82 SPORTING PARSONS OF THE OLD SCHOOL : 



I am told it was a not uncommon practice many years ago 

 in foxhunting centres for clergymen to give out in church the 

 meets of hounds for the current week, and I am assured, on 

 authority which I believe to be absolutely reliable, that Cave 

 Humphrey was the last of the clergy to adopt this practice. I 

 cannot, however, speak from my own knowledge as to this, as 

 I never heard him do so, though I have sat under his ministra- 

 tion at Foxton many a time and oft. 



The late Mr. H. O. Nethercote, in his * History of the 

 Pytchley Hunt," says : ' For many a long year there was no 

 more familiar figure seen at certain of the Quorn and Pytchley 

 meets than that of the Rev. William Cave Humphrey, of 

 Laughton. The long, straight back, the * once round ' white 

 linen scarf still dwell on the memory of many a Pytchley man, as 

 does the form of the fair niece, -who was said to be the heroine of 

 Whyte-Melville's immortal ' Market Harborough.'* For some 

 time it seemed, in the eyes of niece as well as uncle, that there 

 w^as nothing more enjoyable in this world than the hunting- 

 field. 'It is a very solemn thing being married,' said a parent 

 to his daughter, on her announcing her acceptance of a suitor. 

 'Yes, father, I know it,' said the 'fiancee, but it is a deal 

 solemner thing being single ! ' So thought, too, the fair 

 huntress of Laughton. Runs w^ith the hounds, how^ever long, 

 all of a sudden seemed to her nothing worth, compared with 

 a life-long run with a husband, and the worthy old Rector w^as 

 left alone in his glory. He, to whom a day w^ith the hounds 

 had seemed for many a year to be the one great enjoyment of 

 life, -was now^ no longer seen with Pytchley or with Quorn ; 

 and after a while a strange name appeared in the Clergy List 

 as Rector of the Parish of Laughton." 



In ' Baily ' of March, 1906, I was much interested in reading 

 ' Recollections of Seventy-five Years' Sport,' by the veteran 

 Robert Fellowes, an old and valued friend of my late father. 

 Alluding to Gumley, where the happiest days of my youth 

 w^ere spent, he w^rites : ' In the next parish lived one of Whyte- 

 Melville's heroes. Parson Dove. Jogging home after hunting 

 one evening, I asked him how he filled up his spare time in the 

 summer. He said he gardened a good deal. Enquiry elicited 



* There cannot be a doubt as to this, because I am informed by her brother, the 

 Rev. Cave Humfrey, that when Whyte Melville presented Mrs. Wilson with a copy of 

 his novel, he at the same time wrote her a charming letter of apology for the liberty he 

 had taken in thus introducing her into its pages. — F. P. de C. 



