40 THE TKINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



hunting as we know it, and the point in its development at which 

 beagling sprang into being ? Or where ? What say you to motive ? 

 " I was always keen on hunting something," writes a beagler, J. S. 

 Carr-Ellison, who was Master of " T.F.B." in the eighties, and after- 

 wards for a time amateur Whip to a pack of North Country foxhounds. 

 The same was true of myself ; I am a hereditary Barbarian. My 

 earliest memories are of my father in a red coat. I still recollect him 

 coming in pink to see me at a Cheltenham dame school while he was 

 getting a day or two with the Cotswolds, and the smell of his cigar. 

 Then came my own pony, on which I rode with him to the meet, and 

 was afterwards chaperoned by his groom on covert hack for such 

 sight of the fun as was compatible with getting home in time for 

 nursery dinner. Then came " bad times," when there were no horses 

 or ponies, and I and some schoolboy neighbours used to follow the 

 hounds, North or South Herefordshire, on foot. Sometimes we 

 trained to the meet, but as often walked, and always came home 

 afoot, sometimes as much as ten miles. I did not see as much of the 

 sport as I should, for I am very near-sighted, and in those days the 

 fact was not discovered, so that I had no glasses, and all was a 

 blur; but still I was keen, and the taste for hunting was never 

 crowded out. Then good days came again, and I rode a horse and 

 was also given a single-barrel gun ; and, having proper glasses, could 

 see what I was doing. Then followed Cambridge days. Here I 

 knew no way of getting sport of any kind, so having always loved 

 and been used to boats of all kinds I took to rowing, consoling 

 myself with an occasional afternoon's hacking, and once with a 

 day's rook shooting. For the latter I forgathered with two home 

 friends, George Atlay (St. John's) and E. Harington (Clare). I 

 had, I remember, a great tussle with my boat captain ^ to get free to 

 go, and only did so on condition of getting back to go out in the 

 eight late in the afternoon. So Atlay and Harington went forward 

 in a trap with rifles, cartridges, luncheon, etc., and I followed after 

 on "jolly Jack nag," who was, by the way, the most ill-conditioned 

 screw I have ever ridden. Yet, brute as he was, I made him go to a 



1 A strict Pliilistine. I remember him objecting to a man as an improrer person to 

 liold authority in the Gains Boat Club on the ground that lie kept a dog-cart ! ! ! 



