FOX-HUNTING 



•-p^OX-HUNTING,' wrote Beckford in 1787, *is 

 1^ now become the amusement of gentlemen \ nor 

 need any gentleman be ashamed of it.' 



Time had been when fox-hunting and fox-hunters 

 lay under social ban. Lord Chesterfield kindly bore 

 testimony to the good intentions of him who followed 

 the hounds, but could say little else in his favour : in 

 the days of Queen Anne a * fox-hunter,' in the esteem 

 of some, meant a boor or something very like it ; but the 

 slighting significance attaching to the word must surely 

 have become only a memory long ere Beckford wrote. 



There is, however, room for doubt whether fox- 

 hunting in its early days was the amusement of others 

 than gentlemen, and whether any such were ever 

 ashamed of it. William the Third hunted with the 

 Charlton in Sussex, inviting thither foreign visitors of 

 distinction; and Charlton continued to be the Melton 

 of England in the days of Queen Anne and the two first 

 Georges, for fox-hunting was the fashion. Harrier men 

 maintain that their sport was reckoned the higher in 

 these times ; but, I venture to think, harrier men are 

 mistaken. Read this,^ dated 14th July 1730, from Sir 

 Robert Walpole to the Earl of Carlisle :— 



* I am to acquaint your Lordship that upon the 

 old Establishment of the Crown there have usually 

 been a Master of the Buckhounds and a Master of 



1 Letters of Sir Robert Walpole, Hist. MSS. Comm. 



