In the lovely rolling hills of Loudoun County, Va., lies an ancient patchwork of meadow bramble, swamp, and wood that has become the Mecca of American pack beaglers: Aldie. The Institute Farm. Once an early agricultural college, changing times saw its mission dwindle and in the 1880s it became home to the National Beagle Club.

Each year, in the verdant spring and the sun-stroked autumn, packs of Bassets and Beagles gather here on the hallowed ground where Civil War armies fought and bled. Each year the green jackets of beaglers, not the blue and the gray, are seen in regiments crossing the hills and the heath. Each year now the copper hunting horn, not the army bugle, issues the commands that echo through the brush.

Morgan Wing loved this place and came to it many times. He had been led here by the old Millbrook beagler, Eugene Reynal, when a boy. The camaraderie, the conviviality, the charm of the hunting retreat led him back every year since. The old, yellow three-story college building, the collection of rustic cabins grouped about a courtyard, the kennel yards on the hill, and the acres of fenced meadow known as “the enclosure” were to him a second home.

In time he had risen to become the secretary of the club, a force uniting the widespread packs of foot hounds. Finally, toward the end of his life, he had become the president.

It was here, when he realized his life was being ripped from him, that he chose to have his ashes cast.

The pale tin can in the back of Oakleigh Thorne’s car was jostled to and fro as the master of the Sandanona Beagles wound his way along Route 15, south of Gettysburg, heading to the fall pack trials.

The canister had sat on the bookshelf of his home, Thorndale, in Millbrook, for almost a year. He would often look at it in amazement. It was hard to imagine so small a canister containing the soul of a man as large as Wing, but then he remembered, it didn’t. It held only the man’s ashes. His soul was still held and cherished by the many folk and family members who called him a friend.

“Almost there, Morgan,” said Oakleigh, turning his head to look in the back. The low green hound van could be seen bobbing through the rear window, carrying the hounds Morgan had bred and hunted for many years.

It was hard to go to Aldie alone, for Morgan’s joyful and enthusiastic presence was what made the Virginia trips a pleasure. His love of hounds and hunting was so infectious that you couldn’t help but grin and enjoy the sport all the more. But now that presence was lacking, was silent, and the world was just a little bit different.

Most of Morgan’s family would be coming to the gathering at Aldie. Anne, his widow, four daughters and a son would soon be there to take in a few hunts, to celebrate one last time together the sport thatwas the center of Morgan’s life.
And then, later, with many of his friends from the gathered packs, they would walk out with Oakleigh into the field to scatter about the ashes of the old huntsman.

Bigger Than Life

At a small cairn of stones midway into “the enclosure,” a bit to the right of the main path, the party stopped. Almost all the beaglers at Aldie were present. Fred Stone, who had whipped in to Morgan early on and now hunted the Wolver, was there. So too was Jack Oelsner, who had hunted the Buckram Beagles of Long Island, the pack where Morgan had been master over 30 years ago. John S. Williams, master of the Old Chatham, stood near Bun Sharp, master of the Nantucket-Treweryn. Both had been Morgan’s friends. Mrs. Merry, of the Merry Beagles, stubbed out her ever-present cigarette as Oakleigh began to speak.

“It is so hard to bring my friend Morgan here, to Aldie, this way. Not to have him walking, laughing, talking to hounds when amongst us seems unbelievable. He was a bigger-than-life kind of man, and life seems a bit smaller now without him around. Though he has been gone almost a year, I still feel the loss?”

Oakleigh continued on with a brief eulogy, followed by the Wing children. Faith, Whitney, Lucia, Jill, and Bryce. They spoke about the Morgan most didn’t know, the father, the confidant, the family man. Anne said her quiet goodbyes. Oakleigh removed a few of the stones from the top of the cairn, and Morgan’s children slowly poured the gray ash into the earth of Aldie. Oakleigh called for a moment’s silence, and then the party broke back to The Institute for lunch.

Perfect Plan

Three boys hung back a bit, waiting by the cairn until the rest had left. The cere-mony had been so brief; they felt something had been left unfinished. Morgan, their friend, needed something more triumphant.

Peter broke the enveloping silence.

