THE OLD SQUIRE. 283 



friendship with the Prince of Wales, of whom he used to 

 recall many anecdotes. 



This friendship with the Prince and many others was, 

 however, early severed by Mr. Meynell's retirement to the 

 country in order to devote himself to the duties of a 

 M.F.H., and it was very difficult ever afterwards to 

 persuade him to leave his country home. He married, in 

 1819, Georgina, daughter of Mr. F. Pigou, of Dartford, 

 Kent, a lady whose brilliancy and charm won her the 

 close friendship of such men as Sydney Smith, Lord 

 Brougham, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Young, 

 and her exchanging the attractions of such society for 

 the wilds of Staffordshire was often lamented by these 

 friends. But the charms of the chace were paramount 

 in her husband's estimation, and, indeed, it is doubtful 

 whether, in those early days, the family fortune would 

 have been equal to the heavy drain of keeping a pack 

 of foxhounds, and the expenses of a London house. 

 Be that as it may, Mr. Meynell's devotion to hunting 

 never knew any diminution, and when, in 1842, he 

 succeeded to the family estates in Yorkshire, and assumed 

 the additional surname of Ingram, not even the attractions 

 of his beautiful Yorkshire home at Temple Newsam could 

 induce him to spend more than six weeks away from his 

 beloved hounds. 



Early in the fifties continued attacks of sciatica 

 compelled him to resign the active duties of the master- 

 ship to his son, Mr. Hugo Francis. Still, he never ceased 

 to take the greatest interest in the doings of the pack 

 which he had founded and raised to a very high pitch of 

 excellence. Fox-hunting was the absorbing interest of his 

 life, from which not even the solicitations of Sydney 

 Smith could wean him. The latter wrote to ]\Irs. Meynell 

 Ingram, " Your husband has been chasing foxes for thirty- 

 five years. Can you not induce him to give it up ? " 

 But it would have been almost as easy to have dammed 

 the falls of Niagara as to quench that inbred love of 

 hunting, which was a part and parcel of the squire's very 



