98 THE SOUTH DEVON HUNT 



what scanty, I do not think there has been any 

 exaggeration in regard to him. For all through the 

 years — and I began to hunt only two or three years 

 after he retired — I cannot remember ever hearing an 

 unfavourable criticism of him. Colonel Anstruther 

 Thomson had a good word for him in his speech 

 at the Dartmoor Hunt Dinner at Ivybridge in 1872. ^ 

 Men of sound judgment who still remember him are 

 unanimous in his praise. 



Mr. Albert Gould, now of Pinhoe, who has seen 

 sport with many packs and who hunted much with 

 Westlake, tells me that he always thought him the 

 best huntsman he ever had the pleasure of hunting 

 with. Mr. Gould draws a touching picture of the old 

 man — by the way, no one seems to have known Mr. 

 Westlake as a young man — arriving at the covert- 

 side with his hunting-crop slung over one shoulder 

 and a soft shoe on one foot, and of his throwing his 

 hounds into cover and then resting the gouty foot on 

 the top bar of the gate while he listened intently for 

 the first challenge. He wanted no holloa to verify a 

 find for he knew every tongue in the pack ; and 

 when you heard his " Go hoick ! " which he pro- 

 nounced " Go hi ! " you could depend that it was 

 right. He was a martyr to the gout at times, and 

 Mr. George Hext tells how he would then, if anyone 

 rode too close to him, utter his crescendo " Mind my 

 leg, sir. Mind my leg, sir ! Mind my leg, sir ! " 



He was much annoyed on one occasion, the very 

 last that he hunted the country, because Mr. Gould 

 and George Loram purposely let go from the drain in 

 Well Covert a fox which had given a good run and 

 which Westlake wanted to kill. But he was pacified 

 when, at the end of another twenty minutes, the pack 



^ Col. Anstruther Thomson, op. cit,, Vol. II, p. 81. 



