CHAPTER I.EARLY HUNTING EXPERIENCES

THE GRAPHIC STORIES OF THE hunting-field told me by my father, the Rev. H. Digby Serrell, are among my earliest recollections. Being a Dorsetshire man, my father hunted all the early part of his life with the Dorset packs, and the names of Mr. Farquharson, the Kev. Harry Farr Yeatman, Mr. Tudway, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Drax were household words with the members of his family. As we listened to the tales of those early days, we learned to love the sport so dear to the heart of the narrator, and gained our own first knowledge of hunting from his lips.

My father was a fine sportsman of the old school, and he had a remarkably quick eye and a wonderful knack of sticking to hounds. One of his favorite sayings was that a man was no good in the hunting-field if he could not finish as well as begin. Many a time also I have heard him say, “If you keep down wind of the hounds, they are sure to come to you,” and when riding to hounds I have borne this in mind, and by my own experience have proved its truth. It was always a delight to listen to accounts of the runs of bygone days, for as my father had a very retentive memory, he would describe the incidents that happened in them, and thus bring the whole scene vividly before us.

At the time when he was hunting in Dorset, some of the keenest men with hounds were clergymen, and very remarkable characters they were.

The Rev. Harry Farr Yeatman, of Stock House, owned a pack of hounds with which he hunted fox, hare, and roe-deer in the Stock coverts and parts of Somersetshire. These hounds were dwarf foxhounds, and only stood twenty or twenty – one inches, but they had been drawn from all the best kennels in England by Mr. George Templar of Devonshire, from whose possession they passed to that of Mr. Yeatman in the year 1826. The roe-deer which this pack often hunted were brought into the country by Lord Dorchester, and from that time to the present they have lived in the woods and hills of the wilder districts.

A good old yeoman of Stalbridge, named William Harris, was entered with Mr. Yeatman’s hounds, and was fond of telling the story of his first day in the field. He was riding a pulling pony, and in the course of a run he came full tilt against a local magistrate, whom he ignominiously capsized. The sufferer was very indignant, and appealed to the Master to have the boy flogged. The Master, however, took a different view of the matter, and said slyly he thought he saw some good in the boy, as he had come off number one in his first brush against a justice of the peace. This incident, and the fact that on the same day young Harris dislodged a marten cat which the hounds had treed, made him from that time a favorite with Mr. Yeatman. Harris became one of the hardest riding men in the Vale, and his sons after him were very keen men with hounds. When Harris was once asked who was the best sportsman he had ever known, he replied, “There have been so many of the right sort hereabouts, that I’m blest if I know. But one day I was sitting between the two divines, Mr. Yeatman and the Rev. Jack Russell, and I says, ‘Gentlemen, I feels mortal proud to find myself between the two best sportsmen in England.’”

It was through his friend Mr. Yeatman that my father made the acquaintance of the Rev.

John Russell, of Devonshire fame, another choice spirit of the clerical circle whose interests were

not bounded by their parochial duties. My father was staying at Stock House when he heard his host lamenting that, owing to his hunting establishment being very short of hands, he did not know how to get some hounds to the Kev. Jack Russell, which he had promised by a certain day.

Being young and always eager where hounds were in question, my father volunteered to take the draft to Iddesleigh, in Devonshire, and to deliver them within the time specified. This meant a long and weary journey by road. But, nothing daunted, my father was off at daybreak with a large piece of cheese in his pocket, with which he coaxed the hounds along till they grew accustomed to him, and he accomplished the odd eighty miles on horseback in the stipulated time. This was the sort of thing to appeal to Mr. Russell. He was very pleased, and gave my father the warmest of welcomes. That night as the two men were sitting at dinner my father expressed his regret that the next day was not one of Mr. Bussell’s hunting days, as he had to go off early in the morning of the day after to enable him to keep his term at Oxford. He expressed so much disappointment at not seeing the famous hounds in the field that at last Mr. Bussell exclaimed, “Look here, my boy, you shall see them, if you don’t mind turning out at daybreak. There is a fox shut up in the saddle-room that was brought me today, and we will see if we can’t dust his jacket for him.” It was in the early spring, and a move was made to the stables the following morning before it was light. The men being roused, the horses were soon saddled, and all was ready for departure. The kennel lad was sent off on a rough pony with the fox in a bag, which he was ordered to let out at a certain spot, and then hounds were unkennelled and they started in pursuit. A glorious spin over a fine wild country followed, at the end of which the fox made good his escape, and the two sportsmen returned home in good time, as hounds had to Innit the next day. From that time Mr. Russell and my father often met, both in Devon and in Dorset.

