Apparent contradictions
Charles Moore
Still injured, I find myself like Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, finding 'occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one' in only one book. For Sir Walter, it was the Baronetage. For me, it is &lily's Hunting Directory.
How reassuring it is to read through the lists of literally hundreds of English hunts
— foxhounds, harriers, beagles, staghounds, etc. — to find 90 pages on the hunts of North America (including seven just listing the packs of basset hounds) and about the same on Ireland. There are hunts in Belgium and Germany (though Hitler banned them) and Italy and Australia and France and Kenya. They hunt grey foxes in Portugal and jackal in India ('almost exclusively supported and patronised by members of the three armed forces') and 'the clean boot' (bloodhounds) in England and Ireland. There are heartwarming pictures of things like Mr and Mrs Graeme Boggiss at the closing meet of the Surrey Union in Walking Bottom, Peaslake, being presented with their retirement present. Mrs Boggiss, in bowler hat, proudly holds up the fox's mask. There are Californian hounds in the desert and Canadian ones in the snow and a portrait of Rotorua & Bay of Plenty Moby, Supreme Champion Hound at the Northern District Hound Show, New Zealand. Between the red hardcovers of Bailys thrives a global culture.
Any stranger to hunting, however, might be perplexed to work out from the factcrammed and abbreviated entries where authority in the hunting world lies. Everyone knows that a hunt has a Master, but the reader of Bai Iv's notices that almost all Masters are 'Joint' (sometimes 'Acting Joint'), and that in addition hunts have chairmen. In a few entries, it is stated that the hunt is run by 'a committee'. Who does actually run these small but complicated organisations? I ask because I sometimes wonder if the hunting world, having so brilliantly devoted its energies to improving its public relations, is giving enough thought to all its other problems:
1. Hunting has many rich followers, but it is always short of money.
2. Hunting is traditionally hierarchical, yet no one is in much of a position to give orders to anyone else, 3. Hunting is numerically more successful than it has ever been, yet there is a growing shortage of people with the necessary skills to hunt the hounds.
The way it ought to work is that the committee raises the money and supports the Masters in organising the sport and making sure that the huntsman does his job. In practice, though, committees are rarely satisfied or united. As so often in voluntary organisations, many of those with plenty of time lack a sense of proportion, and many of those with a sense of proportion lack plenty of time. While they quarrel, the hunting vocation is growing weaker at both ends of the social scale.
At the 'top', there are far fewer people born to land ownership who will devote their lives to any form of voluntary work, including hunting. They live in a world in which status is associated with having a good job and being busy, where once it was the opposite. The endless diplomacy, not to mention the regulations for running a flesh house (no, that's not a brothel), eats up time and mental energy.
At the 'bottom', the pool of rural poor who would become professional huntsmen for tiny wages has shrunk to a puddle. Forty years ago, big farms that employed 20 or 30 people could have contained a kennelman or whipper-in among that number. Today hardly any farms employ staff in double figures, and not many young people, however keen, will want to learn the trade for long at £100 per week. As a result, the few stars get pinched, like professional footballers. The number of people who really know the sport has diminished at the same time as the size of the fields has grown. You sense in some hunts the consequent tension — the equestrian equivalent of road rage when too many people with too few skills are, as it were, burning up the hard shoulder. As an ignoramus myself. I'm always seeking expertise, but not absolutely always finding it.
It is one of the glories of hunting that its growth has been organic and particular. Therefore it is not uniform and it doesn't suffer from management-speak about 'best practice' and '360-degree appraisals'. But it should put its money not only where its mouth is, but also where its future men and women will be. It needs more professionals.
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