PERILS AND PENALTIES 175 



and after that he was able to hunt the hounds almost as 

 well as ever. On his famous horse Peverott few could 

 equal Joe at jumping. Once, when he had slipped all the 

 rest of the field, finding that one persistent rider was 

 catching him, he dashed up a lane, and cleared five big 

 gates in close succession. After which Lord Delamere 

 offered to back Joe and Peverott for looo guineas 

 against any man and horse in England to negotiate the 

 stiffest part of the Cheshire country ; but the challenge was 

 never accepted. 



Most fox-hunters have been long-lived, and many have 

 attained patriarchal age : preserving their vigour, too, 

 in a marvellous manner. John Warde, "the father of 

 fox-hunting," hunted the Craven when he was seventy- 

 six. Thomas Assheton Smith rode hard to hounds till 

 he was past eighty, and only a few months before he 

 completed his eightieth year had three heavy falls in one 

 day when out with the Tedworth, yet seemed as little 

 shaken as if he had been a hard-riding undergraduate from 

 Oxford or Cambridge. The then Lord Wilton rode 

 straight and well long after he had passed the Psalmist's 

 span. " The other Tom Smith," of Hambledon, could hold 

 his own with the best, and take bad falls with nonchalance, 

 when he was nearer eighty than seventy. Colonel An- 

 struther Thomson rode to hounds when an octogenarian. 

 My old friend Colonel Bethune hunted three days a week 

 when he was eighty. But even these vigorous veterans 

 were not equal to "Jack" Russell, of Devon, who led the 

 field in a fine run with the Devon and Somerset Stag- 

 hounds when he was within three months of his eighty- 

 sixth birthday ! 



As to those dangers of the hunting-field to which I have 

 referred, it is comforting to the fox-hunter to reflect that 

 there are more perils lurking in the streets of London than 

 in the worst hunting-country in the three kingdoms. 

 Anthony Trollope used to calculate that there were more 

 fatal accidents in the streets of London in a year than 

 there were in the hunting-field in a century. He declared 

 that he always felt safer when riding to hounds than when 

 crossing the Strand or Regent Street. And if ever there 



