But gradually and surely women once more made good their position in the realm of sport, one of the early books to take a decided line in this matter being, I believe, a little-known novel entitled A Matched Pair. In this book which was published anonymously, a young man and woman who have kindred tastes, are brought together through their common love of hunting, and an amusing instance of the prevailing spirit, is given at their wedding breakfast. When the hour is drawing near for the departure of the bride and bridegroom, news is brought to the latter that the M.F.H. of the country has met with an accident, which will keep him from the saddle for the remainder of the season. The lady of course is told the news, and she receives the suggestion that their honeymoon should be given up, in order that her husband may stay and hunt the hounds, with the most obliging readiness. This incident I give from memory, as it is now many years since I have seen the book. The strangest thing about the incident, perhaps is, that such a truly sporting couple should not have delayed their marriage till the end of the hunting season.
It is during the last ten years that women have come to be reckoned as a power in the land, in the matter of sport, and it is now a matter of course for the novelists of the day to make their leading women-characters of almost all classes, join in some one or more form of out-door recreation. Vivid pictures of the hunting-field, the banks of the salmon river, the croquet lawn and the golf links, show the love of the nineteenth century maid and matron for the healthy out-door exercise, which has given to the younger generation a physique that would have been regarded with wondering awe, not unmixed with disapproval, by their gentle and delicate great-grandmothers.
In a bird's-eye view, too, of the course of our history, we may note that at the time of the absence of the great body of the nobles in the Holy Land in the days of the Crusades, the women, so many of whom had been left in charge of the castles and lands of their lords, came very prominently forward in the domain of sport, as well as in the social life of the period. On the return of the warriors, this liberty seems in some degree to have been curtailed, and whether this is to be attributed to any undue exercise of freedom during their time of independence, or to the fact of the minds of their lords and masters having been effected by the Oriental ideas as to the conduct of women, does not seem very clear.
The restraint however was but temporary, and when the highest place in the land was filled by a woman, and "Queen Bess" ruled her subjects with a judicious determination none could gainsay, her humbler sisters shared in the reflected glory of her fame. Elizabeth herself, as we all know, was an ardent sportswoman, and took the keenest delight in a run with hounds, or a trial of skill with the cross-bow, long after she had passed the age, at which even modern Dianas are wont to retire from an active share in the fatigues of the hunting-field.
The reign of Queen Anne on the other hand, although the Sovereign herself and the members of her court were lovers of the chase, seems to have had a distinctly depressing effect on the independent position of women. It was not till the present century, when our beloved Queen by her conduct on the throne, and in her private life, gave such a stimulus to the position of her sex, that women came forward to take their share in the sports, as well as in the more serious duties of our national life, in a way that was new in the world's history.
That the young Queen whose every act was eagerly copied by her girl subjects, could have ridden after hounds as she did in the early years of her reign, without having many followers, is not to be supposed. Thus indirectly—for Victoria's early succession to the duties of a sovereign left her but little time for the enjoyment of the lighter side of life—Her Majesty's example has probably had not a little to do with the increased love of sport among the women of the present day.
In the history of sport, therefore, as in other departments of our life as a nation, the name of Victoria will be remembered as the great benefactor of women, by having given them larger, truer conceptions of life, and by opening to them spheres of usefulness and pleasure which the deadening influence of the eighteenth century, seemed to have closed to them for ever.