LADIES IN THE SHIRES 277 



stiff country, a large porportion of habits will be in 

 the front rank. It is usual to say that women cannot 

 take their own line over a country. Of the majority 

 this is doubtless true, but, so far as I can see, it is 

 equally true of the majority of men. But there are 

 some ladies who ride with the fashionable packs, whose 

 names are well known to aU who hunt in the Shires, 

 who can and do take their own line with all the judg- 

 ment and more than the coolness and tact of any 

 man. It was an experienced man who once said that 

 one reason why women ride so well to hounds is 

 because they pay more attention than men to what 

 is going on. Women have a greater capacity for 

 taking pains than men have, especially in the small 

 matters on which so much success in all matters of 

 sport depends. But let us turn back for a moment 

 to the past and trace the coming of ladies to share 

 the sport of hunting and see what their influence has 

 been and is on its fortunes. In the first half of the 

 last century the ladies who hunted were few. As I 

 have elsewhere pointed out, it was difficult, if not 

 impossible, for them to foUow hounds with any degree 

 of comfort and safety on the old-fashioned saddle. 

 The wonder is not that there were so many, but that 

 there were any at all. Yet here and there in the old 

 writers we find allusions to ladies who hunted and 

 took a forward place. There were, for example, Lady 

 Cleveland and Lady Augusta Milbanke, who must 

 have made a brave show in their scarlet habits. They 

 hunted three times a fortnight and had been used to 

 hunting from the time when they were children, but 

 the general opinion of the day is reflected in Nimrod's 

 remark, " Yet it would be difficult to produce two 

 more amiable or accomplished persons." Then in 1841 

 came Miss Nellie Holmes, " Topping the fences like a 



