114 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



beck, who is said to have been married, to have 

 dropped in with the hounds afterwards near Stubton, 

 got a good ducking in the Brant, and started for 

 India all in one day. Nimrod describes the Stubton 

 country thus : "I think I never did see one so 

 strongly fenced. If I could have made use of the 

 pencil, I would have brought away a sketch of one 

 of them. It was a blackthorn hedge about eight 

 inches higher than the top of my hat as I stood on 

 the ground, with growers in it as thick as a man's 

 thigh plashed at the top, and with a wide ditch on 

 one side. On remarking to Mr. Robert Grosvenor 

 that it was a stiff country, he observed that it was 

 so to be sure, but, added he, a man has nothing to 

 do but to throw his heart over and follow it. ' This 

 is all very well,' thought I (and my readers will prob- 

 ably agree), ' but it is not every heart that will leap 

 so high even when its owner gives the word.' " * 



But not always did even the hard riding field throw 

 their hearts over, for Will Goodall, the famous Belvoir 

 huntsman, in a letter to Sir Thomas Whichcote, says : 

 " It's really wonderful to see a body of old fox- 

 hunters when hounds start off with their heads up 

 and sterns down telling them over the very first 

 field that there's no time to lose, to see them follow- 

 ing one another over a weak place to avoid a rasper 

 and thereby losing that portion of precious time 

 which has gone for ever, thus verifying the old pro- 

 verb that ' time and fox-hounds wait for no man.' " f 

 This is a true enough picture, only it is a testimony 

 to the hard riding of the Belvoir field that Goodall 

 should have found such action wonderful. It is 

 certain that in past days more people journeyed to 



* Nimrod's " Hunting Tours," p. 219. 

 I " History of Belvoir Hunt," p. 193. 



