the business, and get the precise article likely to please D., if I
went to every maker in the Metropolis. I went to very nearly every
prominent man--I spent several days at it. I called at shops whose
names are household words wherever an English sportsman can be
found. Some of them, though bright to look at from the pavement,
within were mean, and even lacked cleanliness. The attendants were
often incapable of comprehending that a customer _may_ be as good a
judge of what he wants as themselves; they have got into a narrow
routine of offering the same thing to everybody. No two shops were
of the same opinion: at one you were told that the choke was the
greatest success in the world; at another, that they only shot well
for one season, quickly wearing out; at a third, that such and such
a 'grip' or breech-action was perfect; at a fourth, that there never
was such a mistake; at a fifth, that hammerless guns were the guns
of the future, and elsewhere, that people detested hammerless guns
because it seemed like learning to shoot over again. Finally, I
visited several of the second-hand shops. They had some remarkably
good guns--for the leading second-hand shops do not care to buy a
gun unless by a crack maker--but the cheapness was a delusion. A new
gun might be got for the same money, or very little more. Their
system was like this. Suppose they had a really good gun, but, for
aught you could tell, twenty or thirty years old (the breech-action
might have been altered), for this they would ask, say L25. The
original price of the gun may have been L50, and if viewed _only_
with regard to the original price, of course that would be a great
reduction. But for the L25 a new gun could be got from a maker whose
goods, if not so famous, were thoroughly reliable, and who
guaranteed the shooting. In the one case you bought a gun about
whose previous history you knew absolutely nothing beyond the mere
fact of the barrels having come at first-hand from a leading maker.
But they may have been battered about--rebored; they may be scored
inside by someone loading with flints; twenty things that are quite
unascertainable may have combined to injure its original perfection.
The cheapness will not stand the test of a moment's thought--that
is, if you are in search of excellence. You buy a name and trust to
chance. After several days of such work as this, becoming less and
less satisfied at every fresh attempt, and physically more fatigued
than if I had walked a hundred miles, I gave it up for awhile, and
wrote to D. for more precise instructions.
When I came to quietly reflect on these experiences, I found that
the effect of carefully studying the subject had been to plunge me
into utter confusion. It seemed as difficult to choose a gun as to
choose a horse, which is saying a good deal. Most of us take our
shooting as we take other things--from our fathers--very likely use
their guns, get into their style of shooting; or if we buy guns, buy
them because a friend wants to sell, and so get hold of the gun that
suits us by a kind of happy chance. But to begin _de novo_, to
select a gun from the thousand and one exhibited in London, to go
conscientiously into the merits and demerits of the endless
varieties of locks and breeches, and to come to an impartial
decision, is a task the magnitude of which is not easily described.
How many others who have been placed in somewhat similar positions
must have felt the same ultimate confusion of mind, and perhaps at
last, in sheer despair, plunged, and bought the first that came to
hand, regretting for years afterwards that they had not bought this
or that weapon, which had taken their fancy, but which some
gunsmith interested in a patent had declared obsolete!
