A linguist in pursuit of the uneatable

James Teacher

THOUGHTS ON HUNTING by Peter Beckford

J. A. Allen, £9.95 (Available from The Horseman's Bookshop, 1 Lower Grosvenor Place, London SWI)

Early 18th-century readers of The Spectator, enthused by the exploits of the genial gentleman fox-hunter Will Wimble, would have been hard pressed to find a book on the subject to further their in- terest. The choice lay between Blome's The Gentleman's Recreation (1709) and William Somerville's The Chase (1735). The former a huge tome, weighing in at just under a stone, dealt with all manner of subjects from philosophy to fewmets with a short dissertation on fox-hunting. The lat- ter, a poem consisting of four books of Miltonic blank verse, greatly admired and frequently quoted by Beckford, dealt with hare and fox-hunting, hounds and their kennels. In June 1781 Beckford published his Thoughts on Hunting which he wrote when recovering from a hunting accident. It was to become the best known of all books on fox-hunting and has rightly re- mained so.

The timing was fortuitous. Since the demise of the stag throughout most of England, the hare had been the preferred quarry. It was soon realised that a more prolonged and testing ride was offered by the pursuit of the fox. This trend was greatly accelerated by the innovations of Hugo Meynell (Master of the ()nom from 1753-1800) who was breeding faster hounds and horses to gallop rather than walk his fox to death. Mr Childe initiator of the flying leap — first began hard riding in Leicestershire, a fashion shortly followed by the Lords Forester and Jersey and numerous other bloods keen to experience the thrill of a fast ride after hounds. Poor Meynell was soon complain- ing of the success of his innovation `since the splittercockation of pace he had not had a day's peace'. But the thirst for knowledge was there and Beckford's book satisfied it.

Peter Beckford was born in 1740 at Stapleton, Dorset. The son of a rich planter who had made his fortune in the West Indies, he was educated at Westmins- ter and New College, Oxford (as was Somerville) where he read classics and history. His first cousin was the fabulously wealthy William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey and author of Vathek. He lived in a society described by H.A.L. Fisher as being free from disquieting and torturing doubts, content to ask of life only what life could give, so stable and harmonious, so sure of itself and apparently so well pro- tected from the ruinous follies of the zealot that its like had not been seen in Europe since the days of the Antonines. It was in these idyllic conditions that Beckford hunted his hounds round Cranboume Chase.

Yet he had many other interests. An extensive reader of classical and modern literature, he travelled widely. In Turin he met Lawrence Sterne 'and passed hours with that eccentric genius that might have been more profitably employed but never more agreeably'. Among other intellec- tuals he visited were Voltaire and Rous- seau. Sir Egerton Brydges said of him:

Never had fox or hare the honour of being chased to death by so accomplished a hunter; never was a huntsman's dinner graced by such urbanity and wit. He would bag a fox in Greek, find a hare in Latin, inspect his kennels in Italian and direct the economy of his stables in exquisite French.

A somewhat bewildering experience for hounds, hunt and kennel staff!

The book consists of 24 letters to a young man who has just taken on his own pack of hounds. Much of the advice he gives is as pertinent today as when he wrote it. The prose is simple, lucid and entertaining. There is a liberal sprinkling of anecdotes to enliven the text. Many of them are genuinely funny and are told in a dead-pan style which greatly adds to their charm. Francophobes are amply served.

The roles of huntsman and whipper-in and the tactics of hunting are fully investi- gated. The breeding, discipline and sym- pathetic treatment of hounds, the control of thrusting members of the field and many other problems are discussed with such wit and intelligent reasoning that even on those occasions when one had originally taken a contrary view one is often gently persuaded to the master's way of thinking.

Eccentricity is catered for. In a lighter moment he writes of a very peculiar French method of catching rabbits, Chasse du Lapin a l'Ecrevisse. Not surprisingly cette chasse demande beaucoup de patience: les operations de l'ecrevisse sont lentes, mais aussi elles sont quelquefois plus sures que celles du fume . Those of us who have enjoyed scoffing Cassolette de Queues d'Ecrevisses at Lameloise, Chagny, realise, thankfully, that modem Frenchmen have better things to do with their crayfish than to stuff them down rabbit-holes.

This version published by J. A. Allen is, for all intents and purposes, a copy of the 1899 Methuen edition and includes the drawings by Jalland, the photographs of Beckford's home and kennels, and the introduction and footnotes by Captain Otho Paget who was '0', the hunting correspondent of the Field. Any tempta- tion to tamper with the text had been rightly resisted. However Beckford was writing for an audience nurtured on the classics so it is not surprising to find quotations from Cicero, Horace, Martial and Virgil throughout. People such as Harry Cust who amused himself by reading The Georgics in his dog-cart on the way to the meet are no longer with us. Footnote translations would have been useful as there is not a modem fox-hunter in 10,000 who will get their drift.

The epitaph to this gentle countryman who died in 1811 reads:

We die and are forgotten — 'tis Heaven's decree; Thus the fate of others will be the fate of me.

The numerous editions of his materpeice have proved him wrong. My copy was given to my father in 1923 by W. W. Vaughan for the Rugby scripture prize. That surely would have delighted the great man. The current edition carries an elegant foreword by Michael Clayton, editor of Horse and Hound.