The forgotten Mr Fox
LIKE MOST PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, I love foxes. The walls of our houses, cottage or castle, are covered in his artistic representation — Alken, Edwards and Ferneley. Our bookshelves play host to works on the Chase by Sassoon, Trollope and Surtees. Meanwhile down at the village pub, The Fox and Hounds, we drink pints of Tally Ho and try to catch the eye of the foxy new barmaid.
The fox, for countrymen and women, is much more than mere “quarry”. He is the four-legged Raffles, a gentleman cracksman, an incorrigible criminal we venerate and regard, whilst simultaneously whooping when he is killed by hounds.
RS Surtees personifies this wonderfully muddled thinking with John Jorrocks, the lead protagonist of his 1843 novel . Jorrocks is a cockney grocer turned Master of Foxhounds, a Georgian throw-back; port and brandy antithesis to the woke proto-Victorians who Surtees so despised. “Oh how that beautiful word, Fox, gladdens my’eart and warms the declinin’ embers