D. settled the question, so far as he was concerned, by ordering two
guns: one bored in the old style for ordinary shooting, and a choked
gun of larger bore for the ducks. But all this trouble and
investigation gave rise to several not altogether satisfactory
reflections. For one thing, there seems a too great desire on the
part of gunmakers to achieve a colossal reputation by means of some
new patent, which is thrust on the notice of the sportsman and of
the public generally at every step and turn. The patent very likely
is an admirable thing, and quite fulfils the promise so far as the
actual object in view is concerned. But it is immediately declared
to supersede everything--no gun is of any use without it: you are
compelled to purchase it whether or no, or you are given to
understand that you are quite behind the age. The leading idea of
the gunmaker nowadays is to turn out a hundred thousand guns of one
particular pattern, like so many bales of cloth; everybody is to
shoot with this, their speciality, and everything that has been
previously done is totally ignored. The workman in the true sense of
the word--the artist in guns--is either extinct, or hidden in an
obscure corner. There is no individuality about modern guns. One is
exactly like another. That is very well, and necessary for military
arms, because an army must be supplied with a single pattern
cartridge in order to simplify the difficulty of providing
ammunition. They fail even in the matter of ornament. The
design--if it can be called design--on one lock-plate is repeated on
a thousand others, so with the hammers. There is no originality
about a modern gun; as you handle it you are conscious that it is
well put together, that the mechanism is perfect, the barrels true,
but somehow it feels _hard_; it conveys the impression of being
machine-made. You cannot feel the _hand_ of the maker anywhere, and
the failure, the flatness, the formality of the supposed ornament,
is depressing. The ancient harquebuss makers far surpassed the very
best manufacturers of the present day. Their guns are really
artistic--works of true art. The stocks of some of the German
wheel-lock guns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are
really beautiful specimens of carving and design. Their powder-horns
are gems of workmanship--hunting-scenes cut out in ivory, the
minutest detail rendered with life-like accuracy. They graved their
stags and boars from Nature, not from conventional designs; the
result is that we admire them now because Nature is constant, and
her fashions endure. The conventional 'designs' on our lock-plates,
etc., will in a few years be despised; they have no intrinsic
beauty. The Arab of the desert, wild, untrammelled, ornaments his
matchlock with turquoise. Our machine-made guns, double-barrel,
breech-loading, double-grip, rebounding locks, first-choice stocks,
laminated steel, or damascus barrels, choke-bore, and so forth,
will, it is true, mow down the pheasants at the battue as the scythe
cuts down the grass. There is slaughter in every line of them. But
is slaughter everything? In my idea it is not, but very far from it.
Were I offered the choice of participation in the bloodiest battue
ever arranged--such as are reserved for princes--the very best
position, and the best-finished and swiftest breech-loader invented,
or the freedom of an English forest, to go forth at any time and
shoot whatever I chose, untrammelled by any attendants, on condition
that I only carried a wheel-lock, I should unhesitatingly select the
second alternative. There would be an abiding pleasure in the very
fact of using so beautiful a weapon--just in the very handling of
it, to pass the fingers over the intricate and exquisite carving.
There would be pleasure in winding up the lock with the spanner; in
adjusting the pyrites to strike fire from the notches of the wheel;
in priming from a delicate flask graven with stag and hounds. There
would be delight in stealing from tree to tree, in creeping from
bush to bush, through the bracken, keeping the wind carefully,
noiselessly gliding forward--so silently that the woodpecker should
not cease tapping in the beech, or the pigeon her hoarse call in the
oak, till at last within range of the buck. And then! First, if the
ball did not hit the vital spot, if it did not pass through the
neck, or break the shoulder, inevitably he would be lost, for the
round bullet would not break up like a shell, and smash the
creature's flesh and bones into a ghastly jelly, as do the missiles
from our nineteenth century express rifles. Secondly, if the wheel
did not knock a spark out quickly, if the priming had not been kept
dry, and did not ignite instantly, the aim might waver, and all the
previous labour be lost. Something like skill would be necessary
here. There would be art in the weapon itself, skill in the very
loading, skill in the approach, nerve in holding the gun steady
while the slow powder caught from the priming and expelled the ball.
That would be sport. An imperfect weapon--well, yes; but the
imperfect weapon would somehow harmonize with the forest, with the
huge old hollow oaks, the beeches full of knot-holes, the mysterious
thickets, the tall fern, the silence and solitude. It would make the
forest seem a forest--such as existed hundreds of years ago; it
would make the chase a real chase, not a foregone conclusion. It
would equalize the chances, and give the buck 'law.' In short, it
would be real shooting. Or with smaller game--I fancy I could hit a
pheasant with a wheel-lock if I went alone, and _flushed the bird
myself_. In that lies all the difference. If your birds are flushed
by beaters, you may be on the watch, but that very watching unnerves
by straining the nerves, and then the sudden rush and noise flusters
you, and even with the best gun of modern construction you often
miss. If you spring the bird yourself the noise may startle you, and
yet somehow you settle down to your aim and drop him. With a
wheel-lock, if I could get a tolerably clear view, I think I could
bring him down. If only a brace rewarded a day's roaming under oak
and beech, through fern and past thicket, I should be amply
satisfied. With the antique weapon the spirit of the wood would
enter into one. The chances of failure add zest to the pursuit. For
slaughter, however, our modern guns are unsurpassed.
