Volume Ii Part 1 (1/2)

Sporting Society.

Vol. II.

by Various.

SPORTING OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT DAY

”O tempora! O mores!” how our grandsires would stare if they could only see how differently sporting in all its branches is carried on now-a-days; it would make their pigtails stand on end, and the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons fly off their blue coats in very fright.

There are few of the Squire Western school now left; but occasionally you may still come across some jovial old sportsman of eighty years or more, who, though his form is shrunken, and his snow-white head proclaims that many winters have pa.s.sed over it, yet carries a pair of eyes as bright and keen as of yore, eyes that glisten again when he launches forth on his favourite hobby.

I know several gentlemen nearer eighty than seventy who still shoot, and keep a fine kennel of dogs. One of these gentlemen only last year took a moor in Scotland for five years. May he live to enjoy it and renew his lease.

I could name many close on, ay, over fourscore, who ride well yet to hounds; and though they may not be such bruisers as they once were across country, yet are difficult to choke off.

It is just forty-one years [this was written twenty years ago] since I had my first mount to hounds. There is no _non mi ricordo_ with me. I can recollect the day as well as yesterday, the pinks, the beaver-hats of curious shape, the short-tailed horses, are too vividly impressed on my memory ever to be effaced. Men went out in those days for hunting, and not merely for a gallop. Time changes all things, and I suppose we must change with the times; but are these changes for the better? Well, I will not give an opinion, but leave others to decide.

The hounds of those days were not nearly so fast as those of the present; and I am inclined to think that our hounds are now bred too fine and speedy--for some countries they certainly are--and often flash over and lose a scent which ought not to be lost.

Hunting, in the days I speak of, could be enjoyed by men of very moderate means, for it was not necessary to have two or three horses out. In some countries, especially woodland ones, one horse may still do; but, as a rule, hounds are now so fast, and horses so lightly bred to what they were, that no hunter, however good he may be, can live with them from find to finish. If you wish to see a run out, you must have your first and second hors.e.m.e.n riding to points. These men must not only be light-weights, but steady, know the country, save their animals, and be there when wanted.

You seldom, at least where I hunted, saw men driving up to the meet in their well-appointed broughams, mail-phaetons, or what-not. A long distance was done, in my early days, on a cover hack; and one hunter did where three are now required.

In the present day you see men stepping from their close carriages with the morning papers in their hands, beautifully got up--a choice regalia between their lips, with holland overalls to keep their spotless buckskins from speck of dirt or cigar ashes. Very different from the hardy men you encountered years gone by, alas! never to return again--cantering along on a corky t.i.t, with _leather_ overalls. Now you have all sorts of devices--waterproof ap.r.o.ns _before_ and _behind_--in my idea it only wants some enterprising man to bring out a hunting-crop with an umbrella, something similar to the ladies' driving-whips, whip and parasol in one, to complete the picture. Fancy men hunting with _waterproof ap.r.o.ns_--they should go out for _nurses_!

Perhaps, as years creep on, one is wont to look back on his youthful days and fondly imagine nothing is done so well now as then. Understand, I do not say hunting and shooting are not as good as they were. I do both still, and enjoy them as much as ever; but there is not so much _sport_ in them, to my mind, as formerly--men are not the _hardy_, genuine sportsmen they were.

Horses are much dearer now than twenty, thirty, forty years back--provender also. Where 1 would go thirty years ago, you require now nearly 1, 10s.; this alone prevents many men from following their favourite pursuits.

The time is not far distant when hunting will be given up in England; railways, the price of land, and the high market prices which must necessarily come with an increase of population, are doing their work slowly but surely. The present generation are not likely to witness it: so much the better, for it would break the hearts of some to see the n.o.ble pastime of hunting on its ”last legs.” Waste land, too, is being rapidly enclosed, and what are now wilds, fifty or sixty years hence may be flouris.h.i.+ng districts.

How many country villages are now huge towns! I remember, years ago, when I used to meet the Queen's hounds, before the South-Western line was made, there was only one old wayside inn at Woking, which was much resorted to by ”the fancy,” for it was a noted spot for pugilists. Many and many a prize-fight have I seen there. Now Woking is a little town--I mean the new town, not the old town some four miles distant; and the spots where I used to knock over the snipe and plover are now built on and enclosed. And so it will go on to the end of all time; bricks and mortar, iron and compo, will rise up, large and small buildings, all over the face of the country, and those whose hearts are still bent on sport will have to go farther afield for it.

But this is already done. France, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Bohemia, Bavaria, and other countries, have their English sportsmen. Railways have made nearly all places within reach of those with means. Scotch moors that you could rent thirty years ago for 50 a year, are now 500; the rivers the same; and grouse that are killed one day in Scotland are eaten the next in all parts of the United Kingdom.

Some men meet the hounds now thirty and forty miles away from home.

They breakfast comfortably at home, then step into the train, and are whirled away with their horses and grooms; have a gallop, come home, or perhaps go out to a grand luncheon; lounge down to their club, or do a few calls, then dine, and go to one of the theatres to see the last new thing; finish up with a supper or a ball, or perhaps both.

Old Squire Broadfurrow has ridden his stout, easy-going hack to cover, has had a clinking day, and a fox run into, as the crow flies, about eight-and-twenty miles from his home. The old man, nothing daunted, jogs quietly along and pulls up at the first country inn, orders a chop for himself and a bucket of gruel for his horse, gets home in good time to entertain three or four choice souls at dinner, ride the run over again, and talk of some shooting they are going to have on the morrow.

Reader, which is the pleasanter style of the two? which the most healthy? Railways and hunting I cannot reconcile with my ideas of sport; there is a sort of c.o.c.kneyism about it that I do not like; it seems to me poor ”form.”

Men change, too, in their ideas as well as their dress. I was talking some time ago to an old friend of mine who had been an inveterate fox-hunter, did his six days a week, and spent the seventh in the kennel; if you asked him what Sunday it was, you always got the same answer, ”Infliction Sunday.”

I asked him how he was getting on in the hunting line.

”Hunting, my dear fellow; why, I have given it up years ago--all humbug! What on earth is the use of a man making a guy of himself, putting on a pink coat, top-boots, and uncomfortable leather breeches, and for what?--to gallop after a lot of yelping dogs, and to catch a fox which is of no earthly use to any one when he is brought to hand; endangering your neck, breaking fences, and destroying land and the crops. Hunting is an idiotic fas.h.i.+on; half the men only hunt for the sake of dress, and for mounting the pink. If they must hunt, why not dress like reasonable beings, in comfortable cords, gaiters, and a shooting-jacket? Ah! then you would not see half the men out you do now. I am quite ashamed to think I ever hunted. Just come and look at my shorthorns, will you?”

In sporting parlance, I was ”knocked clean out of time;” this was the inveterate six-days-a-week man.

”But you shoot?” I asked, seeing it was necessary to say something.