132 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



Dick could not be seen, nor one more active either in kennel or 

 field. 



However, I am running riot myself, and skirting pretty wide 

 from the Pytchley, so that, had I Dick Burton as a critic, I fear 

 he would have been for " getting round " me in earnest. Well, 

 Kimrod said a writer was nothing if not discursive, and 

 perhaps I shall be excused if I follow his example. To return to 

 Osbaldeston and the Pytchley, he, like Mr. Musters, was fond of 

 all kind of sport, his overweening vanity leading him to think 

 he could beat all men at all kinds of things ; and that same vanity, 

 unless I am mistaken, lost him a fortune. From what has been 

 handed down to us, I should say that Mr. Musters excelled more 

 in the field than the kennel, and Osbaldeston more in the kennel 

 than the field. He was, however, most zealous and energetic 

 in his endeavours to show sport. In 1834, Mr. Osbaldeston 

 resigned the Pytchley, which must have been the last country 

 that he ever hunted, and Mr. Walter Wilkins, Member for 

 Eadnorshire, took them, with Jack Stevens as huntsman, which 

 arrangement lasted three seasons. Mr. George Payne, acting as 

 his own huntsman, then had them one season; afterwards came 

 Lord Chesterfield, who lived at Abington Hall, and did the 

 thing here as he did everywhere else. He bought not only 

 Mr. Payne's hounds, but also those of Mr. Errington, who was 

 giving up the Quorn, and Will Derry, who had whipped in to 

 Mr. Musters, was installed as huntsman. His lordship went well, 

 and once set the lot over the Loatland brook on Marmion. There 

 were good men and true going then, and Nelly Holmes had just 

 begun to show them what a habit could do in the hunting-field 

 Jem Mason, also, was perfecting that riding which, a few years 

 laterj was to astonish the world on Lottery, by an annual visit 

 to iBrixworth. Lord Chesterfield did not stay long in North- 

 amptonshire, and was succeeded by a man of a different kind 

 altogether — " Tlie other Tom Smith," as he was called, to distin- 

 guish him from Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith, both of them being 

 Hampshire men, and both celebrated huntsmen at that time. 



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