THE HISTORY OF THE BEL VOIR HUNT 



place, with a salary — wages we cannot call it — of ;^300 a 

 year, and a man to wait on him. It is stated that his next 

 place was worth even more to him, and Dick Christian says 

 of him that he was quite " a high man " when at Belvoir, and 

 that he used to canter to the meet on his hack, while Thomas 

 Goosey brought on the hounds. Nimrod, who wrote down 

 everything that happened with a freedom that would not 

 have done discredit to the correspondent of a modern society 

 journal, tells an anecdote of Shaw, which seems to suggest 

 that his manners had not always been of that polished form 

 for which he was later distinguished. 



" Before that celebrated huntsman, Mr. Shaw, went to live 

 with Sir Thomas Mostyn, and not long after he had left the 

 Earl of Moira, he heard that a Mr. Adderley (not knowing 

 anything about him) was in want of a huntsman for his fox- 

 hounds. Shaw was hired by proxy for the purpose, and 

 arrived at his house on a Sunday evening. At nine o'clock 

 the bell rang for prayers. Shaw went into chapel, and 

 behaved with great propriety ; but the next morning he was 

 nowhere to be found. Now, whether it was that there was 

 no allowance for praying in his wages, or whether, as is the 

 case with many, Shaw might have been of opinion that 

 ' prayers are but words, and words but wind,' I will not take 

 upon myself to determine ; but so it was — he had packed up 

 his saddle-bags and returned to the place from which he 

 came. Mr. Adderley himself related this anecdote to me, 

 humorously adding that, although he supposed he had lost 

 a very first-rate huntsman, yet he was not at all surprised at 

 his sudden departure, as he had lived long enough with my 

 Lord Moira to know how to take French leave" ^ 



Both Mr. Apperley and Dick Christian admired Shaw 

 greatly, but both, it must be remembered, were men who 

 looked on hunting from the rider's rather than from the 

 hunting man's point of view. A characteristic of Shaw as 

 a huntsman was his cheery manner with his hounds, for in 

 covert he was always speaking to them and outside he was 



Nimrod's Hunting Tours, p. 216. 



86 



