Cattistock (UK) Joint-Masters in 1936: (l-r) Tally Ruxton and A. Henry Higginson
A family ignores the instructions of the Master and huntsman as he draws for a fox. Nieces of the family continue to forge ahead, despite the huntsman’s requests that they stop when he stops. The wife fails to get out of the huntsman’s way as he tries to get to hounds, so he barrels on through and knocks her off her pony. The wife and her niece continue to hunt kickers with red ribbons in the tails that have already injured field members and their horses.
The Master and huntsman, in this case, is A. Henry Higginson, an internationally-known American Master, huntsman, and breeder of English foxhounds. In 1930, he was engaged by the Cattistock Hunt Committee (UK) to serve as Master and huntsman in their hunting country in England. His breeding and training program have improved the pack and the sport, and his contributions are recognized and appreciated.
The family, in this case, is John Budden and his wife, Diana. The Buddens are landowners in the Cattistick hunting country. They maintain important coverts on their land and keep them safe for foxes by barring gunners. To make matters more difficult, Budden is a close personal friend of Higginson’s English Joint-Master, Tally Ruxton. Both Budden and Ruxton were military officers in The Great War.
Alexander Henry Higginson
Higginson was an opinionated man. In 1905, he rose to prominence in the North American sporting world and elsewhere when he challenged Harry Worcester Smith to a dual between his English foxhounds and Smith’s American foxhounds to settle the ongoing controversy as to which was the better breed of foxhound in accounting for the fox. The Great English-American Hound Match held in the Virginia Piedmont was reported in newspapers and sporting journals across the country and is still talked about to this day.
Higginson’s most fundamental opinion, of course, concerned the matter of what to do with his adult life. In his mind, there was no question. While most Boston Brahmin-born men followed a well-established mold—graduate from Harvard, then spend the rest of one’s life in the world of finance—young Higginson chose a different life. He did graduate from Harvard, but detoured from the expected path of his forbears and devoted the rest of his life to foxhunting. And…with the indulgence and financial support of his father.
Higginson wrote numerous books, excellent books, on foxhunting and American foxhound packs of his day. He was instrumental in the early years of administrating the newly-established Masters of Foxhounds Association. And Anglophile that he was, he served as Master of Foxhounds and huntsman of the Cattistock foxhounds in England from 1930 to 1939. He remains to this day a respected, albeit opinionated figure in American foxhunting history.
So, it’s news to hear of serious personal controversy between Higginson and an important Cattistock landowner that occurred in 1937 during his Mastership there. The flap is well-documented in a series of original letters discovered between the leaves of a book, Try Back, written by Higginson and published in 1932. The book containing the letters was recently purchased by Peter Devers, a member of the Sandanona Harehounds, a foot pack that hunts in the Millbrook Hunt country in New York State. A longtime foot hunter, Peter was made an honorary member of the Millbrook Hunt, having followed the foxhounds on foot for seventeen years.
Peter forwarded copies of the correspondence to Foxhunting Life. The letters reveal a series of incidents that would try the patience of any Master and huntsman, and how they were handled by the latter. Personal relations finally ruptured one day into a serious incident in the Cattistock field. Before day’s end, the Buddens, Higginson, his Joint-Master Ruxton, and the hunt chairman found themselves embroiled in a no-win situation. We can reflect on how each man’s response was triggered by his background, his personality, and…possibly…personal prejudices.
The Controversy
Over time, it appears that the Budden family in the hunting field was a bane to Higginson, as Master and huntsman. One particular day in 1937 turned out to be especially difficult for sport. As the day neared a disappointing end, a fox was viewed. Desperate to show a final burst before going home, Higginson saw an opportunity. He studied the country before him, instructed the field where to stand and wait, and, most importantly, told them where not to stand.
It didn’t work. Budden and his wife appeared where they weren’t supposed to be, and a furious Higginson severely castigated the Buddens in front of the field. An equally furious Budden dispatched a letter that very evening to Douglas Pass, the Cattistock hunt chairman.
December 19, 1937
Dear Pass,
I forward herewith a letter of protest which please put up before your committee.
It refers to the conduct of Alex Higginson to me and my family in the field….
