasion. They held a council of war. A bright idea suggested itself to Lord Saltoun, he propounded it to his comrades; it met with their enthusiastic approval, and they forthwith proceeded to carry it into execution. First, the waiter and ostler were bribed to secrecy. Then the conspirators went softly to work and changed all the boots which stood outside each door. When this was done, Sim Fairfield, who could play any instrument from a Jew’s harp to a trombone, got hold of a trumpet and sounded the French “Boot and Saddle.” In an instant every Frenchman was out of bed—doors were opened, boots eagerly snatched, and _then_—the band began to play! Never was there heard such scrambling and swearing: the air reeked with blasphemy. Men with large feet had got hold of small boots, men with small feet found themselves lost in “jacks” a world too wide for their shrunk shanks. Some tugged and cursed, others stumbled and swore, till they all got outside and finally galloped off. Then Lord Saltoun and his brother-plotters quickly took possession of the vacant beds, barricaded their doors, and slept the sleep of the just.

Another great Scottish foxhunter was brought to my mind not long since when I was skirting the coast along the Sound of Kilbrannan. About four miles from Campbeltown, in the Mull of Kintire, I passed the beautiful bay of Saddell, the graceful sweep of which attracted my attention, and as I let my eye wander upwards over the strip of creamy white beach I was struck by the singular charm of the landscape. Right up into the heart of the wooded hillside runs a lovely glen—in the foreground among its trim lawns, stands Saddell House; close by are the ruins of a grim old castle-keep, and one can trace the venerable avenue of stately beeches which leads to the ancient Abbey, where the old monks of Saddell enjoyed themselves six hundred years ago. It is a place which has a peculiar interest for sportsmen, for it was the home of John Campbell of Saddell, one of the greatest foxhunters of his day, whose hunting songs have won for him in Scotland a reputation as great as that of Whyte Melville or Egerton Warburton in England. A man, too, who could not only write good songs, but sing them as no one else could.

“Johnny” Campbell was a welter-weight, scaling something like sixteen stone, yet he was always in the first flight. He chose his horses more for strength than appearance, and was seldom seen on one over fifteen hands, but they were all short-legged, well-bred, steady and strong. He thought a good deal more of the safety of his horses than of his own. When he was at Melton Mowbray in 1832 English foxhunters looked upon him as the maddest of Scotchmen, because, in trying to save his horses, he would jump _into_ the hedges instead of _over_ them, quite regardless of the consequences to himself; for, like Assheton Smith, the Laird of Saddell did not mind how many falls he got. He was a tall, fine, handsome man, and when dressed at night in his scarlet coat with green facings and buff breeches (the uniform of the Buccleuch Hunt), his equal would have been hard to find in the three kingdoms.

It is not often that the qualities of poet, singer, _bon vivant_ and sportsman are found combined in one personality as they were in “Johnny” Campbell, and, consequently, it is not surprising that the Laird of Saddell was immensely popular. Both in England and Scotland he was voted the best of good fellows, and was the life and soul of the convivial parties to which every host was eager to invite him. He would sometimes astonish and delight the company by improvising a song, setting it to an air and singing it the same evening. One memorable feat of this kind he achieved when he was a guest at Rossie Priory, the seat of Lord Kinnaird, in Perthshire, in 1831. They had had a famous run that morning with Mr. Dalzell’s hounds, and, taking that for his theme, he rattled off a parody of “We have been friends together.” Beginning with “We have seen a run together,” he described the run throughout, and concluded with:

“By Auchter House we hied him
Still haunted by their cry;
Till in Belmont Park we spied him,
When we knew that he must die.
Through the hedge he made one double,
As his sinking soul did droop;
’Twas the end of all his trouble
When we gave the shrill _Who-whoop_!
Oh, now then let us rally;
Let us toast the joyous tally,
And a bumper to our ally,
The gallant John Dalzell.”