“No one brought his hounds up here,” he said quietly, “If we’d only known the exact time, we could have had the pack here waiting for him.”
“No one was dressed in livery,” added Billy. “Wouldn’t you think for such a great huntsman as him everyone would have worn their green jackets? I mean everyone. I would have changed if we’d gotten here earlier.”

Paul kicked a clod of earth, and watched a stone bounce down the trail. “No one blew the hunting horn for him!” he said in amazement. “I can’t believe it! Why didn’t anyone think to do it? It’s crazy not to do it for a guy like him!”

The whips fell silent. Peter shrugged his shoulders in puzzlement and shook his head.

“I guess they think that sort of stuff is pretty hokey,” he said.

Throughout the afternoon’s hunting the three whips followed the hounds quietly together, running along the trails at the side of the packs. Soon Paul came to a dead stop. Peter and Billy looked at him quizzically.

“They should at least have had a horn there,” he said finally, sitting down on a rock. “They should have.”

Peter and Billy sat down too, listening to the huntsman’s voice dwindling into the distance as he coaxed his searching hounds forwards.

“You know,” said Peter after a long silence, “the three of us can steal out into the enclosure at midnight, with the Sandanona, and a hunting horn, and give Morgan a real huntsman’s send-off. Maybe we can even have a midnight hunt. No one will have to know except us.”

“Awesome!” said Billy, his face lighting up with delight. “In livery. That would be perfect!”

“Yes! Let’s do it!” said Paul, jumping off a rock. “That’s a great idea!”

The light of pleasure faded from Billy’s face, however, as he thought of something.

“There’s only one thing,” he said, looking at Peter. “Paul and I have an 11 p.m. curfew. We have to be back in our cabin then, with John S. [Williams], because that was the deal when our parents let us come here with him. We’ll have to tell him what we want to do and get his OK.”

“He Knows”

Peter went into the Sandanona run and opened the hinged panel of the sleeping room. He found the two brothers, Flanker and Farmer, curled together and handed one after the other to Billy and Paul. Morgan’s favorite little bitch, their sister Fury, was in the other run and she was too quickly found and leashed.

“We need another,” said John Williams. “We always run two couples in ‘the enclosure,’ so we should have another.”

Peter was about to reach for a second bitch when, in the dog run, Pilot jumped down and came to the kennel door. Pilot the fighter, the outsider whom few of the other dogs liked, could hunt up a storm when the moment took him. Pilot was the dog hound Morgan so often spoke of before he died, whom he had brought over to his house to run rabbits while on his deathbed. Just so he could hear a Beagle’s cry.

“He knows,” whispered Williams. “Take him.”

In the darkness a slight moon was enough to light their way to the enclosure gate. A rabbit, sitting against the fence, bolted and swished through the grass, heading deeper into the fenced yard. A small wind whispered in the rushes. The party headed toward the small gathering of stones that marked Morgan’s last place of rest.

Pilot, on Peter’s lead, came to a stop.

“I know he knows why we’re here,” said Williams, looking wonderingly at the dog hound.

The hounds and people gathered around the earth where the ashes had been deposited that morning. The circle was an ancient form, and as the nine ringed the cairn Peter thought it could almost be a gathering of Roman legionnaires in Britain, mourning a comrade fallen far from home. Or perhaps soldiers of the Civil War, at the Aldie battlefield, staring at one of them who would never rise again. There was something timeless about what was happening, something pagan and primal, yet something pure and endearing.

Williams took off his hat and began to speak.

“Morgan, these young friends of yours thought things were done amiss this morning. And maybe they were. Maybe as we men turn from boys to adults we lose the romance of life, and of death. We fear to express what is in our hearts. Life drives us on. We move too fast. We lose sight of what is important, what is right, what is beautiful.

“There should have been hounds here this morning. From all the packs, not just your own. There should have been men in full livery to bear you here. There should have been a horn call to send you on. These young friends of yours, Morgan, and even an old one like me, should have said a few good words to cheer you on at the end of your run.

“We failed you this morning. But we’re here now, your hounds, your young whip, and your friends, to set things aright.”

