THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 57 



v/as at Castleside, and soon after the hounds were given up 

 he left the district and was supposed to have gone back to 

 Newcastle from which place he originally came. Some years 

 ago an effort to trace him was made, but no trustworthy 

 information v/as forthcoming, but it is almost certain that 

 he had no further engagement in connection with hunting. 

 Anyhow, he used many of the sayings which are put into 

 Pigg's mouth by Surtees, and it will be remembered that 

 when he (Pigg) makes his first appearance in the novel, 

 Handley Cross, he speaks of having hunted with " Tynedale 

 and D'orm (Durham) and Horworth and all." It is said 

 that when Kirk lived at Castleside, which is within a mile of 

 the Durham border he got a great deal of hunting with the 

 Durham County — that he would be riding a farmer's three- 

 year-old one day, a cart-horse the next, and an old pony on 

 the third, and that, when he could not raise a horse, he hunted 

 all day on foot, and was, as Surtees wrote of Romford, " a 

 capital hand across country, whether on foot or on horseback." 

 While I am on the subject of Surtees I may allude to 

 some recent correspondence which has lately appeared con- 

 cerning him in a weekly contemporary. The question of the 

 whereabouts of Handley Cross Spa has been discussed, and 

 Leamington, Cheltenham, and other places have been men- 

 tioned, and more especially Croft. Probably the real fact 

 is that the author indulged in a combination just as he used 

 half a dozen people to make up one ol his characters; but of 

 one thing I am almost sure, and that is that he never disclosed 

 his originals, either of men or places. He was latterly a some- 

 what silent man, and at no time was he what he would have 

 called a " babbler." His conversation al powers were chiefly 

 reserved for paper, and I remember, when quite a youngster 

 (about five years old), how he took me on to his knee at a 

 hunt breakfast, but said nothing, and there I sat, not liking 

 to move, but wanting to go to the hounds outside. And 

 apropos the Croft theory, one of the recent letters was from 

 Charles Fox, who was huntsman to the Blackmore Vale from 

 1890 to 1897, and who says that, when he was whipping- 

 in to the Hurworth, some years before, Mr. Surtees used to 

 come there not to hunt but to fish in the Tees. V/ith all 

 due deference, I think this story is probably v/rong. In the 



