I had the bed-room Oliver Cromwell slept in the night before the battle of Naseby. Most of these old houses have a ghost, but Oliver, I'm sorry to say, didn't appear.
We are having a ripping time. The Honorable Violet somebody or other is here, among others. She is lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and a very charming person. But I don't know nearly so many Lords and Dukes and things as you do. I used to detest such people, being an American, but I find I have changed my mind. What few I have seen have been perfectly delightful.
Well, the meet yesterday was just like some hunting-pictures we have at home, with maybe two hundred people, the women and children mostly on ponies, or driving two-wheeled carts. Then came the ride to cover, and the drawing. The field was made up of all classes, statesmen, parsons, peers, and farmers,--all the way from the Duchess of Hamilton, homely in a brown habit and riding as hard as a man, to a horse-dealer.
It was quite windy, and most of them said to each other as they passed, "Good morning. It's a beastly windy day!"
The hounds rushed in and out of the covers in the hope of finding a fox, and the huntsmen hallooed and blew their horns. There wasn't any fox in the first cover, but at last one was discovered in the open, and so the pack went scurrying, the huntsmen after them, and the whips. To my surprise, instead of going straight over a hedge into the next field, most of the men went galloping off toward a gate. I didn't know before that it was bad form to jump unnecessarily. Quite different in America.
Helter-skelter through the back yards and gardens of the little cottages we rode, scattering chickens and pigs and children right and left, while the village people stood in their doorways and watched the hunters stream past.
Then there was a check--the fox had hidden in one of the barnyards, and the huntsmen, hounds, and all the small boys searched for him, while everybody else stood round or walked about in the square in front of the Bull Head Inn. Soon there was a halloo--the fox had been found hiding in a hay mow. He was driven out, "broken up" and the carcass given to the dogs, who yelped and barked and fought for the pieces. The brush was given to me.