THEIR PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHASE. 85 



First, let me offer my compliments and thanks to the writer 

 for his very clever sketch of the rector. 



There is no doubt about the original of Parson Dove, as I 

 have It from one to whom Whyte Melville stated it. My Lncle 

 always disliked the idea, and I once heard him at dinner say, 

 *I believe that some good people with more imagination than 

 taste permit themselves to say so.' His costume was studied, 

 and in effect unique, the display of fine cambric shirt front and 

 collar united, the massive white scarf, always fresh-looking, 

 was really a fine expression of dandyism, and people used to 

 turn and look at it in London. 



My memory, however, while perfectly reminiscent of the 

 curiously low waistcoat, fails me at the ' embroidery ' men- 

 tioned. With regard to the alleged ramshackle condition of 

 Foxton Church, I should say very decidedly that it and 

 Laughton Church were neither better nor worse than the 

 neighbouring churches of that day. Then, too, a restored 

 church was a mark of a High Churchman, which the rector 

 would have certainly repudiated being. I venture to think 

 there must be some mistake about the story of the Dissenting 

 chapel at Foxton being 'a monument to fox-hunting,' only 

 natural after the lapse of so many years. 



First, it should be remembered that such buildings were 

 springing up all over the country ; next, I have it from one 

 who, knowing both well, says that Pemberton, so kindly and 

 genial, was the last man to say such a thing, and the rector 

 the last man to whom it would be said, the kindliest deference 

 being always displayed to him by all. Then, as to the alleged 

 dictum that ' Where the parson hunts four days a week they 

 are pretty sure to build a Dissenting chapel,' with its implied 

 mference of neglected duties, let me mention a case in my own 

 experience, where a squire built a grand new chapel, not 

 because the parson hunted four days a week, but because he 

 worked so hard in the parish as to fill the church and empty 

 the old meeting-house. Again, a story literally a propos de bottes, 

 told about myself by my friend, Mr. J. L. Randall, in his 

 History of the Meynell Hunt,' quite contradicts such inference. 



I feel sure from personal knowledge that the rector did not 

 give notice in church of the meets of the hounds; possibly the 

 tradition may have come down from his father, who was 

 Squire and Rector of Laughton, and there kept a pack of 



