But my feet were first set on the right path by the kind teaching of that fine sportsman, the late Sir Charles Slingsby of Scriven, who was as good a falconer as he was a huntsman.
In my summer holidays I would toil over on my pony as often as he could find leisure to be bothered with me, the thirteen miles or so that divided Harewood from Scriven, and receive education in the handling of hawks.
Sir Charles was a past master in managing the sparrow-hawk - perhaps the most difficult kind of hawk to control and keep in health, and with his friend Mr. Bower used to have capital sport with blackbirds and thrushes in July and August. In this sport I was a truly willing novice, and was also allowed, under careful supervision, to do a little "carrying" and training of the young hawk which had been set aside for me to try my hand with.
At last the day came when I was allowed to take it home and do my best with it all alone; and I as a proud boy as I rode home across the countryside with my hawk on hand for the first time in my life.
Well, the history of all beginners' hawks is much the same. I devoted myself to her. I got more education for myself than ever the hawk suspected. But I got her perfectly trained and fit to go hawking with. And then I was wrecked on the rock of "conditions," so fatal to all of us, old hands and beginners alike, and the delicate little hawk got out of health and soon died. But I had become fairly started as a falconer I could feed and handle a hawk properly; cut out my own tackle, even imp a feather, and, except for rare intervals, I have never been out of reach of a hawk since.
Soon after this, in 1866, I was allowed to spend part of my Easter vacation on Salisbury Plain, on the invitation of Mr. Cecil Duncombe, who afterwards became one of my best and dearest friends. The hawks were those belonging to the small club that afterwards developed into the Old Hawking Club, and were managed by that famous old sportsman Clough Newcome, formerly one of the shining lights of the Loo Hawking Club in the palmy days of heron hawking in Holland.
Robert Barr, a member of a famous family of Scotch falconers, was the professional falconer under Mr. Newcome's superintendence, which was, however, so minute and careful that it left his subordinate very little to do.
Here at last, and for the first time, I saw real hawking. I studied the use and training of the noble peregrine passage falcon, so great and so powerful compared with the hawks I had handled up to the present. The quarry was the rook, and the hawks of the highest class. And a second visit stimulated my eagerness yet more fully.
The following year I went to Cambridge, and as Feltwell, where Mr. Newcome lived and kept the hawks, was within fairly easy reach of Cambridge, I used often to go over there for a day or two whenever there was any hawking to be seen.
Meanwhile, when I was at home I kept my hand in by training merlins, and I had a good deal of fun with these most engaging little pets and miniature falcons. In 1870, when the war between France and Germany had broken out, the entire stud of hawks belonging to the Champagne Hawking Club had been removed to Elveden Hall, near Thetford, then the residence of the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, who kindly asked me to stay with him and inspect the establishment. Shortly before that time the Maharajah had sent John Barr to Iceland in order to catch the Iceland variety of the gerfalcon. He brought back some thirty of these magnificent falcons. He told me that they were so plentiful that he had little trouble in catching them when once he became familiar with their favourite haunts, but then he was a past master in the art of catching hawks. His trouble was in feeding them on the homeward voyage, and for this purpose he purcheased some half a dozen of Icelandic ponies, which he slaughtered as became necessary during the passage.
The Champagne Club had an establishment of some twenty or more hawks, mostly peregrines, and two or three goshawks. The Maharajah had a very good saker, and there were one or two hawks of the rarer and most valuable kinds such as our falconer of later years, John Frost, always described as "menagerie hawks."
But altogether this great joint establishment of hawks, so numerous, containing so many of the noblest possible specimens of the Falconidæ, was certainly the most magnificent hawking establishment that I, or possibly any other living person, ever saw.
As to sport. Many of the French hawks were very good ones, but were chiefly game hawks, that had been flying very well in Scotland at grouse the previous autumn. They had one or two good heron hawks too.
The gerfalcons were all flying to the lure in the most magnificent form conceivable. Two or three had been entered to hares, and I saw a few flights at that quarry, but was not very greatly impressed by it as a form of sport suitable for the swift-flying long-winged falcons.
