The Tipping System
Gamekeepers are much associated with tipping. If tips are to be reckoned as part wages, the element of chance is great and unfair. There are cases when tipping amounts to bribery, as when a rich man buys the best place in a shoot. For the system, it may be said that a tip is the most convenient token of appreciation of skill in producing good sport. And we agree that if any servant of pleasure deserves a tip it is the gamekeeper. But among the fallacies of the system is the fact that the scale of tips is seldom in proportion to skill and energy. Thus, a tip of a certain amount is given for a day's covert shooting of, say, under a hundred head, half pheasants, calling for a certain amount of energy and skill on the keeper's part. But a tip of only half the amount will be given after a thirty-brace day at driven partridges, which has afforded five times the amount of shooting, and called for ten times more skill and energy from the keeper. There is a saying among keepers that tips may be looked upon to provide three useful things—beer, 'baccy, and boots. In old times a five-pound note was the order of the day—this is represented now by half a sovereign or five shillings. A few keepers are lucky enough to serve where wealthy sportsmen shoot regularly, who willingly give the keeper a ten-pound note. But most keepers praise heaven for £10 received in tips in a season. Where the scale of tips most fails is when a tip covers compensation for injuries. But the beater who received a note on account of a stray pellet in his person was more than satisfied. "Bless you, sir," he said, "you may give me the other barrel for another of 'em." But beaters always find contentment in a tip, whatever its size. We recall how three beaters were more or less bagged successively during a three days' covert shoot. One, at the time, appeared to have had his right eye destroyed, but saw his way to accept twenty-five shillings. Another buried a shot in his little finger, and on receiving seven shillings was eager to undergo the same treatment for six days a week. A third was peppered behind, and awarded eighteen-pence, which satisfied him, being, as he lamented, "only a boy, like." By the way, there seems no place in the sportsman's scale of tips for awards for narrow escapes. We have known a keeper mention the fact quite unavailingly that his cap had been shot from his head by a careless gunner, who had brought down an easy bird with his first barrel, then, swinging round, had blazed at a second bird just as it topped the keeper's head. "Aw," he drawled, by way of answer, when the keeper respectfully intimated that he had escaped death by a miracle, "I certainly ought to have killed both of those birds."
