For your wealthy noblemen, or large landed proprietors, it matters
little what sport of any kind costs them, whether in horses, hounds,
shooting, fishing, yachting, racing, or coursing.
Yet very many rich men are the greatest screws possible--carrying out
the old adage of "the more you have, the more you want." Love of sport
is one of the boasted and general characteristics of an Englishman; but
I am inclined to think that, after all, young England is not such an
ardent sportsman or such a hard man as his father and grandfathers
were. As a rule, they are more of the feather-bed and hearth-rug sort;
but this by no means applies to all, for I know many good and
indefatigable men, and there are hundreds I do not.
Our forefathers were, no doubt, earlier than we are--that is, they did
not, in spite of their hard drinking at times, turn night into morning
as we do. They went early to bed, and got up early; began hunting
before daylight, and managed to kill their fox as twilight fell. Their
soul was in sport, and we love to talk and hear about the grand,
generous, though illiterate old squires of a hundred and fifty years
ago. Men who always stirred their ale with a sprig of rosemary, and
drank posset before going to bed; dined at one o'clock when they were
at home; smoked their "yard of clay," wore topboots, buckskins, and a
blue coat with brass buttons--regular Squire Westerns, but perhaps a
little more refined than that worthy was. But education--and that
wonderful thing, "steam," which enables us to travel from one end of
the kingdom to another in the course of a few hours--soon stamped the
old country gentleman out. What should we think if we now saw the
queer-fashioned coach, with its four long-tailed black horses, doing
about five miles an hour? Some of our London swells, who cannot stoop
to pick an umbrella up, would fall down in a fit, especially if the
inmates of the said coach were any friends or relations of theirs.
Yes, the good old days are gone by--passed for ever. Men now smoke
their cigars, hunt and shoot for a couple of hours, and look with
horror on the portraits of their ancestors with a pigtail, and whisp of
white cambric round their necks.
Many, very many country gentlemen of a century ago never saw London;
they might have heard of it, but it was the work of a week to get up,
and another to get back, and a visit to London about once or twice in
their lives was as much as many could boast of, and gave them food for
gossip for years and years after.
Shootings in those days were not of much value, and a man might have
had a great deal of sport for a very little money; but now all is
changed, though it is only within the last thirty or forty years that
Scotch shootings have risen in value; some moors that were rented then
for fifty pounds per annum are now nearer five hundred.
Directly people found out they could get down to Scotland at
comparatively little cost and trouble, the prices of shootings went
up--and they will continue to rise. England is much wealthier than she
was. Commerce is much more extended; money is easier; speculation is
more rife; more gold discovered, which I cannot see makes one iota
difference; yet in spite of all this, and the heavy taxes we groan
under--many raised and "thrust upon us" for the purpose of maintaining
a lot of hungry foreigners, who, by the way, have the pick of all the
good things. Well, well! that game will be played out before very many
years are gone by; there will be a most signal "check-mate," a
"right-about," and the usual "Who'd have thought it?" "Knew it was
coming," "Always said so," and so on. But to my mutton. Despite of the
heavy price of things, heavy taxes, heavy rents, the Englishman is
still a sportsman to his heart's core. If he does not make such a
labour of it as his forefathers, he loves it just as well; his hounds
and his horses are faster--he is faster, in many senses of the word;
his guns do not take half an hour to load, and his pointers or setters
can beat a twenty-acre field of turnips in something less than four
hours; in fact, in many places dogs are going out of fashion, and the
detestable system of "driving" coming in. I hate a battue, and call it
sport I cannot, and never will. It is true I go to them occasionally,
get into a hot corner, and have the "bouquet"--but still I cannot call
it legitimate sport.
The man with moderate means must give up all idea of Scotch shooting,
unless he goes very far north and gets some of the islands that are
difficult of access; then it may still be done. Wild shooting, in many
parts of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall may be had at
reasonable prices: thirty years ago ground--and good ground--could be
got at sixpence an acre; now it is eighteenpence and two shillings.
Very fair rough shooting may be rented in North or South Wales for
about threepence an acre, and it is here, or in Ireland--which I shall
presently touch upon--that the man of moderate means may have both
shooting and fishing.
In the first place, house-rent is cheap in Wales; in fashionable spots,
of course, it is not; but those are the very places a sportsman must
avoid: he must leave fashion, youth, and beauty behind him, and go in
for sport, and sport only.
Having found a house and ground, he must then get a good keeper and
dog-breaker.