7° The Old Surrey Fox Hounds 



stand, he quickly produced a fly sheet of a letter and 

 pencil from his pocket, and conspicuously posted up the 

 following impromptu : — 



" May rheumatism, ague, cramp, 

 Or any ills produced by damp 

 Attack the brute who stole my gamp ! " 



A contemporary of his writes : " Well did I know 

 Mr. Haycock in the end of the sixties and beginning of 

 the seventies. He used to write under the nom de plume 

 of c Scrutator,' and he wrote more about the Surrey runs, 

 many of which were first-class, than any other man of his 

 time. In those days hunting contributions were supplied 

 gratuitously to papers, and even c Bell's Life,' to my 

 knowledge, had no paid hunting special. The first whom 

 I ever recollect there was poor Fred Field Whitehurst, 

 whose son took so much interest in rowing, and died a 

 little while ago. It was the c Field ' which first stepped 

 out in the direction of specializing the reports about good 

 hunting runs." 



There was, too, as we are informed, always a roguish 

 twinkle in Mr. Hine Haycock's eye if ever he told the 

 story of a celebrated run in November of i860. It was 

 an extraordinarily long one from Long Coppice to Lord 

 Stanhope's Park, and after running by some cucumber 

 frames the fox was actually killed under Lady Mary 

 Stanhope's petticoats. Harbinger, curiously enough, got 

 him out, when Sam Hills, cutting off* his brush, naively 

 observed, " I never knew a fox killed under such favour- 

 able circumstances before." 



