The Countess of Feversham cut a dashing figure in the hunting field in a red coat and a top hat, as Millais’ portrait would bring out if I could find a colour version.
I hope you are able to read her excellent obituary in The Daily Telegraph so poorly photographed by me. She was les well known in literary circles and, so far as I am aware, wrote only one book: Strange Stories of the Chase. The Earl of Halifax, MFH, her brother, wrote the Foreword.
”If there are two things to which my family has always been addicted – one might almost say dedicated – they are Foxhunting and the Supernatural. When these two subjects are in some way linked together, the effect on anyone who feels as I do is uncanny.”
In fact she wrote it only to the extent of collecting stories amongst which is the legend of the Gormanston foxes, sent to Lady Feversham by Eileen, Viscountess Gormanston, wife of the 15th Viscount, of Gormanston Castle. As it concerns my great, great uncle (by marriage), the 14th Viscount, I will quote it in full.
”Among the premonition legends attached to ancient families is the legend of the Gormanston foxes, which alleges that when death or disaster threatens the head of the Gormanston family, foxes keep vigil close to the entrance to the ancestral home.
Belief in the legend is firmly held by the family and, although the Celtic mind is well known to be highly imaginative, the Prestons are not of Celtic origin – they were Lords of Preston in Lancashire until the 14th century. In 1361 Sir Robert de Preston (whose great grandson was later created 1st Viscout Gormanston) set sail for the eastern coast of Ireland, saw and straightway fell in love with the ‘Manor of Gormanston by the Sea’, bought it and made of it the family seat. Of the sixteen Viscounts who succeeded him only one married a wife of purely Celtic origin.
Proof that the legend was held by the neighbourhood long ago is shown by an entry in an old diary, where, under the date of the 12th Viscount’s death, the day’s abortive hunting was accounted for in the words of a village woman, “Shouldn’t they have known well that all the foxes had gone to see the old Lord die”.
The first record we have of this strange legend was written at the time of the death of the 13th Viscount in 1876. His illness had taken a turn for the better and he had been moved down from his bedroom into the library at Gormanston. His wife, Lucretia, eldest daughter of William Charles Jerningham, who had always treated the legend of the foxes with smiling incredulity, happened to look out of the window and saw a number of foxes sitting on the grass at the far side of the gravel sweep in front of the main hall door, exactly opposite to the library windows. She sent her two sons, Jenico (afterwards 14th Viscount) and Edward, to drive them away. Armed with sticks the two boys succeeded in chasing the foxes into the nearby shrubbery, but as soon as the young men had returned to the house, back came the foxes and took up position as before. The old Lord died that night.
When his funeral procession left Gormanstown Castle, his daughter, the Hon Mrs John Farrell, of Moynalty, Co Meath, saw the foxes trooping across the fields in a pack in the direction of Stamullen churchyard.”
(To be continued)