After seeing so much of these splendid hawks, I could not be happy without a hawk about me of my own. I should think I was the only undergraduate of the nineteenth century who regularly kept a trained hawk in his rooms in College. Moreover, I had a dog also! but the Magdalene dons were kindly folk, and looked the other way when my dog was in the court. As to hawks, there was no law against them, and I had a perch, with the necessary flooring, put across the corner of my rooms, where my hawk could sit very comfortably. But I always blamed the loss of a beautiful little passage tiercel, that Mr. Newcome gave me, to the old cat of a bedmaker, who, no doubt, thought hawks " nasty messy things," and I have good reason to suspect that she untied the leash and left the window open. Professor Alfred Newton, whose rooms were in the same court as mine, saw him in the distance as he took flight, but I never heard of him again. In 1869 Mr. Newcome died, and the Hawking Club was broken up, and the hawks divided amongst the members. Cecil Duncombe gave me the falcon that fell to his share, and Robert Barr took service with the Marquis of Bute.
In the following spring he went with what hawks he had to enter and fly them at rooks on the Wiltshire Downs. I took the falcon I had had given to me, and another one of my own, and went down to join him at Market Lavington. On my way thither I stayed a day in London, and at Tattersalls speculated in a pony, for at least one horseman is essential for rook hawking, and very well did that pony turn out.
With this modest equipment, of two falcons and a pony, I spent the Easter vacation of 1870 assisting Robert Barr. We had a certain amount of sport, and I learnt a great deal about the management of hawks. The pony was a capital hack, and carried a hawk well.
Except for what I did with some merlins of my won, and subsequently with a young goshawk, at rabbits, I saw little hawking for a year or so; but in the autumn of 1871 it befell that Cecil Duncombe, Mr. A. E. Knox, a member of the former Hawking Club, and myself forgathered at Gordon Castle as the guests of the Duke of Richmond. The question of reviving the club was mooted, and then and there letters were written off to Lord Lilford, Captain Brooksbank, also original members, and to one or two others, proposing to them to start the club again. I myself wrote off to John Barr (his brother Robert, our old falconer, was dead), to propose to him that he should become our professional falconer, and soon made terms with him. All the old members gave us support, especially Lord Lilford, whose generosity smoothed all difficulties. Francis Newcome came in place of his father, and I was requisitioned to act as Manager and Hon. Secretary, a position I have held ever since. In now covers forty-four years.
We began well in 1872, with a remarkably good lot of hawks, such a lot as the Dutchmen, who catch them on their "passage" or migration, do not get hold of every year. With these I was able to show very good sport in the spring, partly at Ashdown, on the Berks Downs (Lord Craven was a supporter of the club), and partly in Wilts. When, a few years after, I took up my appointment in the New Forest, I moved the hawks to the south with me.
It was a position much more handy for the spring hawking on the Downs than my Yorkshire abode. In these days of motor cars it is easy to make a long day of it, and to go for the day's sport from Lyndhurst. At any rate it was certain that the hawks must be wherever I dwelt, or else I could not supervise all the management and training of them which was so essential if the establishment was ever to play a good part in the field.
Accordingly, the headquarters of the Old Hawking Club were transferred to Lyndhurst, and, though the hawks were not flown there, the mews where they dwelt was an object of interst to a great many of my neighbours, and other travellers, from Mr. Gladstone to Kaiser Wilhelm, both of whom paid visits thereto, as did many another distinguished personage.
