The next day, however, Sponge, totally disregarding the enchanting Miss Jawleyfords, started, before breakfast, to a meet of the hounds. We are now introduced to a great county magnate, who is believed to be a caricature of a noble sportsman, well known in his day—the Earl of Scamperdale. He had been kept very short by his father, the previous earl; and, as Viscount Hardup, had acquired very penurious habits, which clave to him after his accession to fortune. Hunting was his only expensive taste: and on this he spared no necessary outlay. He was always well mounted and his hounds admirably chosen; but he would do almost anything sooner than take his horses through a turnpike gate. He lived in a sort of back room in his splendid house; and his food was of the coarsest description. His only companion was a Mr. Jack Spraggon, who was exactly like him in appearance, rode well, and was quite content to fare like his lordship, if he could get nothing better. This well-assorted couple between them possessed a fine flow of language, though Lord Scamperdale always said that people presumed on him because he was “a lord and could not swear nor use coarse language”; and they contrived to keep the field fairly select, by driving intruders away by their powers of satire and abuse. Now Sponge was a first-rate horseman, but could only afford mounts which were unsound or vicious. His horse, “Multum in Parvo,” was the latter. In appearance he was a low long-backed beast, splendidly made, and as a rule was a docile and tractable creature; but if he took it into his head to bolt, he did so with great determination and no power on earth could stop him. Directly the horse saw Lord Scamperdale’s hounds, this propensity asserted itself; and he carried his rider into the midst of the pack, scattering them like sheep and maiming several. Then the floodgates of the Earl’s copious vocabulary were opened and poor Sponge was assailed, first by him and, when he sank back exhausted into his saddle, by Jack Spraggon. If I recollect aright, the latter on this or some other occasion called Sponge a “sanctified, putrefied, methodistical, puseyite pig-jobber,” for Surtees is very careful to put no real bad language into the mouth of his characters. From this time forward Lord Scamperdale takes a violent dislike to Sponge and plots with all his might to get rid of him. His determination is increased when on another occasion Sponge’s horse bolts, not this time into the hounds, but into the Earl himself and knocks him off sprawling on the ground. The story, however, is useful to our purpose because it reveals the different types of country life, and the graduated hierarchy of its society. The Earl of Scamperdale is, of course, a caricature; but with all his boorishness and eccentricity, he is quite conscious that, as a nobleman, he is a great personage. His hounds are not a subscription pack, but are supported entirely at his own expense; and his bad language to strangers has at least the advantage of keeping his field small and select for the benefit of the residents in his neighbourhood, who put up with his eccentricities partly because they really regard his rank and position; and also because his lordship shows them the best of sport. Jawleyford, whose daughter Scamperdale ultimately married, represents the country squire, not well off but pretentious, keeping up a sort of pinchbeck dignity, yet a member of the hierarchy of which the peer was also a member, though more highly placed.
Less reputable, but of the same order, is Sir Harry Scattercash, of Non-Such Hall, on whom Sponge inflicts himself after he has been driven out of the Flat Hat hunt, as Lord Scamperdale’s pack was named. Sir Harry is a young man, who has come unexpectedly into his title and estate after marrying an actress; and he is engaged in drinking himself to death and dissipating his money. His house is full of his wife’s theatrical friends, who make themselves thoroughly at home, and Sir Harry has apparently inherited a pack of hounds, managed on a very different system to that adopted by Scamperdale, whose motto is efficiency with economy. Sponge, who, with all his vulgarity, is a first-rate sportsman, takes this motley pack in hand and makes even Sir Harry’s hounds kill their fox in fine style. In fact, on one occasion, when he has outdistanced the mixed field which attended the baronet’s meets, he actually changes foxes with Lord Scamperdale, and a fine scene ensues in which Mr. Spraggon surpasses himself in the variety of his language. Not that two such adventurers as Sponge and Spraggon are real enemies; and they meet on neutral ground in the house of a third type of Squire. Mr. Puffington, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, has bought an estate and set up a pack of hounds. The delineation of this character is extremely clever; and shows how the author realises the change which is coming over country life. Scamperdale, Jawleyford, and Sir Harry all belong to the old landed aristocracy. Puffington is a new man. His money is in the land like theirs; but he is independent of his estate. In his desire to be popular he allows his tenants to rob him and his labourers to poach his game. He maintains a pack of foxhounds, and entertains magnificently. But he is not really liked, and is regarded as an interloper. Thinking Sponge is a literary man and that he will trumpet the fame of his pack in the newspapers, Puffington invites him to stay in his house and entertains him royally.
Jack Spraggon is also one of the invited guests; and Sponge lends him one of his horses. They have a famous run with the hounds; and when they get home, in the interval before dinner, Spraggon tells Sponge that Puffington, their host, expects to have a flaming account of his hunt in the newspapers; and that their reception is due to the fact that Sponge is believed to be a great writer on sporting subjects. As, however, he does not know how to do it, Spraggon offers to dictate an account of the run; and Sponge settles down at the table, having used his friend’s razor to cut the pen. The run is described in true journalistic style; and, when Sponge, who is an indifferent penman, exclaims “Hard work authorship,” Jack Spraggon says that he could go on for ever. Sponge retorts, “It’s all very well for you to do the talking, but it’s the ‘writing’ and the craning and the spelling.” However, the manuscript is sent off to the local paper, and falls into the hands of a daughter of the proprietor. As she cannot make head or tail to Sponge’s writing, she edits it as best she can, calling “a ravishing scent” an exquisite perfume; and making the run not less than ten miles “as the cow goes” instead of as the “crow flies.”
