FOXHUNTING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I said in my recent article about foxhunting that the English were hard to understand. Evidently I am a true Englishman, for my article has been mistaken for an attack on foxhunting and myself for a champion of the anti-hunting cause. The article, in fact, was aimed against self-delusion. One of the points which it laboured was that any love which the foxhunter may have for the fox must be completely sui generis, utterly unlike, for instance, his love for horse or hound. But the love or distaste of the foxhunter for the fox has little bearing on the arguments for or against foxhunting.
My other point was that foxhunting is conducted with a view to the sport it shows its followers rather than to the quickness and kindness with which the fox is despatched. Only the woolly-minded can be in any doubt on this point, and foxhunters as a whole are not more woolly-minded than other people. In labouring this point I hoped to purge the more confused among them of some of their wool by taking them a canter across ground which is common to both the honest foxhunter and his opponent. For the honest fox- h-inter admits that his sport inflicts distress, often prolonged, and death on a dumb animal, but he defends it on the ground, which I am not concerned here to examine, that it confers certain benefits which outweigh this manifest objection.
What does concern me here is to point out that I am not the right person to pose as an anti-foxhunting champion, however just that cause may be, for the simple reason that I have enjoyed some of the healthiest and happiest hours of my life behind a pack of hounds. I have, it is true, grown rather painfully " fox-conscious " with advancing years, but I am still too much a prey to doubt on the whole subject to deserve the commendation of your and my own anti-foxhunting correspondents. I hope that you will find space for this admittedly inconclusive letter, for I should not like my article, which attacked confused thinking, to expose me to the charge of dishonest writing.—Yours faithfully, LAWRENCE ATHILL.
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