1863] ( 225 ) 



CHAPTER XIX. 



MR. E. J. BIRD — RADBURNE DAY RUN TO MODDERSHALL 



OAKS — DEATH OF ADMIRAL MEYNELL. 



1863-1864. 



There are not many people who can remember the 

 Meynell hounds longer than Mr. Bird. "Pa" Bird, as 

 the late Mr. "Chev" Bateman facetiously dubbed him 

 one day, when the family, with a champagne-case mounted 

 on wheels, met the hunt, and ran up to the author of their 

 being, calling out " Pa " ; and the name stuck to him. 



As a boy he hunted with the famous *' Jack " Conyers 

 in Essex and also with Mr. Parry of the Puckeridge, and 

 learned to ride without stirrups — about the only way to 

 insure a good and firm seat in after years. This he 

 attained, and, by its means, assisted by good hands and 

 a determination to go where the hounds went, backed 

 by good nerve, he arrived at the proud position of being 

 one of the leaders of the hunt. Not that this was achieved 

 all at once. In his earlier days, though forward, he was 

 not so often actually the first, but later on, when those 

 two notable persons, Messrs. Cecil Legard and Richard 

 FitzHerbert, had gone away, he naturally stepped into 

 the vacant places, and may fairly claim, with Mr. Walter 

 Boden, the Hon. E. Coke, Mr. Clowes, " Squire " Chandos- 

 Pole, Mr. F. Cotton, Mr. Henry Boden, Mr. G. F. Meynell, 

 and perhaps one or two others, the distinction of being 

 one of the best men with the Meynell at that time. 

 About this period, 1876, under the advice of "Doctor" 

 Statham, he gave Messrs. Newman and Landsley a hundred 



VOL. I. Q 



