48 THE QUORN HUNT 



a half in front of the hounds." According to all accounts 

 Mr. Childe, of Kinlet, first set the example of hard 

 riding in Leicestershire, 1 one of his favourite mounts 

 being either a pure or half-bred arab ; and Mr. Meynell 

 declared that after Cecil Forester and Lord Jersey 

 followed Mr. Childe's example of going at a " splitter- 

 cockation pace " he never had a moment's peace. When 

 describing- what went on in the hunting-field he used to 

 say, " First out of covert comes Cecil Forester, then 

 the fox, and lastly my hounds." Mr. Meynell's fol- 

 lowers, too, appear to have gone the pace, for a writer 

 of the last century (1797) declared that the Quorndon 

 Hunt with its mad collaterals had ruined a great many, 

 and by the general extravagance had nearly compassed 

 its own destruction. 



To hark back for a moment to Quorndon Hall, there 

 are two old books, " Sketch of a Tourist into Derbyshire 

 and Yorkshire," by William Bray, published in 1783, 

 and " Select Views in Leicestershire," by J. Throsby 

 (1789). Both these publications state in effect that Mr. 

 Meynell, at one period, turned Quorndon Hall into a 

 sort of private hotel. Mr. Bray says : — 



The hounds are kept by subscription ; but that gentleman 

 (Mr. Meynell) permits his servant to accommodate as many of 

 his friends as his house will hold with apartments, where they are 

 furnished with dinner and all provisions as at any public place. 

 Many of those who attend the hunt and cannot get apartments in 

 the house, and ai-e strangers, come to the inns, and a great many 

 hunters are kept here. The company on a field day is very 

 numerous, and they go out with as much ceremony as to court, 

 their hair being always dressed. 



1 Mr. Childe may have introduced hard riding into Leicestershire ; but 

 long before Mr. Meynell had the Quorn country people rode hard else- 

 where, as we have an account of the Duke of Devonshire riding down 

 Leven Down, in Sussex, with the Charlton Hunt, and leaping a five-barred 

 eate when he reached the foot of the hill. 



