The Sport of Our Ancestors 



so odious or so vulgar as the exclusiveness which is avowedly 

 based upon nothing except a cash consideration. The 

 practice of capping may possibly be defended on grounds 

 of convenience or utility. But the spectacle of gentlemen 

 dropping half-crowns into a hat looks more like the 

 preliminaries to a sweepstake on board a liner than the 

 beginning of a day's hunting. The thing is sordid and 

 out of the picture, besides being a great nuisance. Part 

 of the delight of Fox-hunting is to steep the senses in 

 forgetfulness of everything to do with finance. Nobody 

 understood all this better than Mr. Bromley-Davenport. 

 He was never tired of pointing out the equality between 

 all the classes that exists in the hunting-field, and has rightly 

 diagnosed this equality as being the principal guarantee 

 for the continuance of the Sport of our Ancestors. But once 

 the Fox had broken covert, and the Hounds had settled to him, 

 he himself had very few if any equals in the knack of going 

 the shortest way. The rest of the field he speaks of as 

 ' the blundering mass ' from whom in his dream he extri- 

 cates himself by jumping in and out of the turnpike road ; 

 and although no class privilege hindered any one from 

 being first over the fences, his own dash and dexterity 

 secured to the author the position of leader. He is not 

 ashamed to exult in his pride of place, and to admit the 

 satisfaction of cutting down all his friends save the three 

 who got over the Whissendine without a fall. Equality is 

 now at a discount : it disappears, as always, in the presence 

 of individual character and skill. 

 90 



