CHAPTER IV.
THE ROUTINE OF COUNTRY SPORTS.
In my last chapter I took a view of the variety given to rural life by the annual visit to town: but if a gentleman have no desire so to vary his existence; if he love the country too well to leave it at all, most plentiful are the resources which offer themselves for pleasantly speeding on the time. If he be attached merely to field sports, not a moment of the whole year but he may fill up with his peculiar enjoyment. Racing, hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, all offer themselves to his choice; and rural sports, as every thing else in English life, are so systematized; every thing belonging to them is so exactly regulated; all their necessary implements and accessories, are brought to such an admirable pitch of perfection by the advancement of the arts, that the pleasures of the sportsman are rendered complete, and are diffused over every portion of the year. Field sports have long ceased to be followed in that rude and promiscuous manner which they were when forests overrun the greater part of Europe, and hunting was almost necessary to existence. Parties of hunters no longer go out with dogs of various kinds—greyhounds, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, all in leash, as our ancestors frequently did, ready to slip them on any kind of game which might present itself, and with bows also ready to make more sure of their prey. We have no battues, such as are still to be found in some parts of the continent, and which used to be the common mode of hunting in the Highlands, when the beasts of a whole district were driven into a small space, and subjected to a promiscuous slaughter; a scene such as Taylor the water-poet describes himself as witnessing in the Braes of Mar; nor such as those perpetrated by the King of Naples in Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia, in which he killed 5 bears, 1820 boars, 1950 deer, 1145 does, 1625 roebucks, 1121 rabbits, 13 wolves, 17 badgers, 16,354 hares, 354 foxes, 15,350 pheasants, and 12,335 partridges. Such scenes are not to be witnessed in this country. Every field sport is here become a science. Hunting, coursing, shooting, each has its own season, its well-defined bounds, its peculiar horses, dogs, and weapons. Our horses and dogs, by long and anxious attention to the preservation of their specific characters, and to the improvement of their breed, are become pre-eminent, each in their own department. Our sporting nobility and gentry have not contented themselves with becoming thoroughly skilful in every thing relating to field diversions; but have many of them communicated their knowledge through the press to their countrymen, and have thus furnished our libraries with more practical information of this kind than ever was possessed by any one country at any one time; and contributed to make these pursuits as effective, elegant, and attractive as possible. It is not my province to go into the details of any particular sports; for them I refer the reader to Daniel, Beckford, Col. Thornton, Sir John Sebright, Col. Hawker, Tom Oakleigh, Nimrod, and the sporting magazines. My business is to shew how gentlemen may and do spend their time in the country. And in the mere catalogue of out-of-door sports, are there not racing, hunting, coursing, shooting, angling? Hawking once was an elegant addition to this list; but that has nearly fallen into disuse in this country, and may be said to exist only in the practice of Sir John Sebright, and the grand falconer of England, the Duke of St. Albans. Archery too, once the great boast of our forests, and the constant attendant on the hunt, has, as a field exercise, followed hawking. It has of late years been revived and practised by the gentry as a graceful amusement, and an occasion for assembling together at certain periods in the country; but as an adjunct of the field sports it is past for ever. Racing, every one knows, is a matter of intense interest with a great portion of the nobility, gentry, and others; and those who delight in it, know where to find Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot Heath, Doncaster, and other places, often to their cost: almost every