Good night to the season
Charles Moore
A[though it is only mid-March, I am writing this column outdoors. In these last two days the tide has turned in the annual war between cold and warmth. No doubt there will be reverses — a late snowstorm, frost-pockets of resistance — but the issue is no longer in doubt. Looking across the valley from our terrace, I can see the light green of growth starting to feather the line of poplars on the far hilltop. And for the last hour a fox has been wandering nonchalantly in the field below them. He moves slowly about in the sun, sniffing the ground. Even through our field-glasses we cannot quite make out what he is doing. He looks as if he is eating worms, but I don't see why they should be plentiful in these dry days on that welldrained slope. If he were a herbivore, I would say that he was grazing.
Anyway, he acts as if he knows that the hunting season is over. Big and bold and healthy, he is enjoying the peace. Even when we whistle to attract his attention, he looks up only momentarily and then goes on rootling. In the Vale of Tears hunt (VT) there is quiet rejoicing because this year we have beaten our record for the season. I don't know why I say 'quiet', actually, because Jack the huntsman has been quite noisy about it, shouting down the odd elderly spoilsport who claims to remember a higher tally. The figure is 43 brace, 25 per cent of which were killed 'on top' and the rest dug out by Muffin and Foxy Dave and their entourage. In our country, the heart of which is heavily wooded, a great many foxes go to ground, and so the terrier work is crucial to giving the farmers the control of numbers which they need.
Compared with the previous two, which were interrupted by foot and mouth, it has been a good season. The VT has never been healthier in its finances or its membership. The threat of a ban has encouraged recruitment and, in holiday periods, the field has echoed (to the detriment of venery) with the chatter of children. I think that attack from politicians has made hunting people nicer, more considerate, more open, even, though this may be overoptimistic, less quarrelsome. We all feel grateful to be hunting at all, As people always say when the scent is poor, or the mist is down, or there is no decent run, 'It's lovely just to be out.'
Looking back on the past months, I find a few images float into my mind.
There's the old man at a village do, who strode up and accosted me, 'I say, when is
the Daily Telegraph going to come off the fence over hunting?'
There's the 14-year-old girl in Shropshire who saw out the whole day on her pony when most of us had second horses. She had point-blank refused to follow her brothers and sisters to boardingschool because it would interfere with her hunting. On the day in question, she was playing truant.
There's the rider in front of me in Northern Ireland who suddenly shouted, 'Mind the bed.' and there, sure enough, was one, sitting surreally across our path.
There are the latter-day Lucy Glitters whose glorious eyes flash dangerously as the chase begins, and the large, comfortable women who, after 40 seasons, have done with all that: and there's wiry Edith in her bowler hat, who first hunted with the VT in the mid 1930s. At New Year, she told me that this was the last mounted day of her life — and then I saw her out again two weeks later.
And there's Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress who, as I write, is somewhere in northern Iraq hoping for the call to lead his people. At this season, he told me, before the heat became too intense, his father used to organise a would-be English fox-hunt with salukis and Afghan hounds, in honour of the king. The staff of the British Embassy in Baghdad used to join them, dressed as for Leicestershire. Saddam, of course, banned hunting, because the people who hunted were 'bloodsuckers'. I hope our troops can hear a ghostly 'gone away' as they fight their passage up through the former Garden of Eden.
Then there are views — Bamburgh Castle seen from the moor, the citadel of Rye gleaming above Romney Marsh, wild Wales opening up before me as the mist parts, the bright shore of Strangford Lough as we work along it and the sheer cliffs of the Seven Sisters as we work above them. Best of all, the view of the country before you at the moment when you have just cleared a hedge.
Anyone who loves hunting must do his best to stay out till the end so that he experiences every gradation of the day — its early nerves, its settled middle period, its gentle decline — or, sometimes, its late excitement as the falling temperature improves the scent and we find a travelling fox at dusk. The experience of the full season has that same quality of completeness. I feel as I do when Jack blows for home and our tired remnant follows him back to the meet — peaceful, happy-sad.
As I finish writing, the sun has gone behind our cherry trees and it grows colder. Still that fox is wandering the hill-side, but working closer and closer to the wood. As you say when you leave the hunting field, whatever the time of day, good night.
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