Williams paused a moment, and then went on to tell of how Morgan had helped him with the Old Chatham, how this generosity and good spirits had been felt and appreciated no end. He spoke of how Morgan was the soul of the National Beagle Club, how his work had helped encourage the formation of other packs, had raised the recognition of the NBC with all who owned Beagles, brace and pack men alike. He told of how Morgan had helped make the Bassets equals with their cousins. He spoke simply and eloquently, summing up a life that was cut short all too soon.

The boys’ comments weren’t as eloquent as Williams’, nor as long, each only saying that Morgan had been his friend, that he was proud to have known him, to have shared a hunting field with Morgan, to have been given some of his boundless love of hounds and the chase. In their awkwardness, simplicity and naﶥt鬠their eulogies could not have been more perfect.

At their feet, in dust, lay a boy, 9-year-old Morgan Wing. He had been that age when his father first took him to Eugene Reynal to see the Beagle pack which captured his soul. At their feet lay Morgan Wing, a teenager, the same age as they, who whipped-in with pride to the old master of Beagles and harriers, and loving every minute of it. At their feet lay a brash Morgan Wing in his late 20s, dashingly handsome, fighting for his life on the beaches of Oman, in Sicily, in Italy, in Normandy, in Germany, during the horror that was World War II. At their feet lay a yet older Morgan Wing, a husband, father, friend–and master of his own pack. And at their feet, in dust, lay Morgan Wing, age 62, who would grow no older.

Given The Honor

“It’s time,” whispered Williams, glancing at his watch. “It’s midnight.”

He reached in his coat and pulled out the silver horn that he had been polishing in the cabin. He weighed it in his hands, then turned to Paul and extended it to him.

“Here,” he said, “it should be one of you that blows the last call.”

Paul took the horn, almost reverently, from the master of the pack. He was a handsome athletic youth, with a fluid grace of movement, and he beamed with pride that Williams would let him give Morgan this honor.

He raised the horn to his lips, pausing a moment to gather his spirit. He drew a breath, and from the horn the first quavering notes of the mournful slow call, the “end of the day.”

Many men can blow notes on a hunting horn, but few can make it sing as Paul did that night. The note started deep in his soul and flowed into the silent night sky, hanging like gossamer on the brambles, the branches of trees, the fencing that ringed the enclosure. The call went on and on, the note rising and falling, sweeping down to the kennels where slept the packs of hounds that would hunt in the morning. It crossed over the cabins, where Morgan’s friends and companions slept, and raced into the coverts and thickets of the institute. It passed across the ears of the wild fox and rabbits, making them pause in their foraging. It went on, finding its way to wherever huntsmen go when they die.

Paul ended the call at so low a pitch that the mourners had to lean into the circle to catch the last of it. And then there was silence, utter stillness, pure, and sated with the rightness of the moment.

Each of the party was lost in his own thoughts as the group walked slowly back to the kennels. The hounds were silent too, straining not at all on their leads, thinking whatever thoughts it is that hounds have of men and hunting. Flanker, Farmer and Fury jumped readily into their bedding, but Pilot refused to go in, sitting instead on the cold earth of the run. Peter tried to put him in with the others, but he just balked and growled.

“Leave him be,” said Williams. “Maybe he needs to be by himself after all this.”

The five beaglers walked slowly downhill to the cabins. But in the kennels Pilot stood up, turned in two tight circles, and lay down again on the cool earth.

His ears pricked up at a sound, and he turned his head to look back up the hill toward the place from which they’d just come.

It’s said that a hound’s ears hear more than a human’s, that sounds silent to men are heard by them. This night, it may have been so.
Pilot cocked his head, straining to hear something ghosting even his acute senses. It sounded like a small pack of Beagles, running, hunting an enclosure rabbit. It sounded like a huntsman, his huntsman, laughing in joy at a find. It sounded like a horn, Morgan’s horn, blowing not the mournful “end of day,” but the joyous cry of “hark forward, hark forward on.”

He strained to catch it, but no, whatever it was, if a hunt had been, it had passed on.

He lowered his head slowly down on his paws and gave a quiet whimper. His eyelids drooped, and soon he too joined the rest of the Aldie hounds and hunters in a quiet, silent and dreamless autumn sleep.

Reprinted from Sandanona Hare Hounds: History of Beagling And Basseting in Millbrook (2004), with permission of the publisher, Liberty Hall Publications Inc. Gary L. Dycus edited the book.