MEYNELL WORTHIES. 39 



Messrs. Holdens, the squire of Aston, and the rector ; 

 and the Rev. H. Vevers of Cubley, who had a hump on 

 his back, and rode well. People said the hump broke his 

 fall, so he had not so much cause for fear as the others. 

 The celebrated actor, Mr. Young, too, used often to stay 

 at Hoar Cross and have a day with the hounds. No one 

 went much better than the Rev. German Buckston of 

 Sutton. He it was who dropped his watch in the Egginton 

 meadows in the great run from Eaton Woods to Horsley 

 Car, eighteen miles as the crow flies, and at least twenty - 

 five miles as hounds ran. A good story is told of his 

 engaging a keeper who was a noted vulpecide. Naturally, 

 all his friends lost no time in telling him what a mistake 

 he had made. " Have I ? " he said. " Well, he will kill 

 no foxes of any one else's now, that is quite certain ; and 

 he knows that he will leave here the first time my coverts 

 are drawn blank." To prevent this disagreeable contin- 

 gency, the keeper used to bag a fox by means of a terrier 

 and a sack from a small earth which he knew of, and place 

 a man with the fox in a bag in a fir tree in one of the 

 coverts. When the hounds came, he used to shake the 

 fox out of the bag, when, the boughs breaking his fall, 

 the latter used to arrive safely on the ground. In 

 the end. Old Tom Leedham smelt a rat, and called 

 out one day, with a grin, " Another of your bag ones. 

 Tommy ? " 



There was no more ardent fox-hunter of the old school 

 than the Rev. Charles Landor of Colton, brother to Walter 

 Savage Landor, the poet, who was himself once with a 

 tutor at Ashbourne. Mr. Charles Landor came of a good 

 old Warwickshire family, and was a great friend of Mr. 

 Meynell's. He used always to stay with the Rev. F. W. 

 Spilsbury at Willington for the Derby week, where Sir 

 William FitzHerbert also came to live in 1838, thus 

 making the third in a very sporting trio, who combined 

 an ardent love of the chase with considerable intellectual 

 abilities. Mr. Landor was very fond of telling an anecdote 

 about how he and his father used to occupy the family 



