HUNTING IN HAPPY HEAVITREE, 1841

 "On Saturday last Mr. R. Cockburn's hounds met at Sandy Gate, at half past ten,, when many of the knowing ones who were let into the secret, were on the qui vive.  The dogs were soon in Mr Salter's brakes, and the music of the full-toned hounds gave notice of what we might expect if we looked sharp out - and so it was, for Reynard, after dodging about the furze, made a bolt through the fir plantation, up the quarry lane by Mr Tuckett's farm, in a line to Heavitree Church, as if he were about to take sanctuary, but finding his friends too close at his heels, he made towards Mr Yard's, and there we were at fault, we thought he was gone to the Tanner's to change his coat, but shortly, after he was discovered crossing the gardens, thence over to Mr. Eardley's chapel to Miss Blunt's gate - finding that shut he went away into the adjoining garden where the hounds fresh found him.  He seemed so  taken with the happy village of Heavitree, as to be determined to end his days therein for he scampered away across the church path to Mr.Swale's to the great amazement of the villagiers;  the dogs were close to his brush, ands he once again reached his brake, but with all the appearance of having had more to do than he had anticipated on his first set out from home, which he never again quitted, the dogs having mawled him at the end of the brake."

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I find it odd that this report from The Western Times of 10th April, 1841 makes no mention of horses leaping over gates or horsemen falling off and breaking their bones or whatever.  Presumably there were  horses galloping in and out of the gardens of the happy village of Heavitree in 1841.  In any case the sporting citizens of Exeter, the 'knowing ones', our hunting fathers, did not have far to go to watch the unspeakable pursuing the uneatable.

What an amazing contrast can be sensed between the spirit of community that is here and the anonymity of our modern life.   Mr. Cockburn and the Salters,  Mr. Tuckett a farmer, Mr. Yard,  Tanner, a tailor?, Mr Eardley, a dissenting minister, dear Miss Blunt,  Mr. Swale, Uncle Tom Cobley and all:  all  (okay, except the last!) have their names casually dropped with the assumption, it seems, that much of the readership, in the city and in towns and villages other than Heavitree, might have some acquaintance with these neighbours.

Mauled, spelled above with a w, - a typo I imagine, as with villagiers, is the just word,  The dogs would have smashed the fox as with a mallet,  not, as the word tends to mean nowadays, leaving the job half finished.