Petronella Wyatt

Beagles and booze

The ongoing escapades of London's answer to Ally McBeal

Virginia

On a Sunday afternoon in the winter there is practically nothing that well-off people in the state of Virginia like to do more than go beagling. So it was that I found myself in the grounds of an ante-bellum plantation house last weekend along with a pack of small dogs, assorted senior citizens and some men in bright-green jackets. The men were also attired in jodhpurs, but without the usual boots. Indeed they appeared to be wearing bedroom slippers and so their legs resembled those of capons that had been dropped in a bucket of dye.

Dr Johnson once defined pointless activity as being like getting on horseback on a ship. Beagling, I soon found out, is very similar. Essentially, it is a long walk to nothing. The men in green jackets crack long, snaking hunting whips and blow horns. The beagles pick up a scent, usually that of a rabbit, and chase after it. The humans follow the dogs as best they can. As the dogs lead one through briars and under hanging branches, this did not bode well for my Chanel sunglasses.

More often than not the dogs cannot find the rabbit which does not bode well for anyone — except perhaps the rabbit. So we trudged about rather aimlessly, without seeing any action, for about two hours. There was considerable consolation, however, in the house. Eerily lovely in the sunset, it stood before a lake, white and porticoed. The front porch was bedecked with rocking chairs whispering their secrets as they creaked in the breeze. A small but exquisite drawing-room conjured up long-forgotten conversations between southern cavaliers about to die for a lost cause.

Someone, I couldn’t find out why, had hung a hangman’s noose over the branch of a large oak in the garden.

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