Seventy Years Among Savages

by Henry S. Salt

There’s blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there’s blood on the game you eat.

without in the least realizing the full truth of the statement. For there, literally, is blood on the “game” which the squire (or the poacher) disposes of, viz. the blood of the “game” itself; and that Kingsley should have forgotten this, is a singular proof of the way in which the lower animals are regarded as mere goods and chattels, and not as creatures of flesh and blood at all—except to cook and eat. The very use of the word “game,” in this sense, is most significant.

As mention has been made of the fall of the Royal Buckhounds, a few words must be said of the man who chiefly brought it about. The Rev. J. Stratton was Master of Lucas’s Hospital, Wokingham, a charitable institution founded in 1663, where a number of aged labourers live as pensioners; and as Wokingham lay in the centre of the hunting district, he was well placed for observing what went on, and for obtaining exact information: he had, moreover, a first-hand knowledge of “sport,” and his detestation of it was based on his own earlier experiences, as well as on a keen sense of fair play. Of all the active workers with whom I have been privileged to be associated, Mr. Stratton was the finest; I have known nothing more courageous than the way in which, almost single-handed at first, and with the whole hunting fraternity against him, he gradually “pulled down” (to use a pleasant sporting term) the cruel and stupid institution which was carried on in the Sovereign’s name and at the expense of the public.

In character, as in appearance, Mr. Stratton was a Roman; his stern and unswerving rectitude made him respected even by his most active opponents. His outspokenness, where matters of real import were at stake, was quite undaunted, and to an extent which sometimes caused consternation among the weaker brethren. I was once asked by a sympathetic bishop whether it would be possible “to keep Mr. Stratton quiet.” More than one dignitary of the Church must have mused on that problem; for if Mr. Stratton had a weakness, it was for a bishop. I do not mean that he viewed bishops with undue reverence, somewhat the reverse, for he loved to take a bishop to task; and some of his letters to bishops, in reference to their sanction of vivisection or blood-sports, were of a nature to cause a mild surprise in episcopal circles. But if bishops did not always appreciate Mr. Stratton, other persons did. So well did the birds in his garden at Wokingham understand him, that they would let him talk to them and stroke them as they sat on their nests. Could there be a more convincing proof of a man’s goodness?

Another active champion of the reform of blood-sports was Colonel W. L. B. Coulson, a well-known Northumberland country gentleman and J.P., who was one of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League. He possessed a fine military presence, and a voice which, even at its whisper, had a volume and resonance which could not fail to make it heard to the uttermost corner of a room; his appearance, in brief, had so little of the pale cast of thought that on the occasion when he first met us we were the victims of an odd misapprehension. It had been arranged that he would preside at a public meeting in London, the first we held, on the subject of deer-hunting; and when the members of our Committee arrived, some time before the discussion began, we were troubled to find thus early upon the scene a very large and powerfully built man, whom, as he did not introduce himself, we imagined to be a master of staghounds, or at least an opponent of formidable calibre, come to intimidate us at the start. We were relieved when we discovered him to be our missing chairman.

Colonel Coulson was very popular with his audiences, for there was a frankness about him which went straight to the heart, and his speeches, though not cultured, were full of raciness and humanity. Himself brought up as a sportsman, he felt keenly about the sufferings of animals, and after his retirement from the army devoted much time to lecturing-tours, in which he visited many parts of the country and especially addressed himself to schools. Eton would not receive him, doubtless fearing some reference to her hare-hunt; but at several of the other big public schools he was asked to speak more than once. Brave, simple, and courteous, he was loved by all who knew him, and by none more than by his colleagues in the humanitarian cause.

Nothing was more remarkable in the history of the Humanitarian League than the diversity of character in the persons whom its principles attracted. Lady Florence Dixie, who joined the League at its start in 1891, had a strange and adventurous career, and has been described, not inaptly, as “a sort of ‘Admirable Crichton’ among women, a poet, a novelist, an explorer, a war correspondent, a splendid horse-woman, a convincing platform-speaker, a swimmer of great endurance, and as keen a humanitarian as ever lived.” It was as humanitarian that I knew her; and she was certainly one of the most faithful supporters of the League, ever ready to help with pen or purse, and prompt, sincere, and unwavering in her friendship. Her poems, of which she sent me more than one volume, had little worth; but her essay on “The Horrors of Sport” was one of the most vivid and moving appeals that have been written on the subject; none of the League’s pamphlets had so wide a circulation, for it has been read and quoted in every part of the English-speaking world. She here wrote with full knowledge of the facts, and with a sympathetic insight, which, together with a swift and picturesque style, made her, at her best, a powerful and fascinating writer. Of her personal eccentricities many reports were rife; and I remembered that when I lived at Eton she used to be seen in the garden of her villa, on the Windsor bank of the Thames, walking, like a modern Circe, with a number of wild beasts in her train. On one occasion a jaguar made his escape from her control, and there was a mild panic in Windsor and Eton till he was recaptured: it might have indeed been serious if the bold youths who hunted the terror-stricken hare had started a quarry that showed fight.

Another unfailing friend of the League’s Sports Committee was the Hon. FitzRoy Stewart. When I first knew him he was Secretary of the Central Conservative Office, and we were rather surprised at finding an ally in that direction; in fact, we had some suspicions, entirely unjust, as the result proved, that Mr. Stewart might be desirous of learning our plan of campaign against the Royal Buckhounds in the interest of his sporting friends. The first time I visited him at the Conservative headquarters I was introduced to Sir Howard Vincent, M.P., who, though a patron of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had not scrupled to throw in his lot with those who were fighting for the continuance of rabbit-coursing, pigeon-shooting and stag-hunting. He seemed to be a good-natured, vacuous-minded person, and one of his remarks, I remember, was that England is “a paradise for animals.” This was hardly the opinion of FitzRoy Stewart, who was indefatigable with his schemes for the prohibition of the more cruel forms of sport. He had great hopes of young Mr. Winston Churchill, then beginning to be known as a rising star of the Tory party, and at his earnest request a letter was sent to Mr. Churchill from the office of the League, reminding him of Lord Randolph Churchill’s strong denunciation of stag-hunting, and asking his aid against the Buckhounds. Mr. Churchill, however, unmoved by this appeal to his filial piety, sagely opined that the crusade against the Royal Hunt was too democratic.

Mr. FitzRoy Stewart worked closely with the Humanitarian League till his death in 1914; and many were his press letters which he and I jointly composed at the office in Chancery Lane. He liked to come there armed with some sheets of his Carlton Club notepaper, on which the letters, when worded to his satisfaction, were duly copied and signed—“Old Harrovian,” or “A Member of the Carlton Club,” was his favourite signature—and then he sent them off to some influential editors of his acquaintance, whose disgust would have been unmeasured had they known what company their esteemed contributor had been keeping. Mr. Stewart, I must in fairness add, though a strong opponent of blood-sport, was a firm believer in the beneficence of flogging; but he was willing to sink this one point of difference in his general approval of the League’s work. So good-natured was he, that when the subject of corporal punishment was going to crop up at a Committee meeting, he used to ask me to put it first on the agenda, so that he might wait outside until that burning question was disposed of: then he would join us—coming in to dessert, as we expressed it—and take his share in the discussion. Oh, if all colleagues were as reasonable! As The Times truly said of him, “his sweetness of temper and social tact made him the most companionable of human beings.”