"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 brass
buttons 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 passed 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 horsemen 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 tit, with _leather_ overalls. Now you
have all sorts of devices--waterproof aprons _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 aprons_--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
noble 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 flourishing 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 cockneyism 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."