THE NEW SCHOOL 49 



circiiinstantially about this ' unfortunate gentleman's ' fate, 

 and hcnv from that time on, two yeomen prickers with pistols 

 always accompanied George III.'s carriage back to Windsor. 

 But as he gives no colour to this being a personal remi- 

 niscence, I must reject with regret a legend which it would 

 have pleased me to preserve. 



The arrival of the Goodwood Hounds at Ascot started a 

 new period in stag-hunting. From this time stag-hunting 

 of the present day may be said to date. The old order 

 changed in many ways. Up till the end of the century the 

 Royal yeomen prickers all carried French horns, which we 

 ma}^ be sure they wound pretty frequently, and a great 

 musicianing went on when the deer was first uncarted, 

 ' an awfully impressive prelude,' says our chronicler. ' We 

 comfort our hounds with loud and couragious cryes and 

 noises both of voyce and hound,' writes a stag-hunter of 300 

 years ago. Even now stag-hunting is apt to be rather a 

 noisy proceeding. Lord Chesterfield presented Frederick, 

 Prince of Wales with a black boy named Cato,^ who in- 

 structed the gentlemen of his household in blowing the 

 French horn and the various calls and signals of musical 

 venery. Africans were as honourably associated with the 

 horn in those days as the French with cooking in ours. 

 The celebrated ' Hellgate ' Lord Barrymore kept four 

 Africans in scarlet and silver on the staff of his Louis XV. 

 hunting retinue ; and I have a little picture at home of 

 a fashionable early eighteenth-century concerto, with two 

 Africans in the background making the utmost of their 

 opportunities. 



A sustained chorus of horns and vociferous hounds 

 greeted the arrival of his Majesty at the meet, sped the 



' Cato was the great maestro of his day. Sir Walter Gilbey has a picture 

 by Wootton in which Cato in a turban and aigrette aj^pears with liis horn. 

 Vide Hore, Hist, of the Royal Biickhmtnds, p. 322. 



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