THE DUKE’S “ BAG ”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 4

THE DUKE’S “ BAG ”

A MAN AND TWO DOGS'. The opening, of the grouse season on August 12 reminded “Lucio” of the Manchester Guardian that the great Duke of Wellington was a dangerous man with a gun. One of the youthful recollections of the second Lord Granville was of a nursery maid rushing into the house, crying’, “The Duke of Wellington has shot master.” It was true. After shooting two dogs, the Iron Duke had inadvertently discharged his gun into his host’s face, fortunately w'thout inflicting serious injury. Lady Shelley, too, in her diary, told of an autumn afternoon in 1819 when Wellington went shooting in her company. After wounding a retriever and peppering the keeper’s legs, he sent a sprinkling of small shot into the arms of an old woman who was washing at her cottage window. “My good woman,” Lady Shelley says she told her, “this ought to the the proudest moment cf your life, for you have had the dis tinction of being shot by the great Duke of Wellington.” The old dame seemed to find small consolation in the assurance, but smiled when the contrite Duke slipped a guinea into her hand by way of compensation.