Another point which occurs to one after such an overhauling of guns
as I went through is the price charged for them. There does seem
something very arbitrary in the charges demanded, and one cannot
help a feeling that they bear no proportion to the real value or
cost of production. It may, of course, be said that the wages of
workmen are very high--although workmen as a mass have long been
complaining that such is not really the case. The rent of premises
in fashionable localities is also high, no doubt. For my part, I
would quite as soon buy a gun in a village as in a crowded
thoroughfare of the Metropolis; indeed rather sooner, since there
would probably be a range attached where it could be tried. To be
offered a range, as is often the case in London, half an hour
out--which, with getting to the station and from the station at the
other end, to the place and back, may practically mean half a
day--is of little use. If you could pick up the gun in the shop,
stroll outside and try it at once, it would be ten times more
pleasant and satisfactory. A good gun is like the good wine of the
proverb--if it were made in a village, to that village men would go
or send for it. The materials for gun making are, surely, not very
expensive--processes for cheapening steel and metal generally are
now carried to such an extent, and the market for metals has fallen
to an extraordinary extent. Machinery and steam-power to drive it
is, no doubt, a very heavy item; but are we so anxious for machinery
and machine-made guns? Are you and I anxious that ten thousand other
persons should shoot with guns exactly, precisely like ours in every
single particular? That is the meaning of machinery. It destroys the
individuality of sport. We are all like so many soldiers in an army
corps firing Government Martini-Henries. In the sporting ranks one
does not want to be a private. I wonder some clever workman does not
go and set himself up in some village where rent and premises are
low, and where a range could be got close to his door, and
deliberately set down to make a name for really first-rate guns, at
a moderate price, and with some pretensions to individuality and
beauty. There is water-power, which is cheaper than steam, running
to waste all over the country now. The old gristmills, which may be
found three or four in a single parish sometimes, are half of them
falling into decay, because we eat American wheat now, which is
ground in the city steam-mills, and a good deal imported ready
ground as flour. Here and there one would think sufficient
water-power might be obtained in this way. But even if we admit that
great manufactories are extremely expensive to maintain, wages high,
rent dear, premises in fashionable streets fabulously costly, yet
even then there is something in the price of guns not quite the
thing. You buy a gun and pay a long price for it: but if you attempt
to sell it again you find it is the same as with jewellery, you can
get hardly a third of its original cost. The intrinsic value of the
gun then is less than half its advertised first cost-price. The
second-hand gun offered to you for L20 has probably cost the dealer
about L6, or L10 at the most. So that, manage it 'how you will,' you
pay a sum quite out of proportion to the intrinsic value. It is all
very well to talk about the market, custom of trade, supply and
demand, and so forth, though some of the cries of the political
economist (notably the Free Trade cry) are now beginning to be
questioned. The value of a thing is what it will fetch, no doubt,
and yet that is a doctrine which metes out half-justice only. It is
justice to the seller, but, argue as sophistically as you like, it
is _not_ justice to the purchaser.
