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MASTERS OF HOUNDS.

BY NIMROD.

No. XI.

MR. FARQUHARSON-MR. YEATMAN-THE LATE MR. OTTWAY CAVE-LORD SOUTHAMPTON, MR. LLOYD-THE LATE AND PRESENT DUKES OF BEAUFORT.

MR. FARQUHARSON.

HERE we have another staunch and well-tried supporter of fox-hunting. Mr. Farquharson has kept fox-hounds thirty-five years, having commenced as master of the same country he now hunts, in December 1806. To prove that he has hunted it with a liberal hand, it is only necessary to say, his fixtures have been five days in the week, extending over a greater space of country than perhaps those of any other master at present do-at least fifty miles, I should say, from point to point.

The first time of my seeing Mr. Farquharson's hounds, was, when on my road into Devonshire, in 1824, I saw them in their kennel, and gave my opinion of them as far as such a transient glance afforded me the means of doing. And one circumstance relating to their character is still impressed upon my mind. Jennings, who then hunted them, asked me some questions about the size, strength of bone, &c. of Mr. Warde's hounds, when pointing to one of his own, I think his name was Guardsman-I told him he was about the stamp of Mr. Warde's, although not so powerful as his for the most part were; when Jennings informed me Guardsman was got by one of their own hounds, which was by one of Mr. Warde's, and that in consequence of his strengthy appearance, and his performance in the field, he had put some bitches to him. I forget the name of Mr. Warde's hound, but I made mention of the fact in an account I gave of my visit to the Devonshire staghounds.

Some years after the period here, alluded to, I spent a fortnight in Dorsetshire, under the hospitable roof of Mr. Yeatman, when I had an opportunity of judging of Mr. Farquharson's establishment in the field as I also had on one other occasion, when I had a chance to reach them when on a visit to Mr. Nicoll, in the New Forest. At the former of these periods, however, having broken off my engagement with the Old Sporting Magazine-the only one then published, and not expecting another to make its appearance-I had giving up all thoughts of continuing to write on sporting subjects, and consequently made no notes or comments on what I saw, either with Mr. Farquhar

NO. XVIII.-VOL. III.

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son's or Mr. Yeatman's hounds; I will, however, rake up my memory and see what it will produce.

It has been kindly hinted to us by Dr. Johnson, in one of his Ramblers, that an unwillingness to be pleased is no proof of understanding; and it would be well if the sound maxim were more generally in our thoughts than it is. "That rigorous habit," says the stern moralist," of examining every thing by the standard of perfection, vitiates the temper, rather than improves the mind: teaches us to discern faults with an unhappy penetration, and suggests ideas of excellence which men, and the performances of men, cannot attain." It would be well, I say, if this precept were observed even in the humble task of passing an opinion on a pack of hounds, forasmuch as we should in that case be often spared the perusal of exaggerated statements, to the discredit of those whose best endeavours to afford amusement to their brother sportsmen, have for many years been exerted. And I make this observation in consequence of one of these " exaggerated statements" that once met my eye, having for its object the lowering the character of Mr. Farquharson's hounds in public estimation. And what was one of the charges brought against his pack. Why, that they had fewer runs and less sport than any pack in the kingdom, arising (to state one of the causes produced) from the multiplicity of foxes. Now this assumed cause at once refutes the truth of the charge. No country ever has been, nor ever will be, preserved for such a length of time as Mr. Farquharson had then hunted his, and preserved to such an extent, for any man whose hounds are described as being the worst in England, for so may the words be construed. Another charge was, the great age of the huntsman. Alas it is a pity that so good a huntsman as Jennings should not have been proof against time; and I am ready to admit, that he was perseverer with too long, as was the case with Goodall in Oxfordshire, Tom Rose in the Grafton country, and some others that I could name. For my own part, however, I saw very little to mend in Mr. Farquharson's hunting establishment, unless it were, that, for so wealthy a man as he is known to be, and so liberal withal, 1 considered his servant's horses a little below the mark. As for the hounds, none could draw closer than I saw them draw some very strong covers, nor hunt and chase better when their fox was on foot before them. As for Jennings, he appeared every thing that could be wished for-save these bonds, which grey hairs may be said to be to a man who is expected to go a racing pace over a strongly-fenced country. I am happy to find that he is still alive, and often appears by the cover side.

Treadwell-brother to Mr. Majoribanks's, and late Lord Suffield's huntsman-now hunts Mr. Farquharson's hounds; giving great satisfaction to his field; and, I have it on the authority of one of the white

collars, that he killed his sixty brace of foxes last season. It is therefore now in my power once more to refute the charge made against Mr. Farquharson as a master, and join with all my brother sportsmen who can appreciate his sporting and gentleman-like conduct in the field and elsewhere, in the hearty wish that he may continue, for many years to come, in the line which he has pursued with so much credit to himself, and satisfaction to his friends.

MR. YEATMAN.

MR. YEATMAN would rank amongst the oldest of our masters of harriers, but his standing as a master of fox-hounds, called the Blackmore Vale hounds, I believe dates no further back than March, 1826, when he purchased the contents of Mr. Templer's kennel, and commenced hunting foxes.

The little experience I had of Mr. Yeatman as a master of foxhounds, does not enable me to say more of him in that character, than that the zeal which distinguished him as a master of harriers, was not likely to abate, when flying at higher game. And he made a very good start, with his first pack at least; in their first season, they killed and ran to ground twenty-five foxes out of thirty found, not commencing till the middle of November; and in their second, in the course of forty-seven days, including four blank ones, they killed thirty-five, and ran eight to ground.

