I N the references in the Times to the will of
the late Mr. Aubrey Harcourt, of Nuneham, a paragraph in the demise of the estate by his father is quoted. In it the previous owner of the Harcourt estates and of Nunebam Park, which are among those longest in the continuous possession of any family in the South of England, asks of his descendants and successors that, in addition to giving due care to the family tombs at Stanton Harcourt, they will maintain a herd of not less than a hundred fallow-deer in the park at Nuneham, which was among the wishes "expressed by our common benefactor, Simon, Earl of Harcourt, and by my good grandfather, Edward, Archbishop of York, re- spectively."
It is said that Nuneham was at first a hunting lodge of the ancient family which still possesses it. But it is a typical country home of the wealthier class of English county family, and this written memorandum of what for some two or three centuries was a peculiar source of pride and satisfaction to that class is an interesting survival. There seems to have been a tradition that the number of one hundred was the minimum head of deer proper for the maintenance of a deer park in due estate. This must have rested entirely on social custom, for licenses to impark with any condition or restriction imposed became obsolete after the Restoration. But the feeling that the ownership of a deer park added splendour and consequence to the status of the possessor was by no means dead after the Commonwealth, when the mobs had sometimes marked their spite against their richer neighboursby destroying their deer and levelling their park palings. It is on record that the riffraff of Colchester and the neighbouring towns, besides destroying the furniture of the Countess of Rich at St. Osyth'a Priory and her other beautiful house at Long Melford, took especial pains to " break " the parks and kill the deer in them. This form of attack on property was a reaction on the part of the lawless classes from a passion for park-making at no distant date before. "The sixteenth century was the golden age of deer parks," says a writer on this subject in the Edinburgh Review. To be the owner of one was the great desire of every gentleman. Among the valued privileges which a man could offer his friend was the right of yearly killing a buck or doe in his park." One wonders why. It must have been fashion purely. In Moryson's "Itinerary" (1617) it is suggested that there were more fallow-deer in a single English county than in all Europe besides. " Every gentleman of 2500 to £1,000 rent by the year hath a park for them enclosed with payles of wood for two or three miles' compass." Even Lord Beacons- field, in one of his earlier novels, dwells on the distinction afforded by the ownership of such a park, in much the same spirit as when he makes one of his characters maintain that every one who had £10,000 a year in land ought to be made a Peer. Times are changed. For we find a correspondent of the Gamekeeper, a paper mainly written by bond-fide keepers of game and keepers of deer, deploring the discouragement of owners of deer parks consequent on the low prices obtained for venison. The degree to which this, formerly the most highly prized of any meat for the table, is now neglected may be judged from the wholesale prices obtainable by the owners. A fallow buck in prime condition fetches only £2 10s, and a whole doe not more than 21 10s. Yet the average weight of slunk is eight stone, and of a doe five stone. The buck will be six years old when killed, so that the return for six yeara' "feed" in the park is lees than ten shillings a year. A Down sheep, killed at the age of two years, is worth perhaps fifty shillings or more, and the price is much the same in the case both of wethers or ewes. The result is that deer are being very freely advertised in the sporting papers as for sale, a sure sign that owners are either giving up their deer altogether or reducing the herd kept in the park.
As a rule, these changes or reductions take place in parks which consist of very fine or rich grazing land, from which the owner can secure a large return in the form of rent. There are parks in which the change from deer to Scotch or fine English cattle is not altogether a loss of the picturesque. Fallow-deer are by no means suited for the landscape of ordinary grazing parks, flat and without feature, except for large and formal clumps of trees. As a rule, the more
Richmond Park is the typical example of the kind; and Nuneham is in many respects a second Richmond. Both grow fine oaks, woods, masses of bracken and thorns; and both of them overlook the Thames. At the same time, the deer are a great addition to the beauties of the flat park of Bushey, though no one would care to see them in the broad pastures of the Home Park at Hampton Court across the road, The reason is that Bushey has much bracken and a number of wild, free.growing thorns and other ancient timber.