I should recommend any gentleman who is going to equip himself as a
sportsman to ask himself before he starts the question that occurred
to me too late in D.'s case: What kind of shooting am I likely to
enjoy? Then, if not wishing to go to more expense than absolutely
necessary, let him purchase a gun precisely suited to the game he
will meet. As briefly observed before, if the sportsman takes his
sport early in the year, and practically in the summer--August is
certainly a summer month--he will like a light gun; and as the
grouse at that time have not packed, and are not difficult of
access, a light gun will answer quite as well as a heavy arm, whose
powerful charges are not required, and which simply adds to the
fatigue. Much lighter guns are used now than formerly; they do not
last so long, but few of us now look forward forty years. A gun of
6 1/2 pounds' weight will be better than anything else for summer
work. All sportsmen say it is a toy and so it is, but a very deadly
one. The same weapon will equally well do for the first of September
(unless the weather has been very bad), and for a few weeks of
partridge-shooting. But if the sport comes later in the autumn, a
heavier gun with a stronger charge (alluding to guns of the old
style of boring) will be found useful. For shooting when the leaves
are off a heavier gun has, perhaps, some advantages.
Battue-shooting puts a great strain upon a gun, from the rapid and
continuous firing, and a pheasant often requires a hard knock to
grass him successfully. You never know, either, at what range you
are likely to meet with him. It may be ten yards, it may be sixty;
so that a strong charge, a long range, and considerable power of
penetration are desirable, if it is wished to make a good
performance. I recommend a powerful gun for pheasant-shooting,
because probably in no other sport is a miss so annoying. The bird
is large and in popular estimation, therefore ought not to get away.
There is generally a party at the house at the time, and shots are
sure to be talked about, good or bad, but especially the latter,
which some men have a knack of noticing, though they may be
apparently out of sight, and bring up against you in the pleasantest
way possible: 'I say, you were rather in a fluster, weren't you,
this morning? Nerves out of order--eh?' Now, is there anything so
aggravating as to be asked about your nerves? It is, perhaps, from
the operation of competition that pheasants, as a rule, get very
little law allowed them. If you want to shine at this kind of sport,
knock the bird over, no matter when you see him--if his tail brushes
the muzzle of your gun: every head counts. The fact is, if a
pheasant is allowed law, and really treated as game, he is not by
any means so easy a bird to kill as may be supposed.
If money is no particular object, of course the sportsman can allow
himself a gun for every different kind of sport, although luxury in
that respect is apt to bring with it its punishment, by making him
but an indifferent shot with either of his weapons. But if anyone
wishes to be a really good shot, to be equipped for almost every
contingency, and yet not to go to great expense, the very best
course to follow is to buy two good guns, one of the old style of
boring, and the other nearly or quite choked. The first should be
neither heavy nor light--a moderately weighted weapon, upon which
thorough reliance may be placed up to fifty yards, and that under
favourable circumstances may kill much farther. Choose it with care,
pay a fair price for it, and adhere to it. This gun, with a little
variation in the charge, will suit almost every kind of shooting,
from snipe to pheasant. The choke-bore is the reserve gun, in case
of specially long range and great penetration being required. It
should, perhaps, be a size larger in the bore than the other.
Twelve-bore for the ordinary gun, and ten for the second, will
cover most contingencies. With a ten-bore choke, hares running wild
on hills without cover, partridge coveys getting up at fifty or
sixty yards in the same kind of country, grouse wild as hawks,
ducks, plovers, and wild-fowl generally, are pretty well accessible.
If not likely to meet with duck, a twelve-bore choke will do equally
well. Thus armed, if opportunity offers, you may shoot anywhere in
Europe. The cylinder-bore will carry an occasional ball for a boar,
a wolf, or fallow-deer, though large shot out of the choke will,
perhaps, be more effective--so far, at least, as small deer are
concerned. If you can afford it, a spare gun (old-style boring) is a
great comfort, in case of an accident to the mechanism.
