If he can afford it, and likes to spend a season or two in the shires for the last superlative polish, let him go and welcome! He will be taught to get clear of a crowd, to leap timber at short notice, to put on his boots and breeches, and that is about all there is left for him to learn!
In the British army, though more than a hundred regiments constitute the line, each cherishes its own particular title, while applying that general application indiscriminately to the rest.
I imagine the same illusion affects the provinces, and I should offend an incalculable number of good fellows and good sportsmen, were I to describe as provincial establishments, the variety of hunts, north, south, east, and west, with which I have enjoyed so much good company and good fun. Each has its own claim to distinction, some have collars, all have sport.
Grass, I imagine, is the one essential that constitutes pre-eminence in a hunting country, and for this the shires have always boasted they bear away the palm, but it will surprise many of my readers to be told that in the south and west there are districts where this desideratum seems now more plentiful than in the middle of England. The Blackmoor Vale still lies almost wholly under pasture, and you may travel to-day forty miles by rail, through the counties of Dorset and Somerset, in general terms nearly from Blandford to Bath, without seeing a ploughed field.
What a country might here be made by such an enthusiast as poor “Sam Reynell,” who found Meath without a gorse-covert, and drew between thirty and forty “sure finds” in it before he died!
Independently of duty, which ought to be our first consideration, there is also great convenience in hunting from home. We require no large stud, can choose our meets, and, above all, are indifferent to weather. A horse comes out so many times in a season; if we don’t hunt to-day we shall next week. Compare this equable frame of mind with the irritation and impatience of a man who has ten hunters standing at the sign of “The Hand-in-Pocket,” while he inhabits the front parlour, without his books, deprived of his usual society and occupations, the barometer at set fair, and the atmosphere affording every indication of a six-weeks’ frost!
Let us see in what the charm consists that impels people to encounter bad food, bad wine, bad lodgings, and above all, protracted boredom, for a campaign in those historical hunting-grounds, that have always seemed to constitute the rosiest illusion of a sportsman’s dream.