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HORSE & HOUND FOR 8.7.04 (if I get lucky)

I think that this now gives you 2 pieces in hand. For my next trick I thought that I might expand on the breaking-in and schooling of green MsFH. Unless I get a wrathful explosion from you, that is what I shall do.

Warning: you should not try this trick at home and it should be kept out of the reach of children.

“The fish stinks from the head,” is a good old Spanish proverb. It demonstrates the importance of good and efficient leadership. Nowhere is this type of leadership more essential to most country people, than in the conduct of Hunting. The responsibility for this conduct lies with the Master. A Hunt is a large and complex organisation, which requires and deserves the very best sort of CEO, which, in effect, is what the modern Master is, or ought to be. I think that it was Beckford who said (in his famous ‘Thoughts on Hunting’) “No man is too good to be a Master of Foxhounds.” He went on to produce a daunting list of qualities required by the ‘modern MFH’. ‘Modern’ in his context being the early part of the C19th, when the management of a hunt was a deal less complex than it is today. This list of qualities still holds good. In the second Millennium, the complexities and responsibilities of Mastership can be a nightmare, especially in the more populous hunting countries. It is indeed heartening that in spite of all the problems of modern hunting there always seem to be those prepared to put themselves forward to fill a vacancy in the Mastership. The late (?) John Tickner wrote and illustrated some gently ironic books on Hunting. In one of these he provided four categories of Master – ‘The Inherited’; ‘The Achieved’; ‘The Put Upon’ and ‘The Dedicated’. It is worth exploring these categories.

‘The Inherited’ is the man with a ‘family’ pack. He (I know that there are many excellent Lady Masters, but I am going to refer to them all as ‘he’, for simplicity and for the same lack of reason that hares are always referred to as ‘she’) very often owns the hounds and broad acres for them to frolic on. He took in the basics of hunting with his mother’s milk and went on to take his ‘A’ levels under the steely eye of the family huntsman. At his best he is a benign autocrat. It is a seldom-voiced fact that too much democracy is bad for Hunting. I remember staying with a terrifying old man, whose family had owned and run the local hunt since time out of memory. I happened to mention ‘Hunt Meetings’. The old man bristled his magnificent moustache and asked his wife who was knitting quietly by the fire if they had ever had a ‘Hunt Meeting’? Without dropping a stitch, she replied:

“1947, Gerald, and it was a great mistake.” Who has not sat through Hunt Meetings that raged on until 0100 hours and where the floor has become slippery with blood.

‘The Achieved’ is the terror of countless Boardrooms and has many slightly dodgy (but non proven) pounds tucked away in many offshore piggy banks. He is prepared to divert some loose cash into the Hunt account for the perceived honour of wearing a red coat and being called Master. His problem is that although he knows all about ‘hedge funds’, he does not know a ‘bull finch’ from a ‘double oxer’ (do such things still exist?) and thinks that hounds have ‘tails’. He needs careful handling and guidance into the paths of hunting righteousness; otherwise he may apply his Board Room manner with the Vale farmers, who will, very properly take the huff. Faced with a business problem that he has not the wit to solve, The Achieved may well stuff his money back into his pockets and disappear to the Cayman Islands with a bimbo and the thick end of a pension fund.

‘The Put Upon’ is the sad man who was asleep at the back of the Hunt Committee Meeting when It was discussing its failure to fill a vacant Mastership and wakes with a start to find that he has been elected ‘nem con’. His mild attempt at protest is cut short by the Chairman:

“Look Roger! You’ve been elected and you’re bloody well going to do it.” Strange to say, he often does it rather well – ‘He that is down needs fear no fall.’

‘The Dedicated’ – ah now, there’s the man – stuck on a pony before he could walk; read Beckford before he could talk; first broke his collar bone falling off his rocking horse; whipped in to the Eton Beagles and somehow managed to break his collar bone; eats, sleeps and dreams hunting – falls out of bed and breaks his collar bone… His two big problems may be lack of cash and the conviction that he actually invented hunting. He may try to solve his first problem by bolting with the wife of a major landowner – a lady, who is loaded in every sense of the word and who will certainly teach him humility. This will solve problem two.

In the real world, most masters are well meaning people who take on Mastership out of a sense of duty and because they wish to put something back into a sport that has given them much pleasure. All very good and laudable, but not enough in this day and age - I have no doubt that nobody should be allowed to commit Mastership without some form of training. Something that we could look at another time.

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