the pressing society of the bailiffs, and set him again on his rather unsteady legs. But it is doubtful whether anybody ever had occasion to enter into such savage covenants for Davis. We might have asked him to stand godfather to our first-born, or act as trustee to our marriage settlement-if in order-but we should not have dared to write to him as Tom Oliver did to Mason, to say we were in Short Street and entertaining the sheriff of the county.

For some years before his actual resignation, failing health and increasing years had led to arrangements with King, by which Davis only went out hunting and remained out for his own pleasure. But in 1866 he had a bad fall and hurt his leg, and at the end of that season he asked leave to retire, and Harry King was appointed in his place. He died at Ascot on October 26, 1867, of bronchitis, in his seventyninth year. Charles Davis left no family.

Il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire, but within the possibilities of this unimpeachable aphorism it was manifest that his death had made a gap, and that his life had made a quite particular impression upon a considerable public. Davis's was a conspicuous career, many things conspicuously English had contributed to his renown. But the distinction of his looks and ways, the elegance of his seat, the scarlet and gold of his public duties, the bold serenity of his horsemanship are not of themselves enough to account for the vitality of his prestige and tradition. All these things we admire in horse- and hound-loving England; all these things will be associated with and ornament his memory and profession. But there is something else of Charles Davis which I like to think lives to inspire and to encourage. There is the staidness of his private life; there is the conduct of responsible duties; there is the example he has left us of endeavour to provide things honest in the sight of all men.

G

CHAPTER IV

DEBATEABLE LAND

As it was my privilege to think with my own reason; so it was my duty to see with my own eyes.-GIBBON'S Autobiography.

THE great difficulty is the Master of the Horse.' So writes Horace Walpole in one of his most serious letters to Mr. Montague in 1760. Those were the braver days of Court appointments and Court influences. Yet a Walpole or a Charles Greville of 1892 might have written much the same of the Master of the Buckhounds. Although perhaps a little of the Bottom type, this ancient officer of state was quite a lion in the path of Mr. Gladstone's last administration.

The difficulty in 1760 lay in the choice of the officeholder and the rivalries of claimants. That was certainly not the case in 1892, for, if anything, Mr. Gladstone had more places than peers. The question was whether there were to be any Buckhounds. Their situation was precarious. Hunting has always been more or less associated with Tory principles and machinations, and the Buckhounds were represented in several party newspapers as being kept for the amusement of a dissolute and exclusive gentry. Social reformers both in and out of the new House of Commons were actively hostile. And it is not to be wondered at that the party wirepullers inclined to compromise.

In the event-in spite of the menaces and exhortations of an excited section of our press--it was decided to appoint

a Master of the Buckhounds upon the understanding that he was to prepare himself and those committed to his charge for their latter end. The process was to be gradual; as far as possible painless; but it was to be complete. The doomed office was offered me, and, mindful of Lord Lansdowne's advice to the most eminent of a long line of predecessors,' I accepted it with all its suicidal conditions. One Minister wrote congratulating me on my moriturus appointment, and I discussed in cheerful after-dinner converse the various aspects and possibilities of disestablishment with one or two of our most trusted leaders. There are kennel secrets just as there are Cabinet and stable secrets. But I must chance the charge of indiscretion this paragraph may bring up against me.

Threatened men, they say, live long. At all events a threatened placeman quickly develops new instincts of selfpreservation. I made up my mind very quickly that the office and its responsibilities would be entirely to my liking. Ascot Races and the terrors of the Royal Enclosure were in a reassuring distance. Forest hunting, on the other hand, was already beckoning to me in the near and inviting foreground. After going through the stables at Cumberland Lodge with Lord Coventry, the most helpful and entertaining of predecessors, on a glorious day in August, and just making acquaintance with the hounds, the sun-bathed kennel green, the wisteria in heavy bloom against the yellow brick of the hack stable, I determined that life was sweet, and that I would die hard. Even a 'Star-man' should not rebuke me for these admissions, seeing that they illustrate the most. malignant instincts of the Court-placeman.

I quite see that my having taken so naturally to my new

1 Lord Granville consulted Lord Lansdowne as to whether he should accept the Buckhounds. Lord Lansdowne's reply was that he had never yet known it go against a man's political career to have something to give up.