PREDECESSORS 225 



Grace. Nevertheless he seemed to enjoy the thing amazingly, 

 and what with leading over occasionally and his groom's 

 assistance, he did very well.' The Duke did not mind falls. 

 He used to relate with evident pleasure how on one occasion 

 he counted eight pairs of shoes flash over him as he lay cast 

 in the landing side ditch. This was in England, but the 

 Duke hunted regularly from Paris after the Peace.' On one 

 occasion he rather annoyed Charles X. by saying when the 

 stag, after ringing about for hours in the forest of Compiegne, 

 took them out into the open, ' Ah ! this is more the thing ; 

 it reminds me of the Vale of Aylesbury.' Judging from my 

 own experiences of les petits environs and the French open, 

 the stag must have picked a very exceptional bit of country. 

 Perhaps it was the unusual look of things which made 

 Charles X. a little nervous and consequently a little short. 

 The Duke was a great supporter and a most generous sub- 

 scriber both to the Vine and the Bramshill hounds. At 

 one time he gave 400?. a year to the former, and on hearing 

 that Sir John's hounds had drawn the Strathfieldsaye coverts 

 blank, he warned all the keepers that a repetition of this 

 would mean their discharge. One day a well-wisher advised 

 him to take up his stirrups a couple of holes. Bad advice, 

 which I hope he did not take, although he appears to have 

 accepted it in good part. But a more striking example of his 

 patience in the hunting field is given in the ' History of the 

 Vyne in Hampshire.' Mr. Chute's hounds were never adver- 

 tised, and one day in March, 1820, the Duke sent his horses to 

 darken Green, as he had been told by the huntsman that 

 the hounds were to meet there that day. They never turned 

 up, and the Duke spent much time in trying to find them ; 



' A great many Englishmen were in Paris at this time. Lord Pembroke 

 astonished Parisian 'society by his fine harness horses and turn-out generally. 

 He asked his groom one day what he did about exercising horses. The man 

 replied that he had been twenty times round Wyndham Place, as he called the 

 Place Vendome. He had evidently made himself thoroughly at home. 



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