The Eton College hunt : $b A short history of beagling at EtonCrossley, Anthony Crommelin
History
The Eton College hunt : $b A short history of beagling at Eton
Crossley, Anthony Crommelin
Beagling; Eton College Hunt -- History
Carter was succeeded by T. J. Huddleston, and Huddleston by E. E. Witt,
who held the hounds for two seasons. Of neither of these do we know
anything. But Thackeray, who succeeded Witt, first instituted the Journal
Book, which was kept right up to the time of the amalgamation in 1867.
I have also been greatly helped by the only two College whips of this
period who are still alive, R. V. Somers-Smith and A. A. Wace. Here is a
letter from the former which covers this whole period from the season of
1863 to the amalgamation:
“I went to Eton as a Colleger in the autumn of 1862, and first ran with
the Beagles in the following spring. Thackeray was then the Master, for
which position his chief qualification was a copious vocabulary. We then
chiefly hunted drags; only occasionally trying for a hare, never with any
success.
“The pack had then been in existence only a few years; they were kept
at the lodge at the Slough end of the Playing Fields by Ward, the
groundsman, and were a mongrel lot. One or two real beagles, some
cast-off harriers, some nondescripts, ‘just dogs.’
“As late as 1862 they kept a badger; the brute knew his job and trotted
along until overtaken, when he sat down until the field came up. One of
the whips carried a sack and a pair of tongs, and the badger was by help
of the latter dropped into the former and carried home.
“There was a story against Lewis, one of the whips, that on one occasion
the badger took refuge in a useful outhouse adjacent to a cottage, and
Lewis was discovered sitting on the sack to prevent the badger escaping
this way, making dives at him with the tongs when the badger threatened
his legs.
“Lewis was Master in 1864; he was a little Welshman, rather prematurely
aged; he was quite a sportsman but a poor runner. I used often to take a
whip in his day, but do not think I was in ‘office.’ A. A. Wace was first
whip.
“Lewis went to Merton; rather distinguished himself there as a
rider—Merton being then a hunting College—and died suddenly in his room
there in 1869.
“In 1865 A. J. Pound became Master. Pound was a remarkable
character—intellectually rather below the average, but endowed with some
originality and an exceedingly strong will. I have sometimes doubted
whether he was quite ‘right’; he looked at the world and mankind from a
point of view entirely his own, and made no effort to adapt himself to
convention of any kind. But he was thoroughly honest and straightforward;
the kindest and most faithful of friends.
“He subsequently went to the Bar, the last profession for which he
was fitted, was for a time a magistrate in British Guiana, married an
American, and latterly fell into pecuniary difficulties and took his own
life.
“His eldest son is a distinguished sailor.
“Pound took up the Beagles seriously. He got together quite a decent
little pack, and began to hunt hares regularly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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