102 



STAG-HUXTING RECOLLECTIONS 



horses. Guy Fawkes,' a great celebrity of my time, was 

 usually a little bit tricky at first— what a hansom-cab driver 

 means when ho tells you that his liorse is ' nappy." From the 

 cabby it is all but a coniiucndation, and the nappy ones are 

 nearly always stout ones. The racehorse Lanercost, it was 

 said, would make a race with a donkey, and I call to mind 

 several good deer who had a little of the Lanercost indolence 

 about them. 1 have had before me an old hunting diary of 

 Freeman's, who was whip to the Queen's Hounds in the 

 forties and fifties : invariably good runs for several years 

 stand to the credit of a deer named Sulky. Sometimes the 

 names of the Swinley deer had and have no connection with 

 anything in particular ; but in this case, I imagine, a deer 

 would hardly have been given such an ugly and undeerhke 

 name, unless it was in some way or other appropriate. 



I have heard it said that hunting the carted deer, if 

 not a science, requires a system. I cannot quite agree. 

 Yovl never know what deer are going to do. They will run 

 up and down the fences, stand in the corner of a field look- 

 ing at you, trot back down a road into the pack instead of 

 galloping away from it, and altogether behave in a most 

 un-Landseer-like way. They oblige you often to trust to 

 luck or to the inspiration of the psychological moment as 

 it arises. Either of these plays the deuce with a system. 

 Sometimes, if the deer is disporting himself in the road, 

 it is best to let the pack go right up to him and let him 

 canter along in the middle of them under the safe escort 

 of the whips until he jumps out. Then stop hounds till 

 he has got his start. This looks bad, especially if the hunts- 

 man is at all excitable and fond of blowing his horn. The 

 master in such an emergency should, if he can persuade his 



' Mr. Gladstone took an interest in Guj Fawkes. Only the other day he 

 asked me after his welfare and recent performances. Alas ! muliis ille bonis 

 flebilis occidit. 



