THE HISTORY OF THE BELVOIR HUNT 



the management, now would be the time. I wrote to the 

 present Duke immediately after the funeral. He replied that 

 he would rather I should give him a little time to consider the 

 matter ; at all events, until his return to Belvoir. He also 

 asked me, as a kindness, to continue the management until 

 he had time to look about him, after settling matters of any 

 pressing importance. I at once acceded to his request, but 

 now write to you to know yours and others' views on the 

 matter, and whether or not you are willing to continue your 

 support." ^ 



Thus the golden age passed away, though men did not 

 know it. For though the succession of the sixth Duke to 

 the mastership seemed to promise a glorious time — and had 

 his health been spared no doubt this would have been the 

 case — there never could be again a combination of circum- 

 stances such as raised the Belvoir Hunt to the height of 

 fashion and indirectly affected the whole sport of fox-hunting 

 between the years 1830-55. 



The fifth Duke himself was a remarkable figure, the very 

 type of our English nobleman. Splendid but not vulgarly 

 lavish, friendly and kind but not familiar, he was a good 

 landlord : a man of cultivated tastes, who loved society 

 greatly, and took advantage of his power to have the best. 

 The life of this Duke was singularly fortunate in the period 

 it covered. He had felt the strange sense of promise an 

 opening century brings with it ; and the ward of Pitt, he had 

 detached himself from the Whig principles of his family, and 

 been one of the creators of the present Conservative party. 

 He had seen the Peninsular War, and the long peace closed 

 by the Crimean campaign. But more important still, from 

 the point of view of this book, he had lived through the 

 greatest changes in social life. Can any contrast be imagined 

 greater than those which the Castle he himself built has seen ? 

 There Brummell smiled and bowed, with his hand where his 

 heart ought to have been ; there George IV. smirked and 

 snivelled in the gallery called by his name ; there the elabo- 

 rate manners of the best of the old dandies — of Lord Robert 



* Reeve Papers. 



188 