In an old hunting journal kept by Mr. Yeatman from the year 1826 to 1831, which has come to me through my father, all the entries are signed John Channing, and are written as if from his pen. With regard to the difficulties that confronted Mr. Yeatman when he began to hunt the country, he says, writing in the usual way in the person of his huntsman, John Channing: “It must not be forgotten—1st, that a very considerable part of the country which their proprietor established in 1826 had not been hunted at all for nearly thirty years, that the foxes had been systematically destroyed, and even that their haunts and earths were known to few, if to any persons, except to those who dealt in their destruction; 2nd, that this small extent of country had never been hunted before by any gentleman as an entire country; 3rd, that at its farthest north - eastern, Wiltshire, extremity the coverts are of enormous extent, and so full of earths as to baffle the vigilance of the most careful and active stopper; 4th, that a large portion of the country lying between Compton Castle and Yeovil is nearly destitute of covert of any description capable of holding a fox during the winter months, consisting almost entirely of sandy arable land, intersected by roads and notorious as bad scenting ground; and, lastly, that a system bordering on persecution in the county of Dorset was not wanting to super add difficulties to the whole of no ordinary kind.

Yet in spite of difficulties the hunt became very popular, and from the same old journal I find that at a fixture at Stock House in 1828 there were “two hundred and eighty-five horsemen” present, a very large field for that period. On that occasion hounds were hunting fox, and finding immediately, “after a brilliant burst of forty minutes they killed their fox in superior style in the open, before he could reach Caundle Holt coverts.”

Another run chronicled in March 1831 deserves mention. The meet was “at Batcombe Wood, near Bruton, and the wind was in the south-west, with driving rain. We found immediately, and went away on only middling terms across the enclosure by Batcombe Lodge and on to Asham Wood “—the latter a covert of some 600 acres—” across the corner of Asham, hounds made for the ‘alpine heights of Mendip,’ hunting their fox over the heather and furzes of this wild and romantic region to a place called Lye. Here, in heavy fog and rain, the fox was apparently lost, having been headed by the furze-cutters on the moor. By taking hounds on two miles, the line was recovered in masterly style in Lye Wood the pack racing their fox through the fine coverts of Colonel Horner at Mells, and on to Vallis and Little Elm, near Frome. Here a curious sight presented itself In a rocky gorge in the valley at the base of a tree overhanging a mountain torrent, the hounds were at bay, and on the top of the tree, twenty feet above ground, and in a mass of ivy, the fox was at perch. From thence he made his leap into the stream below, a favorite hound and the fox sinking to the bottom together. Thus ended a run of four hours and forty-five minutes, over every variety of ground, a good twenty-five miles having been covered in this curious chase, which extended through thirteen parishes.” A peculiarity that marked Mr. Yeatman’s description of a run was that he always noted the number of parishes hounds had been through.

A story told of Mr. Butler and Mr. Yeatman is that one day when they were driving to the meet together, these two worthies disputed as to which of them could best preach a hunting sermon. The dispute waxed warm, and they settled they were to try on the following Sunday. When the time came, Mr. Butler gave as the text of his discourse, “We heard of it at Ephratah, and found it in the wood,” while Mr. Yeatman chose the words, “This is the heir,"—hare,—"come let us kill him.” How the rival merits were decided I do not know.

Mr. Butler was a favorite with all, from the lowest to the highest, and many stories my father used to tell of the friendship of the eccentric parson with the...