That evening there is a grander banquet than ever; and Spraggon and Sponge get hold of a rich young fellow, a Mr. Pacey. Spraggon persuades Pacey, who fancies himself a very sharp blade indeed, that Sponge is a greenhorn, with the result that at the end of the dinner he buys Sponge’s horse, Multum in Parvo, at a very low figure. As, however, that famous quadruped manages to throw Mr. Pacey, and also his guardian Major Screw, Sponge gets the horse back with a sum of money as a compensation for the inconvenience to which he has been put, and generously gives Mr. Pacey a bit of valuable advice: never to try to trade in horses after dinner! Naturally Mr. Puffington is not pleased by all this, and when he reads the account of the run with his hounds he nearly has a fit; and he resolves to take to his bed till Sponge is well out of his house.
Here we take farewell of our hero; and I will say a few words on the way in which Surtees, in his sketches of country life, indicates his appreciation that a change is coming over the land. The Scamperdales, Jawleyfords, and the older families are disappearing and the new commercial and moneyed class is taking its place. Puffington and men of his type are beginning to come to the front. It is getting more difficult to live on the land, as the older gentry had done; and estates are becoming rather a tax on a commercial fortune than the support of an aristocratic family. Surtees represents the old landowners as somewhat out at elbows, trying in vain to compete with the new men who are buying up their estates. In one of his novels we have a great Jewish magnate, Sir Moses Mainchance, who would have been practically impossible twenty years earlier. Sport changes with society. The railway has made country and town one, as a few hours bring all England within reach of London. Hunting is ceasing to be the old friendly and almost family institution, where the neighbourhood gathered at the meet, and everybody was known and welcomed. It was already becoming an affair for the rich from all parts of the world; and the Scamperdales in vain tried to scare away the wealthy sportsman of the town by abusive language. The time was close at hand when his presence would be welcomed eagerly; and rural sport would be at an end.
We will now turn to another side of country life—namely, the social as portrayed by Anthony Trollope, who might also have been quoted as a writer on sport. Trollope, to my mind, has a real genius for interesting his readers in uninteresting people; because he describes so faithfully the characters one meets every day, gives their conversation exactly as they talked to one another, and exhibits them in the same commonplace attitude, in which we all are for the greater part of our lives. He wrote not by inspiration, when he felt in the mood, but regularly and systematically, turning out his novels, when he had leisure from his duties as a government official, at so many pages an hour. He says that he had little or no intimate knowledge of cathedral society; yet, to one who has opportunity of observing it somewhat closely, his descriptions appear to have the accuracy of a photograph.
In Trollope’s novels we have English life, especially well drawn; and though many scenes are laid in London, his characters always gravitate back to the country whence they derive their influence and prestige. It is not my intention to elaborate more than one side of this very versatile and copious writer. His political novels, for example, are well worth studying, especially “Phineas Finn.” In “The Bertrams” we have an excellent picture of Oxford life in the opening chapter. Personal experience gave Trollope unusual insight into the characters of the government officials of his time. He was wonderfully quick at seizing on types hitherto unknown in English society who were gradually becoming forces in the world. Even as a writer on sport he deserves a place. For what can be better than his description of the young, popular, able clergyman in “Framley Parsonage,” whose very success leads him into some very difficult situations? I need not remind you, for I find he is widely read in this country, of his treatment of social gatherings in great houses like that of the Duke of Omnium. All I intend to do is to ask you to examine his clerical types and, perhaps, to offer some explanations which may be useful.
The state of things we read of in such books as “The Warden” and “Barchester Towers” has almost, but not quite, disappeared, and I confess that, although I think I understand it, I find a difficulty in making it clear to you. The initial problem is to explain why life in a cathedral city is often rural rather than town life. In the first place the word “city” in England used to be applied only to places where there was a cathedral. Ely, though still a town of some 8000 people, is always spoken of as a “city” and so are Llandaff and St. David’s, which are little more than villages; and, till very recently, Liverpool and Birmingham were styled “towns.” Leicester, with some 300,000 inhabitants, is still, I believe, technically a “town.” The older cathedrals are in fact generally in small places which were once very important “cities,” but have been outstripped by what then were little better than hamlets, but have long since become great centres of population. Such are Canterbury, Chichester, Salisbury, Wells, Ely, and Lichfield. Barchester was emphatically a country town, dominated by the landowners in the vicinity; and the clergy around it were a rural priesthood. The society which was centred in any cathedral was and still is unlike anything else in the world. In the middle ages a great cathedral, like Salisbury or Lincoln, was designed for a semi-monastic rather than congregational worship. It was served by a community of priests, called “canons” because they observed a “canon,” or rule of life. Joined with these was a veritable army of inferior priests, singers and ministers, all under the control of the dean, who presided over the cathedral, as the bishop over the diocese. This vast and splendid establishment was, at the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth, reduced to a limited number of canons, or prebendaries, minor canons, singing men and boys, vergers and bedesmen. As, however, under the new régime the services were little more than daily morning and evening prayer, the reduced staff had little or nothing to do. Accordingly the canons took turns to reside in the cathedral close and usually held benefices in other places. They married like other clergy; but were still, nominally, monastic persons attached to the cathedral. As time went on the estates of the chapters or colleges of the deans and canons became very valuable; and their positions were much coveted as the prizes of the church. A cathedral chapter therefore was, as a rule, an aristocratic body, consisting of the dean nominated by the crown, and the canons, as a rule, by the bishop. Of course the bishops, in days when public opinion was not powerful, put their relatives into the canonries; and there were many ties between the various members of the cathedral bodies, who kept the rest of the world, and especially the inferior clergy, at a respectful distance.
With this attempt to explain the situation let me try to set forth some of the principal characters in “The Warden” and “Barchester Towers”; remembering that men are living under an order of things which was beginning to pass away.