Recollections of the Vine Hunt. 



that he could get away the next day, desiring that 

 the hounds might meet him in the afternoon with 

 a bag fox, in order to get a gallop on his way home. 

 Beckford, who wrote soon after the middle of the last 

 century, must certainly have considered masters of 

 foxhounds at liberty to act in this independent 

 manner ; for he recommends that the place of meet- 

 ing should not be fixed till the probable state of the 

 weather could be known ; and that, when any day 

 proved a very bad scenting one, the master should 

 take his hounds home at once, and go out the next 

 day instead. 



The consequence of this independence was a great 

 development of individual character, so that many 

 hunting establishments reflected strongly the peculiar 

 humours and oddities of their owner. Take, for ex- 

 ample, the celebrated miser, Mr. Elwes, whose bio- 

 grapher records that his whole foxhunting establish- 

 ment never cost him so much as 300/. a year; who 

 obliged his tenants to maintain his hounds for him 

 during the summer at their several farms ; whose one 

 man-servant, old Thomas, for four pounds a year, 

 milked the cows, groomed the horses, looked after and 

 hunted the hounds, and attended at his master's meals, 

 yet could not escape frequent reproaches from his 

 master as ' an idle dog, who wanted to be paid for 

 doing nothing.' * 



This was an extreme case ; but the establishment 

 of Mr. Poyntz, whom I shall have to mention after- 

 wards, though maintained, I believe, on a scale suf- 

 ficiently liberal, was yet imbued with much of the 



* See the ' Life of John Elwes, Esq.,' by Edward Topham, Esq. 