But the most attractive sight afforded by the hawks to the people of Lyndhurst came during July and August, when the young peregrines, to the nmber of eight or nine, were flying "at hack," - that is to say, in perfect freedom, all round the village, using, as a rule, the pinnacles and tower of the church as their chief resting place. As they began to get stronger on the wing their evolutions, as they chased one another around the spire and all over the village, were very beautiful to watch. I have seen six or seven chevying one another all over the village, and perhaps half a hundred vistiors and inhabitangts standing in the street watching the aerial show. So long as these young hawks come regularly to their food, morning and evening, they are just as secure as fowls let out to feed. But ere long symptoms are shown that they have, one at a time, learned to procure food for themselves. Steps are then at once taken to secure them, and the happy period of liberty, which rarely extends to more than three weeks, is at an end. The hood and the jesses control the holiday maker, but it is ony a very short time that elapses before he is on the wing again, trained and under control,lllll and shortly to be allowed to kill his first grouse five hundred miles from where he learned the use of his wings, "flying at hack" and roosting on Lyndhurst spire.
During my life at Lyndhurst, a great many first-class hawks - hawks such as perhaps have had no superiors - passed throught the mews at the King's House. Of the young hawks that used the spire so persitently in their youth were many very superior game hawks, coming most of them year by year from certain eyries in the precipitous cliffs of north-west Donegal. Wheter it was the intensely wild and stormy surroundings of their birthplace, or whether it was a peculiar strain of dark-coloured peregrines that haunted those precipitous cliffs, I cannot tell; but year by year hawks of the highest class were sent us fro mthose eyries to mature round Lyndhurst spire. Perhaps one of the best was that famous tiercel Persimmon, who came to us in 1897, and lasted till 1900, killing, year after year, old cock grouse up to the end of the season - a thing that not one tiercel in ten is able to do. In one year he killed seventy head of game. But again, from the Culvercliff in the Isle of Wight - an ancient eyrie in which hawks have bred for centuries - one that was specially reserved for Queen Elizabeth for her own personal use - we got one year a very good game falcon called Vesta. She served us for nine seasons, during the short period for which grouse-hawking, bny far the finest form of game hawking that exists, can be carried on. During that time her score was:
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Grouse Other game |
297 41 338 |
The object of the Old Hawking Club, revived in 1872, was to maintain a first-class establishment of working hawks, for all purposes, for the use of its members, where they wished. Every year it obtained from the Dutchmen at Valkenswaard a number of freshly caught passage falcons, and by that means kept an ancient but declining industry on its legs. These were always at first trained ot rooks, and used during the annual visit of the club in March and April to Salisbury Plain. Here we all forgathered, though our quarters shifted from time to time as certain comfortable old inns changed hands. Finally, they were settled at a small cottage at Shrewton, which I bought and made comfortable, and, with rooms at various houses in the village to supplement its accomodation, many very enjoyable gatherings have been held within its walls, by the club and its many visitors. But in former days we were sufficiently comfortably housed, and our sport was very good. The Downs then had not been bought by the War Department for military training, nor laid down to grass and covered with enormous camps as they are now.
There was plenty of arable land to attract rooks, and we could get all the flights we wanted. Most of our members and their friends came down for long or short periods. Our accommodation was always strained, our joviality never failed, whatever might be the weather or the sport. Year by year the members of the French Hawking Club would pay us a visit, when the babel of tongues and the elaborate courtesies exchanged were diverting beyond all expression.
Some members, again, did not patronise the rook hawking, but relied upon the club and its hawks to provide sport on their moors or manors in the game season. Thus the Duke of Portland would year by year have the hawks at Langwell, to help to entertain some of his guests, at that lovely place, prolific of all sport. Mr. St. Quintin and Colonel Brooksbank would take a moor and have the hawks for a month or so. Once, I remember, in that space of time they killed 100 brace of grouse with them, and then the hawks went on to Langwell and killed a number more. Later still that season they killed 105 partridges and made up a total for the game season of 353 head. Lord Lilford, though the country around his home was not suitable for hawking, was unhappily too great a cripple to be able to join us in our sport farther afield, but he always liked to have the hawks with him for a short time, and a good hawk in full practice could show him many successful flights at partridges, even in a cramped country.
