66 Recollections of the Vine Hunt. 



The town of Basingstoke supplied several foxhun- 

 ters. Mr. Warne the lawyer, more than one member 

 of the May family, and now and then, for a short 

 time, between one patient and another, Mr. Charles 

 Lyford the surgeon, * enjoying it exceedingly. Two 

 generations of the Curtis family, who kept the 

 Angel Inn and farmed largely, were regular attend- 

 ants ; with a large number of Tubbs and other farmers, 

 all keen sportsmen, and some of them good ones. 



But the most remarkable person of this class, or 

 rather of a class peculiar to himself, was old Wyse, a 

 civil, respectful mannered, elderly man, exceedingly 

 fond of hunting, who drove Rogers' coach every day, 

 Sundays excepted, from Southampton to Popham 

 Lane in the morning, and back to Southampton in the 

 afternoon. He arrived at the Flower Pots, Popham 

 Lane, soon after tenVclock, and left it between three 

 and four. Either the H.H. or Mr. Chute was sure 

 to be within a few miles of this central place, two or 

 three days in the week. Thus he was able to see the 

 whole or part of many runs. He always had a rea- 



* Charles Lyford really knew something about hunting. Not 

 so his father, the old doctor. I remember him a fine, tall, old 

 man, with such a flaxen wig as is not to be seen or conceived by 

 this generation. This wig he used to ' dispart with biennially^ 

 (as Sir Walter Scott expresses it), and to bestow the reversion of 

 it, every second year, on an old man in our parish, as tall and fine 

 looking as himself, producing thereby a ludicrous resemblance 

 between the peasant and the doctor. It is recorded of him that, 

 having accidentally fallen in with the hounds when checked, he 

 caused great confusion by galloping up in a very excited state, 

 waving his hat, and exclaiming, ' Tally-ho ! Mr. Chute. Tally- 

 ho ! Mr. Chute.* Not that he had seen the fox, but because he 

 imagined that ' Tally-ho ! ' was the word with which foxhunters 

 ordinarily greeted each other in the field. 



