MovieChat Forums > The Camomile Lawn (1992) Discussion > Question about 'The Hounds'

Question about 'The Hounds'


What do the characters mean in the first episode when they talk about "putting the hounds down"? These were references to the neighbor's dogs being killed. For the life of me I can't figure out what this has to do with the story or the war.

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[deleted]

Helena: .....can we talk ?
Richard: What about ?
Helena: The war.
Richard: It's another false alarm; there isn't going to be war.
Helena: The hospitals and doctors are being evacuated, the children t Richard: It's just another bloody exercise. The General says....
Helena: The General is killing the hounds !
Richard: He hasn't done it yet. Good god Helena there won't be war. I Helena: I can't talk to you.

<UPDATE> The IMDB system has chopped lines longer than 70 characters within the pre /pre format markers I was using for the script.

No official order would be required and it would be done because he though that no-one would look after them, or they wouldn't have enough food. For someone who loves hunting it would be the last thing they wanted to do. It was used as an illustration of how seriously the General thought the situation was.

Also, I believe that the expression may have entered common usage at the time to express how seriously people took a situation to be, without being meant literally.

See http://www.mfha.co.uk/hunts_county/4.html for information on the hunts operating in Cornwall now. Since last year they are no longer allowed to hunt with dogs.

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yes, the General was Master of the local foxhunt and responsible for the pack of hounds bred for fox-hunting.

If he had lived through the previous war, he would have known the hunt would have to be be stopped because of the war, probably because there would be no young men to take part in the hunt. Also, if food was going to be rationed, they couldn't justify feeding a pack of hounds that weren't being used.

The hounds are bred specifically for hunting and spend most of their short lives in crowded kennels. They are not suitable as family pets or for any other practical purpose. As soon as they pass their prime, or develop any infirmity or injury, they are put down. Vets bills are not wasted on keeping them alive.

If the hunt was going to be stopped for only a year or two, the hounds would be considered useless by the end of that time. So a callous decision would be made to kill them.

As a previous poster said, 'having to put the hounds down' may have been an ironic expression used by upper-class people for the worst thing that could happen in their privaliged lives.

Poor old Richard refuses to acknowledge all the awful things happening in the world, and even admires Nazi-ism to some extent (as a lot of people did). It's only when he hears that the hounds ar being put down that he wakes up to the fact that life will not be the same again. Upper-midle class Brits do tend to care more about animals than people.

At the moment in Britain, attempts are being made to ban fox-hunting. Legislation went through a couple of years ago, but there are loopholes and some of the hunts are still challenging the law.
One of the arguements used by the pro-hunting lobby was that packs of hounds would have to be destroyed across the land and they tried to use this to get sympathy for their cause. In reality, the dogs are only bred for hunting and have sad and short lives anyway. So it was a bit of a cynical arguement.




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The hounds referred to were Foxhounds. I was in England during the war and I never heard of this happening. Foxhunting was not discontinued for good reason. I haven't seen this series recently, but I think that the author might have been a bit out of her depth at the social level of Masters of Foxhounds. Enlim

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"I think that the author might have been a bit out of her depth at the social level of Masters of Foxhounds."

That was a beautifully snobbish comment - very funny! You must be from the US.

Yes, hounds are killed when there's no use for them or in this case where they couldn't be maintained. I imagine it happens all over the world. Hunting people are pretty bloody and brutal. Hunting with dogs is now illegal all over Great Britain and I suppose most hounds were killed then, or shipped over to the Irish Republic.

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If anyone is interested, the Buccleuch Hunt still come by the house with their pack of hounds when out foxhunting. There's also a huntsman on a quad-bike who carries a shotgun. Thus the law is modified and riding to hounds continues.

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I think that the author might have been a bit out of her depth at the social level of Masters of Foxhounds. Enlim
Well, there's your *opinion* and then there are facts. The AU -- born in 1912 to well-off people like those she wrote about -- knew this milieu and this era well. Read her bio. Perhaps make it rule to check out the facts before forming, and sharing, opinions.

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

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Hello there
Just noticed your question, so you've probably found out the answer by now, but anyway - It refers to the master of hounds of the local hunt (the fox hunting fraternity). Many of the horses went off to war also, as in the first world war, and the hunts were simply closed down. The hounds (beagles) would have been expensive and difficult to feed with rationing etc., and as there was no hunting there was no point in keeping them.
best wishes
Mim
Cornwall, UK

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There was a rather large slaughter of animals at the start of the war.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24478532

Given that the reason was in large part about the worry about food it would be easy to see how the cull would often extend to working animals, and in particular luxuries like fox hounds, though the article doesn't say.

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