Mr. Yeatman is again a master of harriers, and from what I saw of his country, when I had the pleasure of visiting him, as already stated, I did not consider it equal to hold fox-hounds, with any thing like a certainty of matters going on satisfactorily. As a master of harriers, Mr. Yeatman is pre-eminent. I have already given it as my opinion, that in his style of hound he never was excelled but by one man, namely Sir John Dashwood King, whose sort was the beau ideal of the modern harrier. Mr. Yeatman approached him nearly, although, from the circumstance of not breeding to the great extent to which Sir John bred, he was not likely to head, perhaps not to equal him. So preeminently characteristic, however, was his style of hound, wherever his blood was diffused, that I could not fail to distinguish it; and on my entering the kennel of Mr. John Hay of the Grange, near Abroath, in Scotland, I instantly exclaimed, "Here is some of Mr. Yeatman's sort," which these proved to be, although at the distance of upwards of four hundred miles from his kennel.

THE LATE MR. OTTWAY CAVE.

No doubt the majority of your readers never heard of Mr. Ottway Cave of Slauford Hall, Leicestershire, as a master of fox-hounds; but such he was, and I hunted with them in the years 1803 and 1804, having resided at that period within easy reach of his kennel. They

were hunted by a son of the famous Dick Knight-huntsman to the Pytchley in the late Earl Spencer's time, and immortalized by the pencil of the late Mr. Loraine Smith—but he did not appear to possess that fox-killing talent for which his father was so conspicuous.

Mr. Ottway Cave commenced with harriers, and if my memory does not fail me, he did not keep his fox-hounds beyond the second season. His failing in the field, and I believe only in the field, was want of temper, especially with his men, to whom in his wrath he would occasionally make use of the most extraordinary expressions. For example, I remember hearing him, after having exhausted his stock of anathemas upon him, call his huntsman a "d-d swindling scoundrel." But his scene with an unfortunate stable-boy on his road to the post-office, beggars description. He saw the hare, while the pack were at fault, and gave the office. On their being brought to the spot, however, and not owning the scent at once, Mr. Ottway swore the boy had given him a false holloa, and threatened to horse whip him if he ever dared to holloa away his hounds again. On his return from Lutterworth, however, the boy again saw the hare, and the hounds were again at fault. Holloa he did not, but on its being told to Mr. Ottway that the boy on the pony had seen the hare, he exclaimed, "The young rascal! Has he seen the bare and not given us a holloa? I'll whip him within an inch of his life!"

I once saw his temper put to the test, and it did not boil over on that occasion. A very celebrated sportsman of those days was on a visit to me, and Mr. Ottway, being anxious he should see his hounds in the field, absolutely changed his fixture for that purpose. Having, however, accompanied me on the previous day to meet Mr. Corbet's hounds at Ufton Wood, and the chase leading us to Witchwood Wood, consequently having thirty-five miles to trot homewards, my friend, not in good health at the time, and long since gathered to his fathers, was so fatigued as to be unable to leave his bed the next morning, and I was deputed to make his apology, which Mr. Ottway received with a better grace than I anticipated he would have done, after the inconvenience to which he had put himself.

The length of time that has intervened, added to the, to me, much Jamented fact of my having destroyed the greater part of my memoranda of the hunting events of that period, renders it out of my power to give any opinion upon Mr. Ottway's hounds, either in the kennel or the field; but I owe it to his memory to say, that, setting aside occasional outbreaks of temper, and a kind of constitutional peevishness with his servants, Mr. Otway (as he was then called) was what the world calls a very good kind of man, although not exactly fitted to be the master of fox-hounds. His country contained some of the cream of Leicestershire, but was of no great extent.

LORD SOUTHAMPTON.

THE Quorn Country was taken possession of by Lord Southampton, in 1827, when it was nearly as full of foxes as of fox covers, and he made quite as good a start as could be expected with about seventy couples of hounds, collected from different kennels, but still of the right sort. His lordship also entered, with great spirit, into all the minutiae of his new undertaking, going through the cub-hunting with his men and reckoning his twenty brace of noses on his kennel door, before regular hunting commenced. His pack-divided by the sexes—was hunted by Dick Burton, with Will Denny for his first whip; but who his second was, does not at this moment occur to me. Lord Southampton made a good finish to his first season, rendering himself very popular in the country, a circumstance that renders the remarks I am about to make, until further explained, somewhat difficult to account for.

The year succeeding to that in which Lord Southampton made his debût as Master of the Quorn hounds, his country was nearly stripped of foxes. That is to say, the covers of the Laughton Hills, Barkby, Queenborough, Langton, Cowdale, and others, were cleared of them, together with one litter taken close to Melton town. That this, however, had nothing to do with the character or conduct of Lord Southampton as a Master, is proved by the fact of the same plunder having been committed on some of the Pytchley covers, then hunted by Mr. Osbaldeston. It afterwards appeared that a well-organized gang of fox-stealers had traversed parts of the two adjoining counties with traps, wires, and nets, for the purpose of supplying with Leicestershire and Northamptonshire foxes, such masters of other countries as might be supposed to have entertained a notion, that a cross from the crack countries would improve their own sorts. This system, however, was fortunately put an end to before any very serious mischief had been the result.

Lord Southampton hunted Leicestershire only two seasons, a circumstance to be lamented on account of the expense he went to in building a kennel at Leicester. In the second season, Dick Burton left his service, and was succeeded by George Mountford, who came to him from the Oakley, together with one whipper-in. Burton was considered to be rather too slow in his saddle for that fast country, not having, up to that period, quite recovered himself from the effects of a desperate fall he had experienced five years previously, and by which his pelvis was fractured; a similar accident to that which Mr. Griffith Lloyd met with in the Bicester country.

Although Lord Southampton's last season was not so good as his first, his retirement from the Quorn hounds was much regretted, as he did the thing well. When he commenced his career as master, he was considered slow over a country; but the force of good example, aided

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