THE GOOD DUKE 



it.' This is all very well, thought I, but it is not every heart 

 that will leap so high, even when its owner gives the word. 

 ' A man cannot add a cubit to his stature.' " ^ 



Of the hounds he says : " I found them — as I expected to 

 find them — very clean in their skins ; but I was more par- 

 ticularly struck with the fine length of their frames, and the 

 strongly marked and uniform character of the pack. All 

 this, however, is to be accounted for. For one mile that 

 these hounds travel, Mr. Osbaldeston's travel six ; and the 

 Duke generally breeds from thirty to forty couples of whelps 

 every year, so that if twenty couples of them stand, he can 

 always pick and choose." ^ 



And of the huntsman and "whip" : " I liked Goosey's (the 

 huntsman) manner with his hounds very much indeed, par- 

 ticularly his getting them away from covert. The Rufus- 

 headed whipper also took my fancy — not for his likeness to 

 the Belvidere Apollo, but for a something about him that 

 looked very much like a hard-riding whipper-in to a good 

 pack of fox-hounds, and he seemed to know his business 

 well. The Duke's hounds hunt only four days a week."^ 



The same writer notes that when he met the hounds at 

 Croxton Park there were nine hundred people out. So that 

 Leicestershire crowds are by no means an innovation of our 

 own times. As a matter of fact, Leicestershire has always 

 had a big crowd, an alien crowd, and a crowd in a hurry, and 

 the style of hunting there has been modified by the necessi- 

 ties of keeping hounds clear of the field. The liking for 

 blood horses either, is not a fashion peculiar to our time, for 

 some sixty or seventy years ago Nimrod says : " No sooner 

 is a thorough-bred hunter seen in Leicestershire than he is 

 sold, if his owner is disposed to part with him. I rode Sham- 

 rock at Stowe wood, and the following morning he became 

 the property of Mr. Middleton Biddulph — at a premium, of 

 course, as they say on 'Change."^ 



This horse was an ex-racer, and, contrary to the usual rule 

 in such cases, was also a capital hack, and Mr. Apperley made 



^ Nimrod's Hunting Tour. p. 229, ed. 1835. ^ Ibid.^ p. 228. 



^ Ibid.^ p. 229. ■* Ibid., p. 506. 



131 



