9 o THE SPORT OF KINGS 



whether the members of the Berkeley Hunt wear 

 the orange tawny as evening dress, but if they do 

 it will certainly have rather a peculiar effect, as 

 would the mustard - coloured coat and scarlet 

 collars and cuffs (or was it vice versa) of a now 

 defunct hunt had they ever been donned as 

 evening wear. 



After all, I am inclined to think that this 

 matter of dress uniforms may be overdone, but it 

 is perhaps a sort of protest against the sombreness 

 of our nineteenth-century evening attire. For 

 instance, if a golf club, why may not a cricket 

 club or a football club, or even a chess club, have 

 its dress uniform ? It is only a matter of taste, 

 but fortunately so far we have been spared the 

 infliction. 



The scarlet dress coat of the hunting man has 

 been so long in evidence that people had got used 

 to it, and it may be at once admitted that there is 

 nothing so becoming to the hunting man in an 

 evening, it being far before any of the elaborate 

 combinations of colours to a few of which I have 

 alluded. Different coloured collars or facings, of 

 course, are desirable in some cases to identify the 

 hunts to which the wearers belong, but a plain 

 scarlet looks the best in the end. What was the 

 origin of hunting men wearing scarlet evening dress 

 unless it was a survival of those days when hunting 

 men dined as they had hunted, in all the glory 

 of the war-paint, I am unable to say, but it has 

 been a long-established custom, and as such it is 

 entitled to respect. 



Still, the evening hunt uniform has its abuses, 

 and it is for that reason, perhaps, that many 

 hunting men fight shy of wearing it. One or two 



