Lord Helmsley is very fond of shooting; he prefers grouse-driving to any other form of sport with the gun, and after that, walking up partridges. He is also a stalker.
He is not a great fisherman, but sometimes throws a fly on the Rye, which trout-stream runs through Duncombe Park. He has not played much polo since he left Oxford, having had many demands upon his time; and an occasional game is all he has been able to play during the last three seasons.
Lord Helmsley takes a great interest in every department of horse breeding, more especially in the breeding of hunters and polo ponies; he is greatly interested in the work of the Polo and Riding Pony Society. He represents the Thirsk and Malton Division of Yorkshire in the Conservative interest, having been elected at the General Election of 1906.
Sport at Westminster.
“When George the Third was King” used to be a favourite expression amongst my elders when I was a boy, as denoting the many wonderful events which occurred during the first twenty years of the last century, and which terminated that long and glorious reign. Since then the Victorian Era has come and gone, eclipsing in every way the glories of its longest predecessor, and handing down to this twentieth century a record which, as regards sport alone, is vastly in advance of all others, so much so that although we of the elder generation naturally are wont to enlarge occasionally on the greatness of the past, it has to be admitted in our candid moments that our ideas and ideals have been swept away, and can never again be used, except as ancient milestones on the road to Parnassus.
It would seem, however, that thus early in our twentieth century it is destined that a halt should be cried. The why and the wherefore of which it is not befitting that your pages should discuss, except in its one aspect, that of sport, yet, in truth, even sport cannot wholly be dissevered from the growth of democracy, which, for good or evil, has come like a March wind, untempered by sunshine, obliterating bright prospects of spring and summer happiness, foreboding a season of disappointment.
We many of us remember when on the last Tuesday in May, the Prime Minister rising in his place in Parliament moved the adjournment of the House of Commons over the Derby day, and the motion was agreed to nem. con. Our annual classic race at Epsom was a recognised holiday for our legislators. Lord Palmerston was never happier than when, as Premier, he was shaking off the cobwebs of office on this occasion; his horses more than once being competitors in the great race, and once he was second for it. Lord Derby also led his faithful Commons to Epsom, and almost carried off the Blue Ribband. Lord Beaconsfield, when Mr. Disraeli, followed the same practice, and I think it was Mr. Gladstone who first encountered dissentients to this motion. At first the minority of “noes” was an insignificant one, yet it grew, and Gladstone himself not being a sportsman, he soon gave way, and joined the “noes.” Thus the House of Commons has long come to disregard the call of “off to the Derby!” and who in the present Parliament would be bold enough to even raise the question?
In France the President of the Republic leads the way in pompous style to see the great Prix de Paris contested, and most popularly is he welcomed there by citizens of all classes. Why have we as a national community fallen away from a traditional custom?
More Parliamentary days are wasted in almost useless discussion than were wont to be claimed and given to this one day of distinguished sport. Our Gracious King is always present, the noblest patron of all. He must feel the enforced absence of his elected legislators. Painful as it is to admit the fact, we are now, nationally, handed over to people who not only decry sport, but rejoice in its possible overthrow. Some call them “faddists,” but they are worse, they are, many of them, at heart socialists—social democrats, whose aim and object it is to crush or set at naught the pleasures of those whom they are pleased to think are the class that stand between them and the enjoyment of advantages which all should enjoy alike, whether they have legitimately become entitled to them or not.