The Duke of St. Albans did not come out hawking or care for the sport. But he considered that his position of Hereditary Grand Falconer of England (with an income of £1200 a year) put him under an obligation to do something for the sport of falconry. He therefore joined our club, and gave us a handsome subscription on the understanding that if ever he were called upon by the King to produce hawks and show a day's sport, he should have the use of the club establishment. When some years afterwards his Grace commuted the pension he enjoyed in right of his position as Grand Falconer, he withdrew from the club.
I think the club was strongest and showed its best sport about the period 1886-96. The members in 1886 were:
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Lord Lilford. F. Newcome. W. H. St. Quintin. Lord Londesborough. B. H. Jones. Duke of St. Albans. Duke of Portland. Hon. E. W. B. Portman. Hon. G. Lascelles - Manager. HONORARY MEMBERS
Hon. Cecil Duncombe. The author, the Hon. Gerald Lascelles |
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The total head of game killed during the season was 515, including 77 rabbits taken with a goshawk.
In 1890 we had an extraordinary good lot of hawks, and they killed in March and April no less than 257 head of rooks, &c., out of 293 flights. Among these hawks was a rare old falcon called Elsa, flying at rooks then for the fifth season in succession, and killing them as well as ever. But she had also spent the four previous autumns in Scotland, flying at grouse and killing them in the grandest style - in fact, in two of her four seasons, she made the highest score of all the team. Yet after each spring she would, having well moulted, dome out again in August, as a rook hawk, and make year after year either the best, or nearly the best, score of all the lot. It is very unusual to get a hawk that will thus excel in two entirely different forms of sport year after year, and for so many seasons, and when such a jewel is discovered there is no end to the amount of sport that can ge bot out of her. Elsa went on flying grouse into her sixth season, and then was lost at Langwell, the scene of many of her triumps. It is to be hoped that she got clear away, and next spring found herself a mate and bred young eyases of her own quality.
Her mantle to some extent fell upon Ursula, a falcon caught in Elsa's last year with us, and she was just as good as her predecessor, though she did not last so long. In 1891 she killed 50 rooks on the Downs in spring, and in the same autumn 50 grouse in Scotland, coming again to her work at rooks as well as ever the following March.
In 1893 we had an extraordinary rook hawk sent from Holland, which we called Danceaway. She was always kept as a rook hawk, and lasted for seven seasons, invariably flying in splendid form, and never doing anything wrong. A child could have handled and managed her, and she was a delightful pet. Moreover, she always showed us the best of sport., for her style of flying was a treat to behold. She killed for us altogether 288 rooks. In 1902 we trained a remarkable hawk at Lyndhurst, a haggard which was named Shelagh. Now, for the benefit of those readers who are not falocners, I must explain that a haggard is a fully matured hawk - possibly an old one that has reared young, for it is not easy, after the first moult into the blue or breeding plumage, to say how old she may be. Possibly she has migrated more than once, and travelled over half of the globe, returning with her kind to Norther Europe at her appointed season. Obviously such hawks as these, with a wild nature inbred in them, and influencing them for years, are five times as hard to train as a hawk taken from the nest, which is almost afrain to lose sight of the man who has always brought food to it. It is further twice as hard to tame as even an ordinary wild caught hawk of the first year, which is not yet a twelvemonth old, and is more easily reclaimed.
Many a haggard is not really worth the trouble it takes to reclaim and train. Moreover, if you lose her, and leave her out for but twenty-four hours, the old "call of the wild" comes to her, and you have a wild hawk to catch again, instead of merely a lost friend to find and recover.
But if you once get your haggard trained, you have a hawk indeed. For you have got no amateur that needs entering and training to teach her to fly, but a genuine professional - one that has at the least maintained itself for two or three years, killing some wild sea bird, or rock pigeon on most days, and harrying the wild fowl on their migrations, and possibly has also brought up a family needing far harder work from her, and plenty more killing in order to supply the larder for the whole brood.
Such a hawk as is this can fly like a swift, and catch prey wherever she is well placed to do so. She has for her a livetime exercised "dominion over the fowls of the air" at her sweet will and pleasure; and if you can get her to exercise those powers for your behoof whenever you please, you have got a hawk worth any amount of trouble. It is all a question of temper. If you light on a really sweet-tempered haggard, and have the patience and experience to handle her, you may get a hawk worth many ordinary ones.
