CHARLES DAVIS 67 



are now, with the good-natured but irresponsible foot people ; 

 with the deer which runs up and down the first fence, or 

 prefers the haunts of men to the shaggiest heath or fairest 

 champaign ; with the gentlemen who ride the deer, override 

 the hounds, or ride over other gentlemen. But I feel that 

 Davis was able to invest all these things with a decorum 

 as majestic as his neckcloths. Thus when we read of his 

 Ijang in a Vale of Aylesbury ditch, after a run which for 

 pace beggars description, with his arm round Kichmond 

 Trump's neck — a position full of restless discomfort to both 

 parties — there is something chivalrous and romantic about 

 it all which redounds to the credit both of Davis and the 

 gallant Trump. Pictorially, it is all but a subject for Sir 

 Edward Burne-Jones rather than for Caldecott or Leech. 

 And the present Duke of Eichmond tells me that he once 

 saw him direct the operations of a whipper-in in a punt— a 

 trjdng test — without the slightest sacrifice of dignity, 



Mr. Bowen May, who began his stag-hunting under Lord 

 Maryborough, and who still notes with an observant eye all 

 that concerns his favourite pursuit, tells me that he once 

 asked Davis about the pace of a pack of hounds. Davis, who 

 had strong convictions as to the excellence of his own hounds, 

 replied in a letter that the Queen's Hounds were the fastest 

 pack in his opinion, and that nine miles in the hour was 

 about their best pace. But this pace was far exceeded by 

 Eichmond Trump's day.^ It was all over grass, and Davis 

 only weighed about ten stone, and had it all to himself on 

 the Clipper, an animal up to sixteen stone. When Mr. Davis 

 lay in the ditch with one arm round Eichmond Trump's neck, 

 as already related, he pulled out his watch with his free 



' I have found the entry in his diary, March 13, 1832 : ' Eichmond Trump 

 at LilUe's, ran one hour, took at Twvford between Bicester and Buckingham — 

 ran twenty miles in one hour.' In his horse-book I find that the Clipper was 

 bought in the Christmas quarter of 1831 of Mr. Anderson for 120 guineas ; he 

 was sold again at Tattersall's in the summer quarter of 183-4 for 24Z. 18s. M. 



