MASTERS OF HOUNDS.

BY NIMROD.

No. VII.

MR. JOLLIFFE.-MR. NICOLL.-COLONEL COOK.-MR. WILLIAM
WYNDHAM.

MR. JOLLIFFE.

I HAD no great experience of Mr. Jolliffe as a master of hounds, but was much pleased with the little I saw of him in that character, which did not extend beyond a fortnight's sojourn in his country. He kept hounds nearly, if not quite thirty years, having hunted them himself for more than ten, when he gave up the command to that excellent huntsman, Roffey, who had acted as his first whip. We may hence conclude that Mr. Jolliffe was a sportsman, I can attest the fact of his being a perfect gentleman-no small qualification for a master of hounds, and from these circumstances combined, it is scarcely necessary to add, that he was as popular as he deserved to be in his country, nearly the worst in England for hounds, but like most bad countries, producing good foxes. Fancy a cover of a thousand acres (Banstead Park, I think it is called), in which I once had the pleasure of spending a whole day, without an apparent chance of a fox getting away. And upon this subject I must be allowed to repeat an anecdote of his huntsman, Roffey,-at least his answer to his master on his return from a still worse fixture than this. Mr. Jolliffe asked him what he thought of the country? Roffey, associating the people that inhabited it with itself, answered, that he thought they (the inhabitants), "just knew when it was daylight, and that was all." This must be allowed to be no bad definition of the most remote and wildest parts of a naturally wild country; and, moreover, had Aristotle been asked to define the first link in the chain between barbarian ignorance, and a faint dawn of knowledge, I question whether he could have done it better.

Mr. Jolliffe's best country was in what is called the Vale, and the view of it from Reigate hills, over Bletchingly and Godstone, commands a fine extent, and one over which hounds might be expected to show sport.

I remember hearing of two extraordinary circumstances occurring in that country, with these hounds; they found a fox one day, killing him at a place twelve miles distant, at which place, on their next hunting day, they found, and killed where the other was found.

NO. XIV.-VOL. III.-NEW SERIES.

L

No man need have better blood in his kennel than Mr. Jolliffe had I cannot now put my hand upon his list, but 1 well remember the kennels of Mr. Meynell in Sultan, Mariner, and Gusman, in Mr. Warde's Jason, in the New Forest Justice, in the Mostyn Leopardess (out of Lady), and in Sir Richard Puleston's Dromo, had been resorted to with the best success. If my memory does not fail me, Mr. Jolliffe's pack was not a large one, not reaching beyond thirtyfive couples of working hounds; but they were hounds of great power, and with limbs and feet not to be beaten anywhere. Their owner, it will be remembered, like Mr. Beardsworth with his race horses, had a great fancy for naming them after large English towns, such as Lancaster, Loughborough, &c.

I was a great admirer of Roffey as a huntsman, and the more so from my being informed that his hounds had not the advantage of cub-hunting, for want of a cub-hunting country,-in other words, having no foxes to spare. A steadier pack I never saw, and it was delightful to hear Roffey in a strong cover, as well as to see him make his way out of it, when his fox was on foot. His pipe was good and cheering, and considering his weight,-a good fifteen stone, he made his way well over a country. Lastly, let it not be forgotten, that he was the early instructor of the celebrated Jack Stevens, who whipped in to him.

I now dismiss Mr. Jolliffe, with this single remark. He was one of those real old English country gentlemen of which England has been proud, and I sincerely hope she will continue to be so. His brother, Mr. William Jolliffe, was considered a very good sportsman, but being at the time of my hunting with the Merstram hounds, as those I am speaking of were called, deeply engaged in the speculation of building London bridge, it may easily be imagined that fox-hunting with him was then only a minor consideration.

Of the conspicuous characters in a run, I am unable to say much, my memory failing me on this not very material point. Mr. William Jolliffe I believe could go well at one period, before the gout got into his boots; but the best men in my time were Mr. Edward Woodbridge, who now has the management of the hounds kept at St. Omer, in France, and Mr. Claggitt,-the last not to be beaten.

MR. NICOLL.

HERE we have another heaven-born huntsman-one who took not only to the mastership of a pack of hounds but to the hunting of them also, when it was generally believed by his friends and brother sportsmen, that he was not qualified for either the one or the other. Nor is this all; he came upon the stage to no small disadvantage, having been

the immediate successor of the great John Warde. But talent, like strength, will be served; and Mr. Nicoll soon convinced his friends and his field-aye, even "Old Woods," that he could both manage a pack of hounds in the kennel and hunt them also. There was, however, one point on which he was not called upon to exercise his talent to a great extent, viz. in breeding hounds; because he had, for a series of years, the Beaufort young drafts, which, as his country did not require more than forty couples of working hounds, went about half way towards supplying him and keeping up the strength of his kennel, notwithstanding that he was occasionally a severe sufferer, by what is called kennel lameness—so much so, indeed, as to be induced to make his hounds' lodging rooms one story from the ground.

From the specimen I had during the two seasons in which I saw his pack in the field, I consider Mr. Nicoll to have a very correct eye to the essential, as well as ornamental points of a hound, and yet I was told, that his pack had been more handsome a year or two previously to the first of my seeing them; and the period of my first seeing them was two seasons previously to his giving them up, and selling them to the Earl of Kintore for one thousand guineas. They certainly exhibited very high breeding, and when we recollect that they had in their veins the blood of the two Justices (New Forest and Beaufort), Warde's Pilgrim, the Beaufort Waterloo, and that of some others of the best in England, in the Beaufort drafts, we could not but expect that such would have been the case.

