KENNELS AND STABLES 209 



where on intelligence, or the chance of the hounds coming 

 home that way. This saves the Cumherland Lodge stud 

 many a mile, and gets them into their own quarters a good 

 two hours earlier. But given the alliance of the hacks, 

 mounting the establishment is a serious matter. To get on 

 comfortably with the Queen's Hounds and the tireless Swinley 

 deer, you really want two sets of horses, one for the Bucks 

 side and one for the Berks. The furthest meet from Cumber- 

 land Lodge in the Friday county is Loddon Bridge, thirteen 

 or fourteen miles ; and most of the best Friday meets are 

 within ten miles, but the Chalfonts, Holtspur Heath, 

 Beaconsfield, all run into fourteen to twenty-five miles. 



' I have been stag-hunting for between thirty and forty 

 years, and I have come to the conclusion that the demand 

 on the stud in the Royal Hunt is greater than that upon 

 the stable of a master of foxhounds.' So writes Sir Henry 

 Simpson, the widely known and respected Windsor veterinary 

 surgeon, and he goes on to say, speaking from professional 

 experience of the Cumberland Lodge stud, ' No one in my 

 time can say the horses have been overworked, which must 

 have been the case if the Master for the time being had 

 attempted to horse the hunt in the same ratio as would 

 amply suffice for a fox-hunting establishment.' As I have 

 said elsewhere, you want a very well bred one for the far side ; 

 even thoroughbred is not too good to stand the long hours, 

 the hills, and the ever-lengthening miles home which a good 

 run means. To my mind it is an economy to have two horses 

 out for all the men, and I usually had an extra horse out in 

 case of a casualty — this with two for myself meant nine out 

 daily, and five-and-twenty miles home was quite an every- 

 day occurrence. Unfortunately, too, in stag-hunting the 

 second horses do not always mean any very great saving to 

 the first horses ; often and often we could not get them at 

 the right moment to make a difference and in any case the 



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