FAMOUS MASTERS 65 



In 1806 Tom Smith succeeded Lord Foley as Master 

 of the Quorn, over which he reigned until i8i6. He 

 was only thirty years of age, and it was feared that he 

 had undertaken a task beyond his powers. He had 

 earned the reputation of being the best man to hounds 

 in England, but seeds of dissension had been sown in 

 the Quorn country, and there were signs of ill-feeling 

 between the tenant farmers and the foreign hunting- 

 men. Mr. Hugo Meynell, during his long Mastership, 

 had made the Quorn country the most popular in 

 England ; but the farmers resented the foreign invasion. 

 Could Tom Smith dispel the ill-feeling ? He not only 

 could, but did do so, in spite of what his detractors call 

 his irritability and his inability to brook contradiction. 

 Curiously, it was this irritability which often led him 

 into those pugilistic encounters which endeared him to 

 the Leicestershire graziers. Then his social position 

 was such as to command the respect of the large covert- 

 owners. Moreover, he was the heir of a Hampshire 

 country squire with an unlimited balance at his bankers, 

 and was prepared to hunt the country without any sub- 

 scription. Still, there can be no doubt that he was apt 

 to be hasty in his temper towards men. On one occa- 

 sion he was asked why, in spite of his hasty temper, he 

 never allowed himself to be provoked by a horse or a 

 hound. The reply was characteristic of the man. 

 " They are brutes and know no better, but men do." 

 During his Mastership of the Quorn he was chiefly 

 celebrated for the bulldog tenacity with which he 

 would stick to hounds. His ambition was to see the 

 fox run into and to see hounds work, and to satisfy this 



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