I hope you will pardon the flippancy of the subject I am about to introduce; but I may say that it is not possible to understand English life without studying it. Though we are getting close to our own times, yet it is evident that society has undergone an almost complete change since the scenes were depicted in the works I am using to-day. Surtees caught the exact moment when the change was coming; and the old order was awaiting the signal to quit the world. In the rural England of the ‘forties’ and ‘fifties,’ when the railway was just beginning to invade the countryside, the hunting field was still a national playground where neighbours met, the county family still the pivot round which rural life moved. But everywhere are signs of the coming change. The nouveau riche was buying the old estates, and the Jewish magnate beginning to make his appearance; but the fabric of county society remained as yet unshaken. I can myself remember the gulf that parted socially the county from the town, the landed gentry from the professional classes, when the ownership of land was far more important than the possession of wealth.
I propose to treat my subject from two aspects. First I shall take the so-called sporting novels, which are in themselves a literature, though I mean to confine myself practically to a single author; and, after having touched on this subject, I shall ask you to notice how Anthony Trollope, a writer sometimes tedious, but always observant and often witty, deals with the hierarchy, clerical and lay, of county society.
When St. Thomas a Becket was escaping from his enemies in England, he travelled through Flanders in humble disguise. Once, however, he nearly betrayed himself by stopping and admiring a beautiful falcon. Such discrimination raised the suspicion that the traveller was not a mere peasant or itinerant merchant, but an English gentleman of rank. However, the archbishop managed to escape detection and passed on. This little incident, however, shows that, even in the twelfth century, an expert knowledge of sport was deemed to be characteristic of gentility, and Becket, who had spent his early days in the king’s court, instinctively looked with interest on a good bird. Four centuries later a very different archbishop of Canterbury, though he too died a martyr’s death, was known as an excellent rider. Thomas Cranmer, the son of a country squire, was, we are specially told, remarkable for the firm and easy way he sat his horse. Unlike Becket, Cranmer was bred a scholar; but, in later days, he too would have been called a sportsman. About a century later another English primate distinguished himself less creditably in the field. George Abbott, the Puritan predecessor of Laud, was shooting deer; and by pure accident killed a keeper; for which an attempt was made to declare the see of Canterbury canonically vacant. It is much the same with less exalted ecclesiastics. In the middle ages the clergy of England were honourably distinguished for their morality as compared with their continental brethren. Their besetting sin was that nothing could restrain them from hunting. The “hunting” abbot of the middle ages was succeeded by the “hunting parson” of later days. Thackeray’s description of the Rev. Bute Crawley would, mutatis mutandis, apply to many an English clergyman, from the earliest times down to our own days.
“A tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hatted man.... You might see his bay mare a score of miles away from the Rectory house whenever there was a dinner party.... He rode to hounds in a pepper-and-salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in the county.”
It is hardly necessary to dilate upon the sporting vocabulary of Shakespeare; or to point out that the correct use of hunting and shooting and hawking terms was considered as test of a man’s gentility—nor need I appeal to the severity of the old Forest Laws and the more modern Game Laws, both of which were powerless to restrain the English peasants’ inveterate propensity to sport.
Little wonder is it, therefore, that there arose a veritable literature which revolved round the pivot of sport and especially that of hunting.
I need hardly say that the conditions of the pursuit of game changed with the state of the country. In the middle ages the greater part of England was wooded. The greenwood was the home of the outlaw; and it was said that a squirrel could cross England without touching the ground. The chase was therefore pursued in glades and thickets; and could never have been a very rapid affair. What riding was done in the open country was connected with hawking—a very favourite pastime. Gradually, as the country became more open and the forests disappeared, the fox, which our ancestors regarded as vermin, began to be looked upon as a sacred animal, because of the excellent runs he gave. For a long time the hunting was slow and its arrangements very primitive; those who joined in it being the squire, his friends, and his dependants; but gradually the crack riders began to gather from all parts to where the best hunting was to be had; and Leicestershire became the chief centre. Fashionable hunting, as opposed to the rural and purely local sport, seems to have begun at the time of the Regency in the days of the “dandies”; and I have a recollection of an oft-quoted description by “Nimrod” of the way in which a stranger was gradually recognised and welcomed when he came among the hunting fraternity at Melton Mowbray. But it is my intention to speak of a later period when hunting had become a sport in which men, who had no connection with the locality, came down from London to take part. In olden days the town sportsman was a theme of constant derision. John Gilpin’s ride, and Mr. Winkle’s difficulties with his horse, were typical stories. The caricaturists were never tired of depicting the quaint and somewhat dangerous antics of the Londoner with a shotgun, and jokes at his ignorance of all sports were the stock in trade of the humourist. Gradually however these began to fall flat. As the country became accessible, first by good roads, and then by railways, men from London joined in its pastimes, and proved themselves anything but ridiculous where horse and gun were concerned.
“Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour” is valuable for our purpose because it illustrates so many sides of English country life. The hero is a somewhat shady adventurer who spends half the year in hunting and the rest in talking about it, and is famed for being a guest whom, once you get into your house, it is impossible to eject. He hires his hunters, and sells them if he can at a profit; and, as he can ride almost anything, he is able to show a vicious brute to the greatest advantage, sell him for a good sum, and then make a great favour of taking him back. He generally succeeds in getting invitations, partly because he is supposed to be a rich man, and also on account of a rumour, of which, to do him justice, he is unaware, that he is able to give people, anxious for notoriety, a good notice in the newspapers.
One can almost smell the English country in winter time as one reads the book and in imagination plough one’s way, as the dusk draws on, through the muddy lanes on a tired horse after a long run, which has left one several miles from home with the short winter day closing rapidly. Or, one can feel the exhilaration which the sight of a fox gives when he goes away with the hounds at his heels, apparently their certain prey, and then vanishes as he slips through the next fence, not to be caught, if caught at all, for many a long mile.
The author’s description of the different houses visited by Mr. Sponge in his tour gives no bad idea of rural life and sport in the “fifties.” The first house which Mr. Sponge honours is Jawleyford Court, inhabited by Mr. Jawleyford, a gentleman of good lineage, but only moderate means, on which he manages to make an appearance of living in great state. Jawleyford, as his name implies, is a pretentious fellow, apparently hearty and hospitable, but very deceptive to those who come in close contact with him. He poses as a man of culture and refinement, and also as an ardent devotee of the chase. Sponge cares for only one thing on earth, and that is hunting; and he is emphatically a man of one book, namely, a work on London cab fares by a certain Mogg—whether the title is an invention or not, I do not know. When Mr. Sponge has nothing better to do, he takes this work and studies imaginary drives about London, amusing himself by calculating the price of each. One can imagine how this ill-assorted couple—Sponge, who cared for nothing but hunting, and Jawleyford, who liked to pose as a man of culture and refinement—got on together. But Mrs. Jawleyford was impressed with the idea that Sponge was a man of wealth and was a most eligible suitor for one of her pretty daughters. Consequently she received her guest with much hospitality, and gave him a hearty welcome. The first day was unsuitable for hunting; and Sponge had to amuse himself in the house with his host, who conducted him over his picture gallery, and was intensely disgusted when Sponge failed to recognise the bust of Jawleyford, which was considered a speaking likeness.