But there were times when “Johnny” Campbell was not altogether a desirable companion to those who valued their lives and limbs, for he had a strong smack of Jack Mytton’s devilry in him, and when the demon of mischief possessed him he did not care a rap for his own skin or that of any of his companions. One night—or rather dark morning—a party of four gentlemen, including “Johnny” Campbell and Sir David Baird, who had been dining at Marchmont House, started to drive home to Dunse in a post-chaise. After passing through the park gates the post-boy got down to close them. Campbell thereupon leaned out of the window, and with a terrific “Who-oo-op awa’,” set the horses off in a panic. There was an open drain in front of them, a big mound of earth to the left, and a lake to the right. What the fate of the chaise and its occupants would have been had not the post-boy, who was a particularly smart young fellow, sprinted to the horses’ heads and stopped them just in time, one shudders to conjecture. Campbell laughed heartily, and thought it was an excellent joke. Sir David, who was a dare-devil himself of a different kind, preserved a saturnine indifference; but the other two were scared almost out of their senses. Never again would either of them trust himself in anything on wheels with Campbell of Saddell, for, as one of them remarked, “Johnny Campbell is one of the most agreeable companions—_anywhere but in a post-chaise_.”

Lord Eglinton, who for five-and-twenty years was, I suppose, the most popular man in the United Kingdom, was another notable hunting contemporary of Campbell of Saddell and Lords Elcho and Saltoun. He was then only twenty-four years of age, and the classic triumphs of Blue Bonnet, Van Tromp, and the immortal Flying Dutchman were yet in the future. But he had already proved himself an exceptionally bold and skilful horseman, both across country and on the flat. His half-brother, Charlie Lamb, too, was another of the right sort, who could hold his own with the best on the racecourse or with hounds. But Charlie had, what Lord Eglinton lacked, a dry humour, which gave a racy flavour to his personality. An anecdote of his earlier years will suffice for a sample:—

“Why don’t you send Charlie to sea?” an old friend and a right honourable old maid one day said to the Countess, his mother. “It is very bad for a young man to be idling away his time at home.”

After a short pause, Charlie, who was present, furnished the answer himself.

“Do you not think,” said he, “the stomach pump would answer as well?”

But enough of Scottish sportsmen for the present; let me turn to England and her foxhunters. The name of John Warde is, of course, familiar as a household word to every one who takes the slightest interest in hunting-lore, for was he not one of the greatest among the “Fathers of Foxhunting”?

Well, there are some stories of John Warde which will, I dare say, be new to many readers of BAILY. Richard Tattersall, the then head of the famous house, always gave a “Derby Dinner” late in the week preceding Epsom, to which some of the most distinguished men of the day were invited. John Warde never missed this function; indeed, the festive occasion would have been nothing without him to represent foxhunting. Sure as the dial to the sun, a few minutes before six his portly form would issue from his yellow chariot, in his silver knee and shoe buckles. The pipe of port which the host and his brother Edmund laid down annually had to pay a heavy tax laid on it, for each man had to drink “John Warde and the noble Science” in a silver fox’s head, which held nearly a pint, and admitted of no heel taps. None stood the ordeal better than “glorious John” himself; he would rise from the table steady as a rock, and before he left always made a point of going up to the drawing-room in the small hours to bid Mrs. Tattersall good-bye, for that good lady never went to bed till she had seen her husband precede her.

His mother lived to a great age, and became very deaf, but she always had her page-boy in every Sunday to say his Collect and Catechism, and although she could not hear a word he said, yet from the earnest expression of his face, and his never hesitating, she took it for granted that he repeated them properly, and invariably gave him a shilling. John, however, getting a hint that the young rascal imposed upon the good-natured lady, one Sunday morning hid himself in the room. As usual, young Buttons was called up, and requested to commence his religious exercise; then, with a perfectly solemn face, he began, “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon,” and so on to the end of the old nursery rhyme.

“There’s a good boy,” said the old lady, putting into his hand a shilling. But just as Master Hopeful was departing, jubilant, whack came a whip, with which John had provided himself on spec, down upon his shoulders. The welting he got made him remember Collect and Catechism for many a day.

Warde attained the patriarchal age of eighty-five. Like all sportsmen of the “golden time,” he was a _bon vivant_, but in his last days he had to give up wine.

By a strange irony of fate, he died of water on the chest.

“This is a pretty business,” he said. “Here is a man dying of water, who never drank but one glassful of that nauseous liquid in his life.”

