PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF MR. H. S. DAVENPORT. 97 



Personal Reminiscences of 

 Mr. H. 5. Davenport. 



Amusing and Otherwise. 



My earliest recollections of Mr. Tailby date back nearly fifty 

 years. The first time he ever spoke to me was to yell at me to 

 Hold hard 1 and not over-ride hounds ! It Avas during the Christmas 

 holidays, when I was about ten years old, that I was given a 

 ride on a hack named " Sultan," which Sir Richard Sutton had 

 made a present of to one of my sisters. The conditions — imposed 

 by a doting mother — were that I was not to go near hounds. Boy 

 like, however, directly I was clear of the village, off I galloped 

 towards Norton Gorse, as I thought that covert would be the first 

 draw (Ashlands in those days had not been dreamed of, whilst 

 Illston Grange was only in the building). My surmise was right. 

 Before I sank what afterwards became known as the Ashlands 

 Valley, I heard the cry of hounds approaching, and a minute later 

 viewed the fox. I remained motionless whilst he passed within gun- 

 shot, and as soon as the racing pack had glanced by, proceeded 

 temporarily to occupy a solitary place at their sterns that can have 

 fallen to few when out hunting for the first time in their lives. The 

 fox crossed the road just short of Cox's Lodge, near Billesdon, and 

 was put to ground in the Skeffington Vale. Long before I got 

 there on Sultan, however, I heard some one shouting from the 

 background to me to "Hold hard" ! "Hold hard" be hanged, I 

 thought, as hounds were screaming along in front, with an abund- 

 ance of room at their service. A minute or so later, still shouting 

 and yelling, none other than the Master himself, Mr. Tailby, 

 swooped down upon me, and quickly relegated me to a back seat. 

 Where the rest of the field were I don't know. Mr. Tailby was cer- 

 tainly "out by himself," and not for the first time in his life. Later 

 on I had many opportunities of admiring his bull-dog courage in the 

 saddle, and can only suppose that it was a kind of second nature, 

 or force of habit, that led him to try and cramp my ardour on the 

 occasion in question ; for, if ever a Master had to deal with a hard- 

 riding, thrusting, bruising field, that master was Mr. Tailby in the 

 Early Sixties, when High Leicestershire was a veritable sea of grass, 

 and railwavs and wire were unknown within its borders. 



