Volume Ii Part 16 (2/2)
Take my advice, as an old sportsman who has been at it all his life, and has now seen nearly half a century; if you are a man of moderate means take your time in hiring a place, and when you have found one to suit you, rent on a long lease, if you can; if you wish to give it up, it will not remain on your hands any time. Do not be inveigled into buying a lot of useless guns, rods, or sporting paraphernalia; a _real_ sportsman does not require them.
I think I have now pretty well exhausted the subject, and told you how to go to work.
PARTRIDGE MANORS AND ROUGH SHOOTING
Bright, beautiful, glorious June!
I have often been asked which of the four seasons I like the best; my answer has ever been the same: ”The hunting, shooting, fis.h.i.+ng, and racing.” One season I detest (the very name of it gives me the cold s.h.i.+vers)--the _London one_; defend me from that; for if there is a particular time which is calculated to make ”Paterfamilias” miserable and more out of humour than another, it is that abominable period of shopping, dinners, evening parties, operas, theatres, concerts, flirtations, flower-shows, and the dusty Row, with its dangerous holes.
I hate the formality--the sn.o.bbism of the ”little village.” I begin to think Napoleon I. was right when he said we were ”a nation of shop-keepers.” I do not mind a good dinner, when I can get one; but there is the rub, I never do get a good dinner; the English do not know how to dine. After twenty years' residence on the Continent, I have come to the conclusion that John Bull is miserably, hopelessly behindhand with our French neighbours on all matters pertaining to eating and drinking; but then I balance the account in this way--Mossoo is not a sportsman; and although he will tell you he is a ”_cha.s.seur intrepide_,” ”_un cavalier de premiere force_,” he does not s.h.i.+ne either in the hunting or shooting field.
But the French ladies? Ah, they can dress; they beat us there again into Smithereens.
I am not like a bear in the hollow of a tree, who has been sucking his paws all the winter to keep him alive; I have been enjoying most of our country amus.e.m.e.nts, and I may say the winter has pa.s.sed pleasantly.
Of late years a deaf ear has been turned to hints thrown out ”for a change of air, things wanted,” &c. Busily engaged in building, draining, planting, and so on, little time could be given by me to London festivities.
The last attack was made in a somewhat ingenious manner.
”Frederick, poor Alice wants her teeth looking at. I think she had better go up to town for three weeks or a month, and be put under the care of a good dentist.”
This was as much as to say, ”We are all to go;” but I was equal to the occasion.
”By all means, my dear, let her go. My sister is there for the season, and will only be too delighted to have her; but as for my leaving the place at present, with all I have to do, it is an utter impossibility.”
This was a settler.
Somehow or other I begin to feel more lively as spring comes on. As a rule, about the middle of May I require a little spring medicine and a change of air. I find that the breezes of Epsom Downs agree famously with me, although my better-half always declares I ”look vilely” on my return. Absurd nonsense! But I love my own quiet country life; its wild unfettered freedom. Away from the smoke, dust, and tumult of over-crowded cities--away from late hours and the unwholesome glare of gas, and I am happy.
A trip to Ascot and Goodwood with my family keeps matters all straight.
A break now and then, and the quiet monotony of country life is not felt.
June, bright, beautiful, glorious June, has peculiar attractions for me. I am a shooter. I have not a grouse moor, for the simple reason that I cannot afford one; as my old keeper says, ”It is master's terrible long family and expenses that prevents his going into shooting as he would like.”
I am obliged to content myself with a partridge manor; and, after all, I believe I like partridge and snipe shooting better than any other.
As I remark in my notes on ”November Shooting,” a friend of mine once said he considered snipe-shooting ”_the fox-hunting of shooting_,”
and I am disposed to agree with him.
But, to return to June, from the 5th to about the 20th of the month, most of the forward hatches come off, and are seen basking and bathering round their mother.
But there are other hatches much later, for cheepers are often found in September quite unfit to shoot at.
I can only account for this, that the old birds have had their eggs destroyed in some way or other.
A partridge manor is not one quarter the expense of pheasants and coverts. The latter birds not only require constant attention, night and day, but feeding forms a very serious item. Pheasants are very costly, and only within reach of the rich man.
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