Hunting has its enthusiasts—its almost fanatical enthusiasts, I may say—and probably most readers of BAILY have met with one or more of them. For my part I have come across many, but neither in my experience nor my reading have I encountered a more thorough hunting enthusiast than the hero of the following anecdote.

Many years ago a Mr. Osbaldiston, younger son of a gentleman in the North of England, was foolish enough to fall in love with one of his father’s maid-servants, and quixotic enough to marry her. As soon as the news came to the parental ears the imprudent Benedict was turned out of doors, his only worldly possessions being a Southern hound in pup. He and his partner in disgrace started for London, and after a while the young man succeeded in obtaining a clerk’s situation in an attorney’s office at £60 a year. As time went on olive branches gathered about him to the tune of half-a-dozen, from which it may be supposed he had enough to do with his small pittance to keep eight pairs of grinders in work. Yet he not only discharged these onerous domestic duties as beseemed a good husband and father, but he also enjoyed his favourite sport, and kept a couple of horses and two couples of hounds!

But how in the name of wonder could a young man with an income of five and twenty shillings a week and with a wife and family to provide for, afford to keep horses and hounds? Of course he neglected his home and his business, and ended his days in the workhouse. Nothing of the kind! His wife and children were well fed and comfortably clothed, he never ran into debt, and always had a decent coat on his back. And the way Mr. Osbaldiston managed it was this:—

After office hours he acted as accountant for certain butchers in Clare Market, who paid him in kind. The best of the meat provided the daily dinner for himself and his family, and the scraps and offal fed the hounds which he kept in his garret. Having saved up sufficient to buy his horses, he stabled them in a cellar, fed them on grains from a brew house close by and damaged corn from a chandler’s—writing letters, correcting bills, keeping books, and assisting with legal information the proprietors, and so saving all expenditure of coin. Down in the country where he hunted in the season he gained the good-will of the farmers by giving them a hare now and then and tipping them a legal hint, while the gentlemen over whose manors he rode were so delighted with his enthusiasm for sport that he could go almost where he pleased. If any poor hunting enthusiast of to-day were to keep hounds in a garret and horses in a cellar, he would meet with a very different fate; he would promptly be indicted as a nuisance and summarily be suppressed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Times are indeed changed!

The poet of “The Chase,” whom I have already quoted, describes hunting as the “image of war without its guilt.” It is not only the “image of war,” but it is the finest possible training for facing the perils and confronting the crises of actual warfare. The following anecdote of a once famous Leicestershire hunting-man, “Tommy” Yule, is one of the best illustrations of this truth that I have ever come across.

On the night of December 5th, 1857, the 11th Native Cavalry, stationed at Jalpaiguri, 650 strong, mutinied during the night, slew their English officers, and galloped off to meet the other portion of the regiment, then encamped some thirty miles off. Next day, having effected a junction with their comrades, they started to join the revolted Sepoys at Dacca. They rode in the direction of Purneah, with the intention of plundering that station on their way to the North-West. But they left out of their calculations a little man who was John Company’s Commissioner at Bhagalpur. Mr. Yule was an old Leicestershire hunting man, and was one of the most daring riders to hounds ever seen even in the Shires. He had ridden at both Newmarket and Liverpool as a gentleman jockey; he could box, shoot, fence, and play cricket in brilliant style—in fact, was a first-rate all-round man. He knew very little about soldiering, but he knew too much for the Pandies.

Well, to “Tommy” Yule the news was brought that the mutineers were “on the rampage.” At Bhagalpur he had with him fifty of Her Majesty’s 5th Regiment, 100 sailors, and two guns. As Commissioner of the district he was in command. Off he started without a moment’s delay to stop the game of murder, plunder, and ravishment. He came up with the rebels just outside Purneah, and dashed at them at once. They, however, had no heart for fighting, bolted, got round the station and made off for Dacca. But Yule’s blood was up. He had brought his stud of hunting elephants with him. He mounted fifty sailors and forty soldiers on them, and pounded after the flying foe. The little party marched all day and night, and got in front of their quarry the following morning. Then the rascals _had_ to fight; ten Pandies to one Englishman, these were odds that even a modern Greek would face. They could not charge; their horses were fagged out. But Yule charged _them_, with some of his men on the elephants and some on foot, and killed 111 _without losing a man_. And the nerve, the pluck, the dash which achieved that brilliant success had been fostered and trained by hard riding over the pastures and bullfinches of Leicestershire.

