SIR RICHARD SUTTON 223 



and many fewer than there were in Sir Harry Good- 

 ricke's day, when he himself headed the list with 

 upwards of half a hundred, and Lord Forester owned 

 thirty-eight. 



For many years previous to Sir Richard Sutton 

 taking the Quorn, the first Sunday in November was 

 always a noted date for arrivals at Melton. On that day 

 the first dinner of the season was held at the Old Club, 

 and the older members of the Ouorn Hunt made it a 

 point of conscience to be present. 



The rumbling of wheels and the measured trot of 

 post-horses along the Melton streets had been aforetime 

 a sign of the times ; but in Sir Richard Sutton's day the 

 train did duty instead, and so the excitement of awaiting 

 fresh arrivals was necessarily discounted. 



Some lines in connection with "the four Ms" have 

 already been quoted, and of Sir James Musgrave it is 

 related that he once came to grief over a fence, and 

 broke his collar-bone. Finding himself unable to ride 

 any of his tolerably numerous steeds, he, like the good 

 sportsman he was, wrote to a friend in London to come 

 down to ride his horses while he was on the shelf; and the 

 friend promptly responded, only too glad to shake from 

 his feet the smut and dust of the metropolis. He arrived, 

 provided with an equipment fitting him to take the field 

 with such a fashionable pack as the Ouorn, and one 

 morning started for the covert-side, two of Sir James 

 Musgrave's best horses having been sent on for him. 

 He had a fall at the first fence, and broke his collar-bone, 

 and so the two friends, in fine hunting weather, sat and 

 nodded at each other from easy-chairs placed at opposite 

 sides of the hearth in the hospitable mansion of Sir 

 James at Melton. 



The season 1847-48 was exceptionally mild, and 

 so, after Christmas, foxes took to forsaking their usual 

 haunts in favour of the open, when, of course, it was. 



