by George MacDonald Fraser, as a frequently mentioned favourite song of the anti-hero. In 1876, Whyte-Melville penned the rarely attributed, but widely recognized opening line to the short poem The Object of a Life: "To eat, drink, and be merry, because to-morrow we die." Crimean War When the Crimean War broke out, Whyte-Melville went out as a volunteer major into the Turkish irregular cavalry, but this was the only break in his literary career. Death Whyte-Melville lost his life in 1878 while hunting with the Vale of White Horse Hunt, falling as he galloped over a ploughed field at Bradon Pond, Charlton, Wiltshire. The Dublin Evening Mail said that it was "strange that he, so gallant and accomplished a horseman, who had dared danger with a light heart so often, should have perished, not while jumping a difficult fence, but simply while galloping across a ploughed field." He, a skilled horseman, had often boasted that he had only fallen once in the twenty years from 1847 to 1867. He had moved to Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in about 1875, the better to follow the Beaufort and Vale of White Horse hunts. George Whyte-Melville was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Tetbury, within a few feet of his property, Barton Abbotts. When he rented the house, a friend criticised the choice because it was so near the graveyard. Whyte-Melville replied that perhaps it was, but that it was a good choice for a hunting man, as his friends would not have to carry him far. His estate was valued at under £70,000. Memorials It has been claimed that Whyte-Melville's death inspired the well-known hunting song "John Peel" – although John Peel was a real-life huntsman in the Lake District, the author of the lyrics, John Woodcock Graves, was a close friend of Whyte-Melville. After imbibing a quantity of alcohol at Whyte-Melville's funeral, Graves penned some verses in tribute to Whyte-Melville, set to the melody of a traditional folk song entitled, "Bonnie Annie". The Scottish Border poet and Australian bush balladeer Will H. Ogilvie (1869–1963) was strongly influenced by Whyte-Melville, so much so that he addressed two poems to him. These lines are from the Scattered Scarlet anthology of 1923: How good it is, how good, to fling aside The last new garbage-novel of the day And turn again with pleasure and with pride To your long line of volumes silver-grey, And with