Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago

by Henry William Herbert

"That's right. I saw he wasn't quite up to the mark the last ten miles or so. If he don't dry off now, give him a cordial ball out of the tool-chest--one of the number 3--camphire and cardamums and ginger; a clove of garlic, and treacle quantum sic, hey, Frank, that will set him to rights, I warrant it. Now have you dined yourself, or supped, as the good people here insist on calling it?"

"Weel Ay wot, have I, sur," responded Timothy; "an hour agone and better."

"Exactly; then step out yourself into the kitchen, and make us a good cup of our own coffee, strong and hot, do you see? and when that's done, bring it in with the candles; and, hark you, run up to the bed-room and bring my netting needles down, and the ball of silk twist, and the front of that new game-bag, I began the other night. If you were not as lazy as possible, friend Frank, you would bring your fly-book out, when the light comes, and tie some hackles."

"Perhaps I may, when the light comes," Forester answered; "but I'm in no hurry for it; I like of all things to look out, and watch the changes of the night over a landscape even less beautiful than this. One-half the pleasures of field sports to me, is other than the mere excitement. If there were nothing but the eagerness of the pursuit, and the gratification of successful vanity, fond as I am of shooting, I should, I believe, have long since wearied of it; but there are so many other things connected with it--the wandering among the loveliest scenery--the full enjoyment of the sweetest weather--the learning the innumerable and all-wondrous attributes and instincts of animated nature--all these are what make up to me the rapture I derive from woodcraft! Why, such a scene as this--a scene which how few, save the vagrant sportsman, or the countryman who but rarely appreciates the picturesque, have ever witnessed--is enough, with the pure and tranquil thoughts it calls up in the heart, to plead a trumpet-tongued apology, for all the vanity, and uselessness, and cruelty, and what not, so constantly alleged against our field sports."

"Oh! yes," cried Harry; "yes, indeed, Frank, I perfectly agree with you. But all that last is mere humbug--humbug, too, of the lowest and most foolish order--I never hear a man droning about the cruelty of field sports, but I set him down, on the spot, either as a hypocrite or a fool, and probably a glorious union of the two. When man can exist without killing myriads of animals with every breath of vital air he draws, with every draught of water he imbibes, with every footstep he prints upon the turf or gravel of his garden--when he abstains from every sort of animal food--and, above all, when he abstains from his great pursuit of torturing his fellow men--then let him prate, if he will, of sportsmen's cruelty.

"For show me one trade, one profession, wherein one man's success is not based upon another's failure; all rivalry, all competition, triumph and rapture to the winner, disgrace and anguish to the loser! And then these fellows, fattened on widows' tears and orphans' misery, preach you pure homilies about the cruelty of taking life. But you are quite right about the combination of pleasures--the excitement, too, of quick motion through the fresh air--the sense of liberty amid wide plains, or tangled woods, or on the wild hill tops--this, surely, to the reflective sportsman--and who can be a true sportsman, and not reflective--is the great charm of his pursuit."

"And do you not think that this pleasure exists in a higher degree here in America than in our own England?"

"As how, Frank?--I don't take."

"Why, in the greater, I will not say beauty--for I don't think there is greater natural beauty in the general landscape of the States--but novelty and wildness of the scenery! Even the richest and most cultivated tracts of America, that I have seen, except the Western part of New York, which is unquestionably the ugliest, and dullest, and most unpoetical region on earth, have a young untamed freshness about them, which you do not find in England.

"In the middle of the high-tilled and fertile cornfield you come upon some sudden hollow, tangled with brake and bush, which hedge in some small pool where float the brilliant cups and smooth leaves of the water lily, and whence, on your approach, up springs the blue-winged teal or gorgeous wood-duck. Then the long sweeping woodlands, embracing in themselves every variety of ground, deep marshy swamp, and fertile level thick-set with giant timber, and sandy barrens with their scrubby undergrowth, and difficult rocky steeps; and, above all, the seeming and comparative solitude--the dinner carried along with you and eaten under the shady tree, beside the bubbling basin of some spring--all this is vastly more exciting, than walking through trim stubbles and rich turnip fields, and lunching on bread and cheese and home-brewed, in a snug farmhouse. In short, field sports here have a richer range, are much more various, wilder--"