MEYNELL WORTHIES. 41 



a few reminiscences of Mr. Inge as a sportsman, a task for which many years of 

 intimate acquaintance has qualified me. For his early friends and the scenes of 

 liis youth we must recur to the days of Osbaldeston, and other celebrated 

 masters of the Atherstone hounds, to Sir Francis Lawley, Shawe of Maple Hayes, 

 and suchlike Staffordshire worthies and noted sportsmen. 



Quite at the beginning of the century Lord Vernon hunted what is now 

 the Meynell country, together with the present Atherstone country, minus the 

 Rugby side. At the age of five, the subject of this memoir made his dehnt in 

 the hunting-field, being carried on a pony in front of a groom, and concealed near 

 the earths in Thorpe Gorse, to get a view of the fox, as soon as he should be 

 afoot. From that date up to the season of 1881, the old familiar figure has been 

 seen at the Atherstone meets, having hunted with sixteen successive masters of 

 that pack. This list includes, besides those above alluded to, such noted names 

 as Lord Anson, Applewhaite, Anstruther, Thomson, and others. 



Mr. Inge's sporting recollections went back as far as his undergi-aduate 

 experiences at Christ Church. One of these was in company with George 

 Osborne, afterwards Duke of Leeds. The two friends drove a tandem to Bicester, 

 and arrived at the meet just in time to see a fox found in a half-acre spinny, 

 bearing the name of Goddington cow-pastures, and they ran him to Tingewick 

 wood. Their instructions had been to follow Wingfield, the huntsman, late first 

 whip to Osbaldeston, with the Atherstone. Eiding a hard puller from one of the 

 Oxford stables, young Inge missed his pilot down a ride, and came to a stake- 

 bound fence that bounded the wood. The puller landed hira over it, but 

 he lost his seat, and recovered it only just in time to follow Sir Henry Peyton 

 over the next fence. At the first check he was one of the three who were " in it " 

 and (he always added) " neither my pilot nor Sir Henry, who had chaffed me for 

 my narrow escape from a fall, were among that number." At the end of an hour 

 the hounds ran close into the town of Buckingham, and came to a check in some 

 suburban gardens. At this point Jimmy Jones, lately a fellow-student at West- 

 minster, now become a parson, appeared suddenly on the scene, and dismounting, 

 helped five hounds bodily over the garden wall. Shortly afterwards, the two 

 couple and a half ran into the fox handsomely in the open by one of the Stowe 

 lodges. Soon after leaving college, our friend's health gave way, and he was 

 ordered to winter at Madeira. Eight of his Oxford chums gave him a fare- 

 well dinner—" they are all dead and gone now," he used to say, with a shake of 

 his head— but at tiie last moment the sentence of expatriation was commuted to 

 a sojourn at Torquay, and, as a matter of fact, Mr. Inge never went beyond the 

 four seas up to the day of his death. 



******* 

 It was not until the year 1870 that he succeeded his elder brother, Colonel 

 William Inge, in the Thorpe and other family estates. Thenceforward his ample 

 fortune enabled him to follow his favourite pursuit to his heart's content. The 

 pi-esent writer has seen him ride well to hounds during the last five years. His 

 parish duties were always light, for at the census of 1871, the population of 

 Thorpe numbered fewer than fifty persons, thirty of whom were servants at the 

 hall. The warden of All Souls, of which college Mr. Inge was a fellow up to the 

 time of his resignation, about a year ago, when on a visit to his old friend, com- 

 mented on the small size of the church. " Yes, it is three feet shorter than the 

 dining-room," was the reply. " Ay," remarked the curate, " and the living not 

 half so good ! " 



Mr. Inge continued to enjoy life and his quiet country pursuits up to within 

 a few weeks of his death, which event took place in the beginning of August. 



