When we hear the word “hunting,” most people in the U.S. picture a guy in camo gear stalking the woods or marshes with a rifle. But in some of the earlier eras I like to write about, hunting is a fashionable exercise for the upper classes and it does not involve either guns or putting food on the table.
Instead, the rich dressed in their elegant hunting clothes and rode through the fields chasing after a fox tracked by a pack of specially trained hounds. This type of hunting served no useful purpose whatsoever, although it did provide a small amount of exercise for the riders and quite a bit of dangerous exertion for the animals involved.
Fox Hunting in England and the U.S.
Fox hunting, known as “riding to hounds,” was particularly popular among British nobility in the colonial era, and as the English began buying up investment properties in North America, they attempted to take their favorite sport with them. According to some accounts, the hunters in the late 1600s found it unsatisfying to chase the native gray foxes because instead of dashing across the fields, the gray fox would disappear into the nearest hole, ending the chase after about 10 yards. To recreate the exciting hunts of their homeland, some settlors supposedly imported not only trained fox hounds to give chase but also red foxes to be chased.
Scientists (link) are still debating whether the all the red foxes in the eastern U.S. are related to these imports (making the red fox an invasive species) or whether red foxes were native to the region.
In any case, in the 1700s and early 1800s, the pastime of hunting was more like a stylized horse-riding competition. But for the upper classes, it was one of the few forms of exercise that was socially accepted, along with coursing, which involved riding after greyhounds who were on the trail of rabbits. Gentlemen were also allowed to engage in fencing and boxing. (Upper class women were limited to horseback riding and walking.)
Giving My Hero a Weird Hobby
When I wrote my story Deceptive Behavior, I gave my hero an athletic pastime that was not as common, and one which is today not politically correct (or even legal in the U.K.). Instead of riding to hounds, he ran to beagles.
In the sport of beagling, runners race on foot after beagles who are chasing a rabbit. In the modern era, the rabbit usually gets away, and hunt clubs such as The Roscommon Hounds declare that it “is a dark day if anything is ever killed.” But years ago, it was a chase to the death. The Trinity Foot Beagles, a club from Cambridge University, in 1912 recounted a theme song which described the sportsmen shouting “Tally-ho” as they ran off after the “Pussy” which was apparently their affectionate name for the rabbit they were attempting to disembowel. The song goes on to describe the men engaging in a tiring run before the hounds begin “breaking up” the hare. And then there’s much toasting to the glory of their bloodied pups.
I can’t imagine why the sport isn’t popular today.
In any case, though my hero in Deceptive Behavior belonged to the “upper” class, he was in the common yet embarrassing position of needing to marry someone rich to pay off the debts of his ancestors. So, he didn’t have enough money for the horses and hounds needed for hunting, but he could engage in beagling with the family pets as a form of exercise. (This allowed him to become a fast runner in an age where few people ran unless they were being chased by something.)
In the story, I never described a scene of my hero engaging in a full beagling chase, but if I had, I am certain that no rabbits would have been harmed because I am quite fond of them. In fact, at the time I wrote the book, I shared my office with a mini rex rabbit who used to chew on my reference books. (This habit led to her nickname Eve, which was short for Evil Bun-Bun.)
Useless Fact of the Day
So now you’ve learned about beagling, a sport that you’ll never want to or be able to try. You’re welcome.
The images in this post are watercolors painted by Diana Sperling, from sketchbooks she created between the years 1812 and 1823. Her depictions give a glimpse into the life of the country gentry that populate Jane Austen’s stories–and with the same sense of humor. I would love to see how she might have illustrated Jane’s characters and situations. The second image in this post depicts the family’s efforts to get through the mud to dine with their neighbors.
You can see a video of modern beagling (not a blood sport) with the Roscommon Hounds here https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=776682922817132
Information in this article came from a variety of sources including:
- Re-evaluation of the evidence for the importation of red foxes from Europe to colonial America: Origins of the southeastern red fox (Vulpes vulpes fulva) (published on Science Direct https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320712003539#:~:text=Most%20treatments%20of%20the%20red,have%20concluded%20that%20the%20southeastern)
- The Trinity Foot Beagles: an Informal Record of Cambridge Sport and Sportsmen During the Past Fifty Years https://ia801301.us.archive.org/30/items/trinityfootbeagl00kemp/trinityfootbeagl00kemp.pdf
I have finally had Deceptive Behavior reformatted and re-released in print and ebook after the publisher who originally released the story closed up shop. The book is available on
Apple Books
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
and other sites through this universal link