I remember hearing Lord Wolseley tell the following story, which is a further proof of my assertion that hunting develops a man’s pluck and confidence.

“I once saw,” he said, “a Staff officer, a man well known in the hunting field, gallop with an order to a column of cavalry which had been drawn up in a sheltered position behind the village to be screened from the enemy’s fire. As he drew near the column, a round shot struck the ground under his horse’s belly. The horse made an effort to swerve, which was checked by its rider, without taking the cigar out of his mouth. He galloped up to the column, coolly gave his orders, and cantered back over the open ground, where the round shot were striking pretty thickly, still smoking his cigar as if he were taking his morning exercise. A few shots had previously plunged into the column, causing some excitement, which always happens when horses get knocked over; but the jolly indifference of this officer, and the manner in which he appeared altogether to ignore the existence of danger, had a capital effect upon the men.”

Lord Wolseley did not give the name of the officer, but I have been told that it was “Bob” Wood, sometime Colonel of the 8th Hussars.

Lord Roberts, too, paid a high tribute to a noted foxhunter when he declared, after his great campaign in Afghanistan, that one of the most valuable Staff officers in the British Army was Lord Melgund (the present Earl of Minto) who had few equals in those days as a cross-country rider.

The late Earl of Wilton, himself one of the finest horsemen and most enthusiastic followers of the chase the Shires have ever seen, used to say that he “had often heard the great Duke of Wellington remark that England would rue the day when her field sports were abandoned,” and that “amongst his best Peninsular officers were those who had most distinguished themselves in the hunting field,” courage and decision being the necessary attributes of success in the chase.

The “Iron Duke” himself was a keen lover of the sport. Mr. Larpent, who was Judge-Advocate of the British forces during the Peninsular War, relates, in his private journal, some anecdotes which prove how hard a rider and good a sportsman the conqueror of Napoleon was. For his own personal service Wellington kept fifteen horses, and paid high prices for them; and when one reads of such galloping to and fro as Mr. Larpent records, one is not surprised at the number of the Duke’s stud.

Here is an extract from the journal which illustrates both the tireless energy and the keen sportsmanship of the Duke:—

“Lord Wellington is quite well again; was out hunting on Thursday, and being kept in by rain all yesterday, is making up for it to-day by persisting in his expedition to the Fourth Division. He was to set out at seven this morning for the review of General Cole’s division, on a plain beyond Castel Rodriques, about twenty-eight miles from hence; was to be on the ground about ten, and was to be back to dinner to-day by four or five o’clock. This is something like vigour, and yet I think he overdoes it a little; he has, however, a notion that it is exercise makes headquarters more healthy than the rest of the Army generally is, and that the hounds are one great cause of this.”

Of these hounds Mr. Larpent gives the following details: “We have three odd sorts of packs of hounds here, and the men hunt desperately. Firstly, Lord Wellington’s, or as he is called here, ‘the Peer’s’; these are foxhounds, about sixteen couples; they have only killed one fox this year, and that was what is called mobbed. These hounds, from want of a huntsman, straggle about and run very ill, and the foxes run off to their holes in the rocks on the Coa. Captain Wright goes out, stops the holes overnight, halloes, and rides away violently. From a hard rock sometimes the horse gets up to his belly in wet gravelly sand; thus we have many horses lamed and some bad falls. The next set of hounds are numerous. The Commissary-General, Sir R. Kennedy, is a great man in this way, and several others. And thirdly, Captain Morherre, that is, the principal man of this place, has an old poacher in his establishment, with a dozen terriers, mongrels and ferrets, and he goes out with the officers to get rabbits. Lord Wellington has a good stud of about eight hunters. He rides hard, and only wants a good gallop, but I understand knows nothing of the sport, though very fond of it in his own way.”

MONAUL PHEASANTS.
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KOKLASS PHEASANTS.
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