George John Whyte-Melville

A noted authority on hunting etiquette and culture, this prolific Victorian author and sportsman died following his passion for horses and hounds.

- By Sir Johnny Scott

WHEN EQUESTRIAN magazine and The Field sister title Horse & Hound was first published on 29 March 1884 the front cover carried the strapline 'I freely admit that the best of my fun I owe it to horse and hound'. Every week since, these words have appeared either on the cover or the contents page. This quotation was cleverly adopted by the editor, Arthur Portman, from that wonderfully evocative poem The Good Grey Mare by the author George John Whyte-Melville, which so movingly portrays the enduring bond between rider and horse.

Whyte-Melville was born at Mount Melville, the family estate near St Andrews in Fife in 1821. His father, Major John Whyte-Melville, late 12th Lancers and Royal Fifeshire Yeomanry, was a well-known sportsman, Master of the Fife Foxhounds from 1827 to 1848 and captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. His mother, Lady Catherine Osborne, was the youngest daughter of the 5th Duke of Leeds, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Pitt the Younger. Young Whyte-Melville was tutored at home by Robert Lee, the future professor of biblical criticism at the University of Edinburgh, before going on to Eton.

In 1839 his father purchased a commission for him in the 93rd Highlanders - later the Argyll and Sutherland - exchanging into the Coldstream Guards in 1846 and retiring with the rank of captain in 1849. Two years beforehand Whyte-Melville had married the Hon Charlotte Bateman-Hanbury. On his retirement from the Army they moved to Northamptonshire to pursue his passion for foxhunting and, once the Season was over, to try his hand at writing.

His first novel was