county and considerable town, has its course and annual races. These, however, to the country gentleman, unless he be one whose great and costly passion is for breeding and betting on race-horses, are but occasional excitements: the rest run their round of seasons as regularly as the seasons themselves; and place a lover of field sports in the country at any point of the year, and one or more of them are ready for his enjoyment. Is it winter? He has choice of all, except it be angling. Hunting, coursing, shooting, are all in their full season. Hunting, as I have said, is more confined in its range than it was anciently; but it is more regular, less fatiguing, less savage in its character, more complete in its practice and appointments. There is now neither the boar, the bear, nor the wolf, to try the courage of our youth, and stag and buck hunting may be considered as rare and almost local amusements,—but we may quote the words of a great authority as to the position which hunting occupies amongst the rural sports of England. “There is certainly no country in the world, where the sport of hunting on horseback is carried to such a height as in Great Britain at the present day, and where the pleasures of a fox-chase are so well understood, and conducted on such purely scientific principles. It is considered the beau idéal of hunting by those who pursue it. There can be no doubt, that it is infinitely superior to stag-hunting, for the real sportsman can only enjoy that chase, when the deer is sought for, and found like other game which are pursued by hounds. In the case of finding an out-lying fallow-deer, which is unharboured in this manner, great sport is frequently afforded; but this is rarely to be met with in Great Britain: so that fox-hunting is now the chief amusement of the true British sportsman: and a noble one it is—the artifices and dexterity employed by this lively, crafty animal, to avoid the dogs, are worthy of our admiration, as he exhibits more devices for self-preservation than any other beast of the chase. In many parts of this and the sister island, hare-hunting is much followed, but fox-hunters consider it as a sport only fit for women and old men,—but, although it is less arduous than that of the fox-chase, there are charms attached to it which compensate for the hard riding of the other.”
I do not enter here into the question of cruelty in this sport, nor into the other question of injury resulting from it to crops and fences, on which grounds many so strongly object to hunting, and on the former ground, indeed, to all field sports. Lord Byron, for instance, thought hunting a barbarous amusement, fit only for a barbarous country. It is not my intention to undertake the defence of this old English sport from the standing charge against it, we here have only to deal with it as a feature of rural life; and though one cannot say much in praise of its humanity, it cannot be denied that it is a pursuit of a vigorous and exciting character. A fine field of hunters in their scarlet coats, rushing over forest, heath, fence or stream, on noble steeds, and with a pack of beautiful dogs in full cry, is a very picturesque and animating spectacle.
Through the winter, then, up to the very approach of spring, hunting offers whatever charms it possesses; pheasant, woodcock and snipe shooting, in the woods and by the streams, are in all their glory. It is the time for pursuing all manner of wild fowl, in fens and along the sea-coast; and if any one would know what are the eager and adventurous pleasures of that pursuit, let him join some old fowler for a week amongst the reeds of Cambridge, Huntingdon, or Lincolnshire,—now laying his traps and springes, now crouching amongst the green masses of flags and other water plants, or crawling on hands and knees for a shot at teal, widgeon, or wild duck; now visiting the decoys, or shooting right and left amongst the rising and contorting snipes. Or let him read Col. Hawker’s delightful description of swivel shooting on the coasts, the mud-launchers and followers of the sea flocks by night. Those are sports which require a spice of enthusiasm and love of adventure far above the pitch of the ordinary sportsman.
