Captain White. 407 



elsewhere, and we can see his smile of pleasure as 

 Captain White looked over his youngest son, one Cup 

 day, when he heard that he was intended for a whip, 

 " to see if he had good legs and feet." We never 

 remember the immortal Captain so amusing as when, 

 with Sir Watkin and two ex-masters of hounds, he 

 was helping to dig out a fox on a frosty bye afternoon 

 in the Wynnstay Woods, and stood at a bolt hole 

 with a stick, as he said, to " nobble " him. Again he 

 was very great, when he was bidding at Mr. Blenk- 

 iron's for Lord Stamford, and kept popping his head 

 at intervals out of the window of the drag, and re- 

 questing Mr. Tattersall to " knock him down." He 

 was always very good-natured if any writer asked 

 him about old times, and most pathetic on the horrors 

 of the great frost of '15, when he was obliged to leave 

 Lincolnshire, where he was hunting with Mr. Asshe- 

 ton Smith, and employed his London leisure in look- 

 ing at the skaters and the bonfires on the Thames. 



He hardly understood being followed by a pencil, 

 and his scream when he saw one produced with an 

 author at the end of it, was a sort of compound of 

 Tom Ranee's and Rachel's for intensity. And then 

 his language and his power of simile, when he described 

 the points of his hunter Harlequin ! The echoes of 

 the laughter of those who heard him, must linger yet 

 in the smoking-room at Cherry Hill. If there was a 

 bit of fun, there he was in the midst of it, with a joke 

 and a comment which would have often sounded as 

 nothing in another man's mouth, but were so rich and 

 so mellow in his. He and Mr. Osbaldeston were born 

 in the same year, but the " Old Squire " outstayed 

 him, although he was reduced to his Bath chair. He 

 rode his grey mare, Alice Grey, which originally cost 

 him 20/., for ten or twelve seasons, in fact almost to 

 the last, over Cheshire. Every year he had a week or 

 two with The Duke's at Badminton, and enjoyed the 

 Btone walls amazingly. He was also a good deal at 



