292 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



of the hunting-field. But hunting was now the 

 fashion, and the hunting-field was regarded as the 

 door to the best country society. How far this 

 opinion was correct I will not venture to assert ; 

 but it certainly did not meet with the approval of 

 many Masters, who had already begun to abandon 

 the old practice of coffee-housing at the meet. Nor 

 were many of the new recruits remarkable for "the 

 calm repose of Vere de Vere." They were rather 

 prone to chatter at covert - side than to watch 

 what hounds were doing, and I am sorry to say 

 that a few of them were guilty of jealous riding. 

 Not that this was entirely an innovation, for it will 

 be remembered that the old groom in Punch gave 

 it as his opinion that it was the cutting one another 

 down at the fences, which was the chief attraction 

 of fox-hunting to ladies. 



Now I do not wish to write a syllable which can 

 be construed into want of gallantry. Nor is there 

 any possible necessity why I should do so, for many 

 of the errors of the early eighties have disappeared. 

 I think that women are quicker than men in per- 

 ceiving what is considered bad form ; and, as noisy 

 chatter at covert-side is distinctly bad form, it was 

 not long before ladies abandoned it. Again, the 

 number of the new recruits prevented the hunting- 

 field from being of much advantage to ladies 

 struggling upwards in the social scale. Another 

 error had been perpetrated which was sure to be 

 cured by time. When the hunting fever was first 