When spring arrives, and warns the shooter to give rest to the creatures of his pursuit, that they may pair, produce, and rear their broods; as he lays down the gun, he can take up the angle. Many a keen and devoted old sportsman, however, never knows when to lay down the gun. Though he will no longer fire at game, he likes through the spring and summer months to carry his gun on his arm through the woods, to knock down what he calls vermin,—stoats, weazels, polecats, jays, magpies, hawks, owls; all those creatures that destroy game, or their young broods, or suck their eggs. He is fond of spying out the nests of partridges and pheasants, and from time to time marking their progress. It is a grand anticipative pleasure to him when, passing along the furrow of the standing corn, his old pointer, or favourite spaniel starts the young birds just able to take the wing, and he counts them over with a silent exultation. He is fond of seeing to the training of his young dogs, of selecting fresh ones, of putting his fowling-pieces and all his shooting gear in order. There are some old sportsmen of my acquaintance, who, during what they call this idle time, have made collections of curious birds and small animals which might furnish some facts to natural history. An old uncle of mine in Derbyshire, who has shot away a fine estate, I scarcely ever recollect to have seen out of doors without his gun. I saw him lately, when in that county, a feeble, worn-out old man, just able to totter about, but still with the gun on his arm. For those, however, who can find it in their hearts to lay aside the gun at the prescribed time, and yet long for rural sports, what can so delightfully fill up the spring and summer as the fishing-rod? There is no rural art, except that of shooting, for which modern science and invention have done so much as angling. Since Izaak Walton gave such an impetus to this taste by his delicious old book, it has gradually assumed a new and fascinating character. A host of contrivances have been expended on fishing tackle. What splendid rods for simple angling, trolling, or fly-fishing, are now offered to the admiring eyes of the amateur! what a multitude of apparatus of one kind or other! what silver fish and endless artificial flies Angling has become widened and exalted in its sphere with the general expansion of knowledge and the improvement of taste. It has associated itself with the pleasures and refinements of literature and poetry. All those charms which worthy Izaak threw round it, have continued to cling to it, and others have grown up around them. The love of nature, the love of travel have intertwined themselves with the love of angling. Angling has thence become, as it were, a new and more attractive pursuit—a matter of taste and science as well as of health and pleasure. It is found that it may not only be followed by the tourist without diverting him from his primal objects, but that it adds most essentially to the delights of a summer excursion. Since Wordsworth and John Wilson set up their “Angler’s Tent” on the banks of Wast-Water, “at the head of that wild and solitary lake, which they had reached by the mountain-path that passes Barn-Moor-Tarn from Eskdale,” making an angling excursion of seven days amongst the mountains of Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland, having “their tent, large panniers filled with its furniture, provisions, etc., loaded upon horses, which, while the anglers, who separated every morning, pursued each his own sport up the torrents, were carried over the mountains to the appointed place, by some lake or stream, where they were to meet again in the evening;” and
that solitary trade,
Mid rural peace in peacefulness pursued,
Through rocky glen, wild moor, and hanging wood,
White flowering meadow, and romantic glade;
since Sir Humphry Davy went angling and philosophising in the mountain tarns, and along the trout and salmon streams not only of Scotland and Ireland, but of France and Switzerland, the enthusiasm for angling has grown into a grand and expansive passion. We have our “Anglers in Wales,” our “Anglers in Ireland;” Stephen Oliver has flourished his lines over the streams of the north, Jesse over the gentle and majestic Thames. The only wonder is, that, as our countrymen walk to and fro through all known regions of the earth, we do not hear of anglers in the Danube—the Ister—the Indus—the Joliba,—of trolling in La Plata, and fly-fishing in South Africa and Australia. All that will come in its own good time: meanwhile let us remind our country friends of the further blessings which await them, even should all the rapid streams of our mountain rivers and rivulets, Loch Leven trout, Loch Fine herrings, and salmon pulled flouncing from the crystal waters of the Teith or the Shannon, to be crimped and grilled by most delicious art, satiate them before the summer is over. The 12th of August approaches! the gun is roused from its slumber—the dogs are howling in ecstasy on their release from the kennel—the heather is burst into all its crimson splendour on the moors and the mountains, and grouse-shooting is at hand once more!
That sentence is enough to make a sportsman start to his feet if it were but whispered to him in his deepest after-dinner doze. In “The Book of the Seasons” I asserted that sportsmen felt the animating influence of nature and its beauty in their pursuits. For that passage many have been the gentle lectures of the tender-hearted; but that it was a true passage has been shewn by the thanks which many sportsmen have given me for that simple vindication, and by the repeated quotation of the whole article in their books. That they do feel it, is plainly shewn in many papers of the sporting magazines; but nowhere more vividly than in “The Oakleigh Shooting Code.” If the unction with which the paper on grouse-shooting is written in that book were more diffused through works of the like nature, vain would be all arguments to check the love of shooting. The feeling on this subject has been evidenced by the avidity with which that part of the book has been quoted far and wide. But the spirit of the picturesque is not more prominent in these chapters than in the description of Oakleigh Hall, and of the “wide-ranging treeless view of the smooth-turfed limestone hills, the white rocks breaking out in patches, so characteristic of Derbyshire.”