Such a hawk was Shelagh. She became as sweet-tempered and gentle as a bird could be, and we all loved her. As to performances: in her first year she killed fifty-four rooks; in her second, sixty-two. She came out in her third year as good as ever, and was beginning to run up a score again, when she was lost, owing to a clumsy blunder with rotten tackle. It is, alas; so easy to lose a good hawk; and the better she is the harder it is to recover her, for a good hawk is never hungry. We have had other good haggards, some that were for long so handy as to be useful as game hawks, but Shelagh was the nearest approach ot a perfectly tractable wild falcon that I remember having handled.
We have had many a notable hawk - such as Josephine, who killed 185 rooks in three and a half seasons; Aimwell, who killed 72 rooks her first season; - but it would be tedious to recount the doings of these various favourites, interesting as they may be to those who witnessed them. There has never been a year up to the present time that has not produced one or two very good hawks; but, of course, some of them stand out as exceptionally good ones, and are remembered accordingly.
All of these hawks that I have named were trained at Lyndhurst, with many others, year by year. The mews was always open to visitors who took an interest in the sport, and the early lessons on training were all given on the Lyndhurst racecourse, where some scores of good hawks first learned to use their powers of flight under the control of man.
But I regret to say that, although the existence of a pretty large stud of trained hawks excited some little interest in the neighbourhood, the ancient sport of falconry has lost its hold over any but a small band of enthusiasts. The amount of patience and time necessary to success in a very difficult sport does not appeal to the modern sportsman, who lives at a faster rate and requires a larger return of quarry brought to bag to repay him for his time and trouble than he can get out of a trained falcon.
Those who are once bitten with the desire to follow this beautiful old sport seldom recover, and generally become real enthusiasts, up to the end of their days; but it is idle to dream of a "revival of falconry" such as sæhould restore this pastime to its ancient position of the premier sport enjoyed by the leaders of Europe.
The general practice of shooting and the improvement in fowling-pieces was the first blow to the more precarious method of providing game for household consumption by the means of trained hawks. Then the enclosure of most of the cultivated lands of England so reduced the area of open land available for hawking, that it bcame practically banished to the Downs, where the country is on the chalk formation. In other districts the sport died out perforce.
The best Downs remaining for the purpose of the sport are those Wiltshire Downs ranging from Lavington to Salisbury, and from Marlborough to the valley of the Wylye.
But these, alas! have been ruined for sport or beauty by the necessities of the military authorities, when seeking for fresh training grounds for troops, to which all else had to give way. When first an immense slice of Salisbury Plain was purchased, a large standing camp was established at Bulford, near Amesbury. This camp has grown and grown until, on what was once the wildest and most attractive part of our country - where the hobby and even the raven built - there is a vast city of tin houses.
The camps to the south side of the Avon - Larkhill and others - were soon afterwards established, and then commenced the artillery practice over all the wide Downs almost from Stonehenge to Lavington.
We withdrew to the remotest corners of the Downs on the western side, but our range is very limited, and our sport on its last legs in that district.
However, I do not doubt that many another keen falconer of earlier generations has died in the firm conviction that the sport he loved was dying with him; so I hope that as to my certain knowledge those veterans were in error, and that it has fallen to my lot to maintain this time-honoured sport for a span of nigh upon fifty years after they had passed away, so may I also be mistaken in my gloomy prognostications, and better and younger men will carry on what has been well described as "the noblest sport in which man has ever indulged," for the benefit of many future generations after I have ceased to take a part in it.
With this somewhat digressive chapter, I bring to a close my history of my New Forest life. As I have explained above, although hawking had not much vogue in the Forest, yet it has always been identified with my pursuits, and in my old age andretirement I am thankful that the tinkle of a falcon's bell is generally to be heard in my garden.
BORCH'S FALCONRY - english