2o6 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



Lodge ; a comfortable range of warm-toned red brick, with a 

 high-pitched gable roof, and all sorts of proper and sympa- 

 thetic things about it — wide lawns, spreading trees, a cricket 

 ground, and at the back a very remarkable kitchen garden. 

 The stabling has all the dignity and character of a royal 

 and ancient establishment, and the refined look which only 

 belongs to the older-fashioned stabling of people of quality. 

 They were built by Charles II., like his father, a fine school- 

 horseman, who delighted and surprised the Duke of New- 

 castle by the gay shrewdness of his sayings about horses, and 

 also by the integrity of his equestrian principles. Sarah, 

 Duchess of Marlborough, added to and improved Cumberland 

 Lodge during her rangership of Windsor Great Park, and Sir 

 Jeffry Wyattville carried out some further additions whilst he 

 was playing the very deuce at Windsor. Mercifully, however, 

 he did not think it worth ' Gothicising.' I forget how much 

 stabling there is, but we always had a lot of horses there, 

 twenty-five or thirty, and yet there always seemed to be plenty 

 of room, and plenty of work for more. Most of it is stall 

 stabling, but of the wide, long, generous sort, with old oak 

 divisions and posts. Horses do here just as well as in boxes, 

 and a shy feeder put next a greedy one very soon gets into 

 the spirit of feeding time. The summer boxes are very good, 

 the best I think I ever saw : every two boxes has an open 

 yard the full size of both, and the horses take turns in 

 going out, one all night and the other all day. Given the 

 right sort of land with shade and water, spareish for grass, 

 with a sweet bite here and there, I like turning horses 

 out myself. Here and there an individual horse is better 

 summered in a box ; but most horses gain in every way 

 by the contrast and the freedom of the out-door life. It puts 

 nature into them and makes them more independent and 

 sensible. At Cumberland Lodge we had no grazing land. 

 However, this I think is the only weak point ; and many 