But we are pausing on our way to the Highlands; and surely nothing can be so inspiring and exciting in the whole circle of sporting scenes as a trip to the moors and mountains of the north, in the height of summer—in the beauty of summer weather, and in the full beauty of the scenery itself. If the season is fine—the roads are dry—the walks are dry—the bogs are become, many of them, passable, the heather is in full bloom, the fresh air of the mountains, or the waters in sailing thither, the rapid changes of scene, the novel aspects of life and nature in progressing onward, by the carriage, the railway, the steamer, with all their varying groups of tourists and pleasure-seekers, of men of business and men of idleness, are full of enjoyment. To the man from the rich monotonous Lowlands, from the large town, from the heart of the metropolis perhaps, from the weary yoke of business, public or private, of law, of college study, of parliament and committees, what can be more penetrating and delicious than the breathing of the fresh buoyant air, the pleasant flitting of the breeze, the dash of sunny waters, the aspect of mountains and moors in all their shadow and gloom, or in their brightness as they rise in their clear still beauty into the azure heavens, or bask broad and brown in the noon-sun? There go the happy sportsmen; seated on the deck of some fast-sailing steamer, with human groups around them; they are fast approaching the “land of the mountain and the flood.” They already seem to tread the elastic turf, to smell the heather bloom, and the peat fire of the Highland hut; to climb the moory hill, to hear the thunder of the linn, or pace the pebbly shore of the birch-skirted lake. They have left dull scenes or dry studies behind, and a volume of Walter Scott’s novels is in their hands, living with all the character and traditions of the mountain-land before them. Well then, is it not a blessed circumstance that our poets and romancers have kindled the spirit of these things in the heart of our countrymen, that such places lie within our own island, and that science has so quickened our transit to them? Let us just note a few of the symptoms which shew us that this memorable 12th of August is at hand. In the market towns you see the country sportsman hastening along the streets, paying quick visits to his gunsmith, ammunition dealer, tailor, draper, etc. He is getting all his requisites together. His dogs are at his heels. Then you see him already invested in his jacket and straw hat, driving off in his gig, phaeton, or other carriage, with keeper or companion, and perhaps a couple of dogs stowed away with him. You see the keeper and the dog-cart on their way too. As you get northward these signs thicken. In large towns, as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, you see keeper-like looking men, with pointers and setters for sale tied up to some palisade, or lamp-post, at the corner of a street. But woe to those who have to purchase dogs under such circumstances. It is ten to one but they are grievously gulled; or if they should chance to stumble upon a tolerable dog, there is not time for that mutual knowledge to grow up which should exist between the sportsman and his companion of the field. He that sees beforehand his trip to the hills, should beforehand have all in readiness: he who on a summer ramble is smitten with a sudden desire of grouse-shooting, must however, do the best he can.
When you pass into Scotland, the signals of the time grow more conspicuous. In the newspapers, you see everywhere advertisements of Highland tracts to be let as shooting-grounds. When you get into the Highlands themselves, you find in all the inns maps of the neighbouring estates, divided into shooting-grounds for letting. It is very probable that the income derived from this source by the Highland proprietors frequently far exceeds the rental of the same estates for the grazing of sheep and cattle. The waters and the heaths seem to be the most profitable property of a great part of the Highlands. Almost every stream and loch is carefully preserved and let as a trout or salmon fishery, many of them for enormous sums; and so far is this carried, that sportsmen who are not inclined to pay eighty or a hundred pounds a-year for a shooting ground, complain that Ireland is the only country now for shooting in any degree of freedom. Sometimes several gentlemen join at a shooting ground; and it is a picturesque sight to see them, and their dogs and keepers, drawing towards their particular locations as the day approaches.