There he confronted them, looking rather like a prophet of old with his bristling white beard, holding the shotgun at the ready.

General Bouverie, a mild and courteous person when he was not on horseback, always became so excited during a hunt that he went purple in the face, blasted everybody he encountered with weird and terrible oaths, and demanded of them in furious tones, ‘Have you seen my fox, damn you?’ Peaceful shepherds, market-gardeners ploughing their land, and even passing motorists who were not aware there was a fox for miles, were often cursed up hill and down dale because they were too stupefied by the General’s demented appearance to answer this terrifying question. But now, as the General pounded up to the gate and yelled out to William, ‘Have you seen my fox, damn you?’ he received a reply which he had certainly never had before.

‘I have seen my fox,’ said William sternly, ‘and your hounds have just killed it.’

‘Your fox?’ spluttered General Bouverie, who believed like all Masters of Foxhounds that he had a prescriptive right to all the foxes within the boundaries of his hunting-country, ‘What the devil do you mean by your fox?’ And he uttered his favourite oath, which was the most extraordinary one I have ever heard: ‘Fishcakes and haemorrhoids!’

‘All the same,’ said William, with quiet dignity, ‘it was my fox; and this is my land; and if any of you dares to step over the boundary of my land I’ve got a gun.’

A ridiculous situation arose, in which everybody talked except William. A woman with a drawling voice said, ‘The fellow must be drunk,’ several times. General Bouverie’s huntsman encouraged his hounds from a distance (although they needed no encouragement) to ‘tear ’im up, my beauties, tear ’im and worry ’im, worry, worry, worry!’ The General himself called upon fishcakes and haemorrhoids repeatedly but with diminishing conviction. And the Secretary of the Hunt, who was a lawyer, endeavoured to reason with William in a very learned way by pointing out that foxes, like other wild beasts, were legally considered to be animals ferae naturae, that is to say of a wild nature, in which the law recognized no private property whatsoever.

But William, who was somewhat ferae naturae himself, took no notice. Perhaps he didn’t even listen, perhaps he was too full of grief for his little fox and of horror at the worrying noises of the hounds. But he continued to stand at the gate holding the gun awkwardly (for he hardly ever used it) and looking rather like a stiff sentry ‘On guard’ in a bad Victorian oleograph. Anon the huntsman blew his horn, and the hounds began to come back to him in twos and threes, bloody and stinking of fox, carrying tatters of fur in their mouths. General Bouverie called and cursed them alliteratively:

‘Hey, Barmaid, Bosphorus, blast the bitch, Bellman, Bountiful! Here, Dimple, Daisy, Dairymaid, Dauntless, damn the dog, Daffodil!’ and at last he turned his horse and rode away, followed by the disconsolate company. ‘I did want to see them break up their fox,’ said the drawling lady. ‘It’s so rarely the poor darlings ever get the chance . . . What an uncouth, what a barbaric old man!’

Ups and Downs

After that William gave notice to General Bouverie that he would never allow the Hunt on his land; and this action of his was to have far-reaching consequences, as you shall see. It had one immediate consequence, which was that the Hunt no longer bought their hay from him, and because the Depression was just beginning he was left with two big ricks of seeds on his hands. Then one of his cows got foot and mouth disease, and the Ministry of Agriculture sent their slaughterers to kill every beast on the farm. They had to fetch the village policeman before they dared to do it, for they had heard tales of how William had threatened the Hunt with a gun. In the end, however, he gave them surprisingly little trouble. When he saw the preparations for the burning, the faggots and hedge-brash piled high in his Home Ground, the fight went out of him suddenly and the policeman, who knew how to handle him, led him brokenhearted into the house.

Because of this loss, and the time it took him to re-stock his farm, the Depression hit him badly. For two or three seasons there was a glut of fruit and nobody to buy it; the price of sprouts didn’t pay for the cost of growing them; sometimes it was actually cheaper to plough a crop into the ground than to try to market it. William, like all the other farmers round about Brensham, got into debt with the bank, the seed-merchant, the local tradesmen, and even the village pub; but unlike some of the others he paid them all in full when the new war began to loom up on the horizon and the farmers were suddenly prosperous again.

Neither debt nor disaster could tame him, and even during the worst of the Depression he would often blow into Brensham like the wind, shattering the uncomfortable quietude of those stricken days when it seemed indeed as if we were taking part in the obsequies of a dying countryside, as if a graveside hush lay over the land. Into the Adam and Eve or the Trumpet or the Horse Narrow blew William, boisterous, thunderous, always discovering at the bottom of his trousers-pocket a forgotten half-crown to pay for another round of drinks; then out into the street at closing-time, singing and shouting his defiant happiness to the world at large, banging on the windows and doors of friends, acquaintances and strangers alike, and answering their sleepy protests with that strange proud boast about his apocryphal ancestry – ‘Thee carsn’t touch I! Thee carsn’t touch I! For I be descended from the poet Shakespeare!’ and so, with huzza and tolderolloll, away home to the farm on the hill.

One of the most endearing things about William Hart was his complete lack of any shame or remorse afterwards; indeed he seemed to glory in the memory of his bouts and to look back on them with only one regret, that they were over. When the Rector happened to meet him on the morning following a particularly riotous night, and said to him sternly, ‘I hear you were very noisy last night, William,’ the wild old man threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Noisy?’ he said. ‘Why, I was drunk – rascally drunk!’ And he fairly smacked his lips over the night’s junketings – ‘Rascally drunk, Rector!’

Liberty ’All

William’s favourite pub was certainly the Horse and Harrow, because it had a boisterous atmosphere in which he felt at home. Its landlord, Joe Trentfield, who was a retired sergeant-major, and his huge wife who moved with the ponderous dignity of a full-rigged ship sailing into action, were boon-companions for William because like him they possessed an infinite capacity for laughter. Little came amiss to them as a source of fun; and the world as they saw it was a rich plum-pudding stuffed with joke and jest.

Mimi and Meg, being brought up in this genial air, soon added their quota to the general merriment. They were both serving in the bar (illegally, I dare say) before they were fourteen; and in one of my earliest memories of William Hart I can see the two strapping little girls sitting on his knees, while he warmed a pint of beer with a red-hot poker and told them stories. He was a born storyteller and I think the only time he was ever serious was when he was inventing tales for the children. He would then tell the most comic story with that quiet gravity which children love.