The motive which influenced the choice of the creators of parks was twofold. Some, when licensee had been obtained, used the park mainly as a means of securing for the household an enclosed " rands:, " which would carry the largest head per acre of the heaviest deer. Others chose some wild part of their estates, and enclosed that, mainly for sporting purposes, for which they wisely selected ground which was rough, beautiful, and of little or no use for tillage. This is seen on the largest scale in William the Conqueror's selection of the New Forest as his sporting ground, and in a minor degree in the history, or obvious origin, of many parks, among which the enclosure of Richmond Park by Charles I. is not the least striking example. The Old Deer Park, fiat, fat, and not very interesting, did not attract him at all_ The enclosure of the beautiful and wild upland of the new park on the bill for the home of the Royal herds of deer is just what might have been expected from Charles's artistic taste. The survival of fragments of old and wild heath and woodland in parks in the middle of culti- vated land is also evidence of the care with which, with due feeling for the fitness of things, the sites of the old deer parks were often chosen. One of the most striking parks in the Home Counties is that of the Earls of Craven at Hamp- stead Marshall, on the Rennet above Newbury. Though surrounded by high cultivation, and with rich water meadows below, the portions of this park bordering on the rushing river are wild and broken in the extreme. Steep banks, glens, chains of pools, bracken beds, and ancient and fantastic trees diversify the slopes, though on the fiat sum- mits are some of the most regular formal avenues of limes in the country. The deer wandering in the broken parts greatly enhance the charm of such an unusual scene. At the same time, the dappled coats of the fallow-deer when at the brightest hue of warm gold and glistening white are an exquisite feature when seen on a close-cropped lawn of grass in the summer sun, under the fresh green of young foliage. At Campsey Ash, in Suffolk, a small but beautiful deer park is crossed by an avenue of magnificently grown limes, with branches descending low towards the smooth sward which lies between and beneath the trees. As the brightly dappled deer feed across the park, and suddenly appear in this vista, amid the alternate shafts of light and shadow, they lend a beauty to the whole which no other creatures could confer on this exquisite picture of park scenery.
It may seem a paradox, but it is none the less matter of reasonable conviction that red-deer are far more ornamental in big, rather tame parks, provided that they are embellished with large timber, than are fallow-deer. Where bracken is
absent, but fine and ancient oaks are abundant, or where there are open slopes, with some imposing castle rising from them, herds of red-deer are very much in place. Their finer carriage, great antlers, and dignity are quite in keeping with parka which are on the grand scale, such as Lowther, with its huge, if not very beautiful, " Gothic " castle ; or in Windsor Home Park, or parts of Welbeck Park or Woburn. In Rich- mond Park the red stags would not be greatly missed in the general effect, though full of interest to the visitor who wishes to study their form and movements. The fallow bucks, does, and fawns supply the living motif sufficiently. But this would not be the case in the open meadowland of Windsor Home Park within sight of the great Plantagenet fortress with its crown of towers. At Helmingham, an open park on the clay, but with some groups of what are probably the finest oaks in England, and with a moated and battlemented house, the red- deer have incomparably the finer appearance, while in the park at Lowther Castle they "make" the scene_ The "feed" in this park is exceptionally good, and the stags grow to a great size. At the close of August, when their coats and antlers are at the brightest and freshest, a herd of as many as five-and-twenty red stags, carrying their heads in perfect fashion, may be passed strolling and feeding on either side of the carriage- way, presenting what is perhaps the finest accidental gathering of English-bred red-deer in thia country.
CORRESPONDENCE.
HISTORICAL PORTRAITS AT OXFORD.
[To van mama or Tea "8.ex...res..' But if it is a coincidence that the two shows opened on the same day, it is something more than a coincidence that while the first portrait at Paris is that of King John the Good, the first at Oxford is that of his victor, the father of his captor at Poitiers, King Edward III. (No. 1). For this is indeed, as far as it goes, an Exhibition of English primitifs; the work of the first painters known to England. And all who care for this early work, these beginnings, will do well to take the opportunity of running down to Oxford, not otherwise an unpleasant thing to do in May, and spending a few hours in inspecting this limited but unique collection. Connoisseurs and historians will not need to be told what not to expect ; but the ordinary picture-gallery visitor may as well be forewarned. 'He will not find any brilliant blaze of colouring; he will find but few paintings which, apart from their historic interest, will charm or arrest him. He will perhapa.at first be disappointed; but if he looks carefully, he will find himself face to face with a small show of some hundred and thirty-seven paintings, very well hung and arranged by Mr. C. F. Bell, of the Ashmolean, in a quiet, well-lighted room, and aided by illustrative photographs. He will find a businesslike and well-printed catalogue, to which Mr. Lionel Cast, the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, has contributed an illuminating pre- face. As this preface suggests, the collection is educa- tional in two aspects. It exemplifies, as far as it goes, alike the painting of history and the history of painting. The first is, of course, by far the more important. The Kings and Queens, the Princes and Princesses, of England during this period, the Ambassadors and statesmen, the nobles and courtiers, the Prelates and Judges, the poets, the musicians, the seamen and Empire-makers, the scholars and antiquaries, the divines and doctors, are all represented.
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