44 NOTITIA VENATICA. 



hunted Leicestershire, kept his hounds, Mr. Warde twice suffered in his 

 kennel from the ravages of canine madness — at one time, losing his whole 

 pack ; and at another, all excepting a few couples. Mr. Warde's greatest 

 failing in breeding hounds, was his extreme prejudice in favour of his 

 own sort ; to which might he attributed the increased slackness of the 

 pack, although unrivalled in form in his later days. He was remai-kably 

 convivial and facetious ; and although his well-timed jokes and anecdotes 

 continually kept " the table in a roar," he w^as as much at home and 

 refined in the more elegant society of the drawing-room, as he was when 

 entertaining with his inexhaustible fund of wit a circle of sporting far- 

 mers by the cover side. No man was better calculated than Mr. Warde 

 to add a lustre to each grade of society in which it was his lot at times 

 to be placed, various and different as it was ; and equally was he in his 

 place, whether you take him as a bidden guest, as was occasionally the 

 ease in his early life, at the refined table of George the Fourth, when 

 Prince of Wales, or merely as the chairman of a Pytchley Hunt dinner. 

 He Avas a great patron of the road, and amongst the dragsmcn of the old 

 school was considered a first-rate performer in his way, always driving 

 his own four horses on a journey, let the distance be ever so great. He 

 was one of the original members of the B. D. C. (or Benson Driving 

 Club) ; and amongst the numerous feats of his more active days may be 

 enumerated his driving one of the long coaches from London to Oxford 

 in a match against time, which he won. Mr. Warde was a great agri- 

 culturist ; and at one time, when the butchers of his neighbourhood, in 

 Kent, combined unfairly to keep up the price of meat, he opened a re- 

 gidar butcher's shop of his own, and by a spirited perseverance in under- 

 selling the trade, not only brought the butchers to their senses, but re- 

 duced the price of meat to its pro])er standard, making for himself, as 

 he afterwards declared, a good and remunerating profit by the trans- 

 action. During the summer, when his pack was at what he considered 

 their highest perfection, Mr, Warde had an annual hound show at 

 Squerries, to which place were invited many of the first judges amongst 

 the masters of hounds of that day, who were not contented by merely 

 inspecting the pack in kennel, but had many of the best hounds brought 

 by the huntsman singly into the room after dinner, where they once 

 more went through the ordeal of the scrutinizing judgment of his guests, 

 and where their individual merits were again pointed out by the enthu- 

 siastic owner of the pack. Mr. Warde's immense and increasing weight, 

 during the latter part of his career, led him to bo the purchaser of a 

 description of horse which from its pace was by many sportsmen consi- 

 dered but ill-calculated to carry a man to a pack of foxhounds in any 

 country ; and I remember, nearly twenty years ago, Avhen I M'as stay- 

 ing at Hungerford for the purpose of hunting with his hounds, that he 

 purchased a bay horse to carry himself, with no other character than 

 that he could draw a load of wheat round the market-place in a quicker 

 time than could be accomplished by any other horse in that neighbour- 

 hood. 



By the deatli of ,Tohn Warde, society was deprived of one of the 

 finest s])ecimen,s of the true English gentleman and sportsman that was 