We have stood it now for several seasons but we have had enough…
…if he continues this line of conduct we shall be forced to ask him to desist from coming into our coverts…
…we have hunted all our lives and never have been subjected to such untoward conduct…
The hunt chairman shared the letter with Higginson’s Joint-Master, Tally Ruxton. In his turn, Ruxton wrote a letter to Higginson.
December 19, 1937
Dear Alex,
A situation has arisen with regard to the hunt which…is definitely serious….
I heartily sympathize with John Budden in his complaint, and I think that your treatment of him and his family has been both unnecessary and uncalled for….
The first instanced that he mentions i.e. Diana being knocked off her pony, I personally did not see….
Your two fracases with his nieces however, I did see and in both these instances I feel that your action was entirely wrong….
Your words with John earlier this season…were unwarranted and later that night, after dinner, you admitted to me that his suggestion was correct and that you were wrong: and again yesterday…I think the way you spoke to him and to Mrs. Budden was most unjust….
I do not for one second claim that I have the knowledge of hunting or the experience that you have had, but I do claim to have an equal knowledge to right and wrong and the proper use of authority.
Custom dictates that it is wrong to answer back to a Master in the hunting field but this same custom also dictates that the Master, finding himself with this absolute authority, must lean over backwards not to abuse it.
Hunting is neither a business nor a duty but it is solely a sport that people participate in for the pleasure they get out of it. Good hunting and good fellowship in the field must go hand in hand.
We must use the power and authority given us with the very greatest of care…
I am convinced that he is right and you are wrong.
Ruxton’s letter appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Higginson replied.
December 20th, 1937
Dear Tally,
…It seems to me that John Budden sees fit to take an absurdly serious point of view, —I might say a childish one…
I have no recollection whatsoever of having knocked Diana off her horse….but if she happened to be in my way, in the ride, when I was hunting hounds, it may have happened….
He says I have handled his niece….I can recollect one time this season, when she kept forging ahead, in spite of being asked civilly to stop, when I did so.
Mrs. Budden and her niece continually ride two horses which kick and have injured members of the field and their horses; and that if they bring such horses out to hunt, they should take due care not to get in other peoples’ way. If I were a member of the Field, I should used a damn sight worse language than I ever have used as Master….
With regard to his final charge; i.e. Saturday….John Budden and Mrs. Budden, at the bottom end of Coker Wood, could not wait to see what happened; couldn’t wait til the Field got away…but had to gallop up the open space, which would have headed any fox back into the Wood if he had tried to cross…a damned exasperating performance…[for] any Master who was trying to show sport to a Field on a bad day….
You are much less quick-tempered and impulsive than I am….but since you feel as you do, and since I respect your judgment, while not admitting for one minute, that you are right and I am wrong in the opinions that we hold, I’m perfectly willing to acquiesce to an extent….
I will go farther…I will have nothing to say to Budden, or Mrs. Budden, or any of his family, in the field; no matter WHAT they do—unless they deliberately refuse to acceded to a request which is made by you, or Peter, or me, to the Field in general….
We can only get on together, in the future, as we have in the past, by trying to see the other fellow’s point of view, and by occasionally yielding to the other man’s judgment.
Concluding Thoughts
What the final agreement was between the parties, we don’t know. Baily’s Hunting Directory tells us that Higginson and Ruxton both remained as Joint-Masters until 1939, the year that England declared war on Nazi Germany. After that, British life changed drastically for both people and foxhounds.
There can be no doubt that more Masters of even a half-century ago tended to be more imperious compared to the Masters of today. But in my opinion, I believe every player in this unfortunate story was in the wrong in some way and had something to answer for.
Higginson we know was opinionated and never had the need to learn diplomacy. Which he might have used to advantage with Budden.
Budden and his family appear to have been the prototypical field members from Hell, yet they had value to the hunt. Taken aside for a private discussion with his friend, Ruxton, might have been the better move.
Ruxton was sensible and diplomatic, especially about how a Master should use the absolute power granted to him by his station. Yet he couldn’t relate to Higginson’s frustrations, inflicted by an uncooperative field member for reasons we don’t know. Ignorance? Pride? Hearing loss? Prejudice? To my mind, that’s the sixty-four-dollar question at the root of the entire affair. From there, the personalities, loyalties, and shortcomings of the other players simply played out as they must.
Posted April 27, 2021