"PAT" CURREY 63 



spite of all this he should have made time to hunt, shows of itself 

 what a true sportsman he was : and he has earned the gratitude of 

 every beagler in that he gave of his hard-won hunting time to 

 showing sport to undergraduates. It is of course true that for Dons 

 as for undergraduates beagling has this advantage over fox-hunting, 

 that it does not monopolise a whole day. But a Don can manipulate 

 his time so as to get a day a week free, and on that day to hunt, so 

 that this in no way detracts from our debt. 



The memory of Muggeridge, the " henchman," is also valuable. 

 He also is dead, and we have few records of him except one letter, 

 re the carrying on of the pack wlien Currey gave up, which is repro- 

 duced later. It shows something of the intimacy and affection wdiich 

 can exist between Dons and undergraduates who are alike sportsmen 

 and have the same home tradition. Among such, difference of age 

 counts for little. The relationship was of course made easier by two 

 facts — one fundamental, the other accidental. The one is, that no- 

 where can I find auy trace of our annals having been soiled with the 

 doings of the low-caste "sporting man." The other is, that the 

 Fellow-Commoner still survived. He was the University equivalent 

 of the parlour-ljoarder of the private schools of Thackeray's time, 

 who paid double for everything, and dined at High Table. We 

 may laugh at the arrangement now as a sort of snobbish molly- 

 coddling, but the position must certainly have helped to bridge 

 the chasm between seniors and juniors. These fine gentlemen, teste 

 Lord Ernest St. Maur, used to come out with the Beagles, but not 

 regularly. 



I append here Lord Ernest St. Maur's recollections of the sport of 

 the period. Old runs are recorded, but the record of each is of com- 

 mendable brevity, and in bulk they give a good picture of the 

 average sport of that day, which differs very little from sport now 

 except that in those days there were fewer meets, and those, with 

 few exceptions, within walking distance of Cambridge. Also the 

 unwritten law that beagles must be hunted afoot was not then 

 observed. It must be remembered that beagling as we know it — 

 that is, as an organised su])scription sport — is of recent development ; 

 in the earlier days it was as private and personal as shooting. 



