56 THE HUNTING FIELD 



Epping hunt. This would save the wearer's neck, 

 and also the disfigurement of an otherwise sporting 

 and seemly article of dress. The projections make 

 caps look like barbers' basons. Gentlemen never 

 look well in caps. A cap and a frock coat should 

 always go together. A gentleman in a cutaway coat 

 and a cap looks as absurd as a courtier would in a 

 round hat. 



Leather breeches are stupid things for field servants. 

 If the breeches are good, they are heavy, and require 

 a deal of cleaning to keep them in order, and nothing 

 can be more unsightly than thin, dingy, parchment- 

 looking, ill-kept ones. Hunting servants have plenty 

 to do without cleaning leather breeches. Lord Yar- 

 borough's men, we believe, wear them ; but it is not 

 every Master that has his lordship's purse. His 

 lordship's men are the only ones we ever saw really 

 well turned out in leathers. The Warwickshire men 

 used to wear them in Boxall's time, but they would 

 have looked better in cords. The Atherstone men, 

 in Mr. Applewaite's time, were as well turned out as 

 any men of the day, in neat cords, all the same colour 

 and pattern. 



Servants' dress should be stout, warm, and weather 

 defying. They have many a weary, trashing, cold 

 ride, both of a morning and an evening, that the 

 generality of hound followers know nothing about. 

 If the generality of men find the hounds at the meet 

 at half-past ten or eleven, they neither care to know 

 whence they came, nor whither they go. They look 

 at them, much as people look at a play ; at a certain 

 hour they expect to find the doors open, and " nosey " 

 scraping his fiddle in the orchestra, after which all is 

 looked upon as a mere matter of course ; they are 

 but spectators, free to stay or go as the humour seizes 

 them. The Huntsmen and whips, however, must 

 stay till the close of the entertainment, sometimes 

 longer, unless, indeed, the Huntsman is content to 