As a huntsman, Mr. Nicoll succeeded quite to the satisfaction of his field. He rode well up to his hounds-in fact no man rode harder or better over the Forest, and there was a quickness and a decision in his actions, combined with judgment, that all huntsmen to fox-hounds should possess. In the kennel he had his peculiarities. He fed his hounds lighter than most men are given to do, but doubtless he had his reasons for it-in the April month especially. I saw them both with a good scent and a bad one, and although they appeared lower in condition than others with which I had been hunting in the course of that season, I saw nothing to make me believe that they were under the mark in their work.

It must also be taken into consideration that the New Forest country has likewise its peculiarities, which must not be lost sight of in the kennel. Although I never saw them in such a situation, having only hunted with them in the April month, I can picture to myself their running across this wild and pathless country, on a boisterous, windy

"Old Woods," as he was called, hunted the New Forest hounds when Mr. Warde bad them.

day, with the leaves falling thick around them, and crossed continually by deer; together with to them the encouraging fact of now and then being left to themselves, by reason of their huntsman and his whips being forced to quit their line, to avoid a bog,-to say nothing of their frequently entering enclosures, into which no horse, without wings, could follow them. A little management both in and out of the kennel, must be allowed to be called for here.

One of the greatest evils of the New Forest, as relate to hounds, is the unsoundness of its kennels, be they built where they may; and although there are those masters of hounds who dispute the fact of there really existing such a complaint as kennel lameness,-in other words, that it may entirely be avoided by kennel management, I am inclined to think that unless certain precautions, lately found to be effectual, are adopted in the structure of kennels in the New Forest, lame hounds will ever be found in them.

I cannot say I should like to hunt all the season in the New Forest, inasmuch as there would be to me too much of sameness in the whole thing; still no sportsman should go to his grave without seeing it, forasmuch as it is, barring the bogs, a country in which hounds can always be seen in their work; and it is a beautiful sight when they quit the several brakes, and stream over the intermediate glades with a breast-high scent. Then in Mr. Nicoll's time the coffee house part of the business made up for long draws without finding a fox. Indeed he himself was a host here; and his reply to the gentleman who told him he did not come out to be damned,-namely, "that he might go home and be damned," occasionally goes the round of the provincial papers to this day.

A good practical sportsman was lost to the hunting world when Mr. Nicoll gave up his hounds, and I witnessed his finish as a master, at the end of the season of 1828, when his beautiful pack (fifty-seven couples) were transferred to the kennel of Lord Kintore, at Keith Hall, Aberdeenshire, for the sum I have already named, and I have had the pleasure of seeing them at work under their new master. His two last days but one, were chef d'œuvres as to the performance of the hounds, and the science displayed by their huntsman; but on their last day of all, we had a light flashey scent, with which no good could be done. But if the scent was light there were many heavy hearts in the field, that of the master amongst the rest, although as that good sportsman, and real specimen of an Irish gentleman, the late Lord Lisle, observed at his farewell dinner, "how much soever he (Mr. Nicoll) might feel on the occasion, his friends felt still more." Nor should the conduct of his first whip, Joe Grant, be forgotten, on this, to him, very melancholy occasion; especially his answer to myself to the

question of "How happened it that his master had been so little in the kennel the last fortnight or so?"

"He hasn't been with 'em much lately," said Joe, "he hasn't fed 'em these three months." "How do you account for all this," was my next question. "Why," replied Joe, heaving a sigh at the moment, "I suppose he has been a weaning himself from 'em!"

COLONEL COOK.

I never saw Colonel Cook, the author of "Observations on Foxhunting," in the field but once, and that was in Sutton Park, when he hunted the Staffordshire country. From such slight experience of him, it would be presumptuous to offer an opinion as to his capability as a master of, or huntsman to, hounds,-for he was both the one and the other; but on the authority of a good sportsman, I am entitled to state that when he hunted Mr. Nicoll's hounds for a short period, whilst that gentleman was kept from the field by a severe domestic affliction, he showed that he was equal to the task. Of his book, I have already given my opinion, and it is unnecessary to repeat it here.

MR. WILLIAM WYNDHAM.

I witnessed the end of Mr. Nicoll in the Forest, and the commencement of Mr. Wyndham, who succeeded him. It was a wise remark of a celebrated ancient, Nulli tacuisse nocet nocet esse locutum, that being silent never did any harm, but he who lets loose his tongue, has often occasion to repent of his words. With this hint before me, I shall say little of Mr. Wyndham, as a master, and for one very good reason I saw little of him, not more than five or six days. I do not mean to imply that Mr. Wyndham is not a good sportsman, on the contrary, I believe him to be one, but he is, in my opinion, far too slow in his motions for fox-hunters of the present day. To be sure he made an unfavourable start as a huntsman; the one season in which he tried his hand in the Craven country was an unfavourable one, generally; and the weather on his taking to the Forest, at the end of it, was very much against him-a combination of circumstances indeed, opposed him, to say nothing of the disadvantage of appearing after such an artist as Mr. Nicoll. Mr. Wyndham's father kept fox-hounds before him; and he having retired from the Forest, now keeps a small pack to hunt the country formerly hunted by his father, and which I should imagine, from what little I have seen of it, to be one of the worst in England.

(To be continued).