254 THE QUORN HUNT 



among the lookers-on were several Leicestershire celeb- 

 rities ; while Idas and the Prior, brother to Alice Haw- 

 thorne, were among the horses. " The Squire " on 

 Assheton jumping a gate, Sir Harry Goodricke on Dr. 

 Russell, and Mr. Holyoake on Crossbow were prominent 

 characters in one hunting picture, while in another Sir 

 Harry was represented on foot, while Mountford was 

 holding his fox aloft. 



" And what a fox it was," writes a critic who examined the 

 picture. " None of those bullet-headed animals, which town 

 artists will persist in drawing on the look-out for rabbits, but a 

 regular racing greyhound, with a true Cream Gorse or Billesdon 

 Coplow birthright." 



A third picture was " A Scurry." It was a very long canvas of 

 about seven feet, representing all the principal Melton men going 

 away. Lord Wilton was leading, as he generally did, with Mr. 

 Little Gilmour in close attendance, behind these being Captain 

 Lloyd, Mr. Coke, and a hard-riding Russian merchant. 1 Five 

 were represented as going over a gate and a hedge at one time, 

 amongst them being the then Duke of Rutland, who was followed 

 by Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) Grant. This picture was to 

 be raffled for. In the following year (1858), when Ferneley was 

 close upon eighty years of age, he was hard at work upon a 

 sketch of the Quorn hounds crossing the Nottingham turnpike 

 road en route from Melton Spinney to Sir Harry Goodricke's 

 Gorse ; while one of his largest works was the meet of the Quorn 

 under Assheton Smith at Shangton Holt, with Lord Plymouth 

 and other well - known Meltonians of Assheton Smith's time 

 (1806-17). Full of years, and by no means without honours, 

 Mr. John E. Ferneley passed away at Melton on the 4th June 

 i860. His father had been a wheelwright at Thrussington, and 

 tried to bring up his son to his trade, but the son had other 

 aspirations. 2 



1 In the early eighties, a Russian merchant, Mr. Matvief, was a regular 

 follower of the Surrey staghounds, and sometimes of the Burstow. He did 

 not begin to ride until late in life, but he went well, and the writer saw him 

 once jump a very awkward gate in a corner. 



* For a detailed notice of Ferneley, see Sir Walter Gilbey's article in 

 Baity s Magazine for September 1897. 



