io6 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



powers. He had earned the reputation of being 

 the best man to hounds in England ; but seeds of 

 dissension had been sown in the Quorn country, 

 and there were signs of ill-feeHng between the tenant 

 farmers and the foreign hunting men. Mr. Hugo 

 Meynell, during his long Mastership, had made the 

 Ouorn country the most popular country in England, 

 but the farmers resented the foreign invasion. Could 

 Tom Smith dispel the ill-feeling? He not only 

 could, but did do so, in spite of what his detractors 

 call his irritability, and his inability to brook con- 

 tradiction. Curiously, it was this irritability, which 

 often led him into pugilistic encounters, which 

 endeared him with the Leicestershire graziers. Then 

 his social position was such as to command the 

 respect of the large covert owners. Moreover, he 

 was the heir of a Hampshire country squire with 

 an unlimited balance at his bankers, and was pre- 

 pared to hunt the country without any subscription. 

 Still, there can be no doubt that he was apt to be 

 hasty in his temper towards men. On one occasion 

 he was asked why, in spite of his hasty temper, he 

 never allowed himself to be provoked by a horse 

 or a hound. The reply was characteristic of the 

 man. " They are brutes and know no better, but 

 men do'' During the Mastership of the Quorn he 

 was chiefly celebrated for the bulldog tenacity with 

 which he would stick to hounds. His ambition was 

 to see the fox run into and to see hounds work, 

 and to satisfy this ambition he did not hesitate to 



