It is true that the Major did not take a subscription in the common acceptation of the term, but he took assistance in various ways, such as a few days ploughing from one man, a few “bowels” of seed-wheat from another, a few “bowels” of seed-oats from a third, a lamb from a fourth, a pig from a fifth, added to which, he had all the hounds walked during the summer, so that his actual expenses were very little more than the tax. This he jockeyed by only returning about two-thirds the number of hounds he kept; and as twelve couple were his hunting maximum, his taxing minimum would be about eight—eight couple—or sixteen hounds, at twelve shillings a-piece, is nine pound twelve, for which sum he made more noise in the papers than the Quorn, the Belvoir, and the Cottesmore all put together. Indeed the old adage of “great cry and little wool,” applies to packs as well as flocks, for we never see hounds making a great “to-do” in the papers without suspecting that they are either good for nothing, or that the fortunate owner wants to sell them.
With regard to horses, the Major, like many people, had but one sort—the best in England—though they were divided into two classes, viz., hunters and draught horses. Hacks or carriage horses he utterly eschewed. Horses must either hunt or plough with him; nor was he above putting his hunters into the harrows occasionally. Hence he always had a pair of efficient horses for his carriage when he wanted them, instead of animals that were fit to jump out of their skins at starting, and ready to slip through them on coming home.
Clothing he utterly repudiated for carriage horses, alleging, that people never get any work out of them after they are once clothed.
The hunters were mostly sedate, elderly animals, horses that had got through the “morning of life” with the foxhounds, and came to the harriers in preference to harness. The Major was always a buyer or an exchanger, or a mixer of both, and would generally “advance a little” on the neighbouring job-master’s prices. Then having got them, he recruited the veterans by care and crushed corn, which, with cutting their tails, so altered them, that sometimes their late groom scarcely knew them again.