Lot Essay
A UNIQUE AND DETAILED ACCOUNT OF FOXHUNTING IN LEICESTERSHIRE BY ITS MOST FAMOUS PRACTITIONER.
William Ward Tailby was educated at Repton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became one of the most notable hunting men of his time, earning the accolade of a caricature in Vanity Fair ("A Leicester Man" by G. A. Fothergill in 1899) and numerous obituaries in local and national press on his death.
In 1856 (the year these diaries commence with the words "Nov. 17. Commenced my career as a Master of Hounds...") Tailby took mastership of the Billesdon Country hunt (later named the Fernie) which hunted on what was formerly part of the Quorn and Cottesmore's country in the prime-hunting country of Leicestershire. Over twenty-two seasons of continuous hunting his hounds became one of the most famous and revered packs in the country, playing host to many notable figures of the day and inspiring the writings of George John Whyte-Melville, who was himself killed on the hunting field in 1878. In the same year, Tailby gave up his mastership. He writes: "I have enjoyed a very happy reign, and can but say that I resign the horn with the deepest regret. My occupation gone, I expect I shall sink into a worn-out and premature old man. God grant that it may not be so. And now good-bye for ever to my office and to the happiest period of my career." However, despite a large number of falls and injuries - it was said of him that he had broken every bone in his body - he continued to hunt into his eighties. He was, in the words of his obituary in The Morning Post, "a splendid sportsman of the old school."
William Ward Tailby was educated at Repton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became one of the most notable hunting men of his time, earning the accolade of a caricature in Vanity Fair ("A Leicester Man" by G. A. Fothergill in 1899) and numerous obituaries in local and national press on his death.
In 1856 (the year these diaries commence with the words "Nov. 17. Commenced my career as a Master of Hounds...") Tailby took mastership of the Billesdon Country hunt (later named the Fernie) which hunted on what was formerly part of the Quorn and Cottesmore's country in the prime-hunting country of Leicestershire. Over twenty-two seasons of continuous hunting his hounds became one of the most famous and revered packs in the country, playing host to many notable figures of the day and inspiring the writings of George John Whyte-Melville, who was himself killed on the hunting field in 1878. In the same year, Tailby gave up his mastership. He writes: "I have enjoyed a very happy reign, and can but say that I resign the horn with the deepest regret. My occupation gone, I expect I shall sink into a worn-out and premature old man. God grant that it may not be so. And now good-bye for ever to my office and to the happiest period of my career." However, despite a large number of falls and injuries - it was said of him that he had broken every bone in his body - he continued to hunt into his eighties. He was, in the words of his obituary in The Morning Post, "a splendid sportsman of the old school."