SKATING
The rime of the early morning on the rail nearest the bank is easily
brushed off by sliding the walking-stick along it, and then forms a
convenient seat while the skates are fastened. An old hand selects
his gimlet with the greatest care, for if too large the screw
speedily works loose, if too small the thread, as it is frantically
forced in or out by main strength, cuts and tears the leather. A bad
gimlet has spoilt many a day's skating. Nor should the straps be
drawn too tight at first, for if hauled up to the last hole at
starting the blood cannot circulate, and the muscles of the foot
become cramped. What miseries have not ladies heroically endured in
this way at the hands of incompetent assistants! In half an hour's
time the straps will have worked to the boot, and will bear pulling
another hole or even more without pain. On skates thus fastened
anything may be accomplished.
Always put your own skates on, and put them on deliberately; for if
you really mean skating in earnest, limbs, and even life, may depend
on their running true, and not failing at a critical moment. The
slope of the bank must be descended sideways--avoid the stones
concealed by snow, for they will destroy the edge of the skate. When
within a foot or so, leap on, and the impetus will carry you some
yards out upon the lake, clear of the shadow of the bank and the
willows above, out to where the ice gleams under the sunshine. A
glance round shows that it is a solitude; the marks of skates that
went past yesterday are visible, but no one has yet arrived: it is
the time for an exploring expedition. Following the shore, note how
every stone or stick that has been thrown on by thoughtless persons
has sunk into and become firmly fixed in the ice. The slight heat of
midday has radiated from the surface of the stone, causing the ice
to melt around it, when it has sunk a little, and at night been
frozen hard in that position, forming an immovable obstacle,
extremely awkward to come into contact with. A few minutes and the
marks of skates become less frequent, and in a short time almost
cease, for the gregarious nature of man exhibits itself even on ice.
One spot is crowded with people, and beyond that extends a broad
expanse scarcely visited. Here a sand-bank rises almost to the
surface, and the yellow sand beneath causes the ice to assume a
lighter tint; beyond it, over the deep water, it is dark.
Then a fir-copse bordering the shore shuts out the faintest breath
of the north wind, and the surface in the bay thus sheltered is
sleek to a degree. This is the place for figure-skating; the ice is
perfect, and the wind cannot interfere with the balance. Here you
may turn and revolve and twist and go through those endless
evolutions and endless repetitions of curves which exercise so
singular a fascination. Look at a common figure of 8 that a man has
cut out! How many hundreds of times has he gone round and round
those two narrow crossing loops or circles! No variation, no change;
the art of it is to keep almost to the same groove, and not to make
the figure broad and splay. Yet by the wearing away of the ice it is
evident that a length of time has been spent thus for ever wheeling
round. And when the skater visits the ice again, back he will come
and resume the wheeling at intervals. On past a low waterfall where
a brook runs in--the water has frozen right up to the cascade. A
long stretch of marshy shore succeeds--now frozen hard enough, at
other times not to be passed without sinking over the ankles in mud.
The ice is rough with the aquatic weeds frozen in it, so that it is
necessary to leave the shore some thirty yards. The lake widens, and
yonder in the centre--scarcely within range of a deer-rifle--stand
four or five disconsolate wild-duck watching every motion. They are
quite unapproachable, but sometimes an unfortunate dabchick that has
been discovered in a tuft of grass is hunted and struck down by
sticks. A rabbit on ice can also be easily overtaken by a skater. If
one should venture out from the furze there, and make for the copse
opposite, put on the pace, and you will be speedily alongside. As he
doubles quickly, however, it is not so easy to catch him when
overtaken: still, it can be done. Rabbits previously netted are
occasionally turned out on purpose for a course, and afford
considerable sport, with a very fair chance--if dogs be eschewed--of
gaining their liberty. But they must have 'law,' and the presence of
a crowd spoils all; the poor animal is simply surrounded, and knows
not where to run. Tracks of wild rabbits crossing the ice are
frequent. Now, having gained the farthest extremity of the lake,
pause a minute and take breath for a burst down the centre. The
regular sound of the axe comes from the wood hard by, and every now
and then the crash as some tall ash-pole falls to the ground, no
more to bear the wood-pigeon's nest in spring, no more to impede the
startled pheasant in autumn as he rises like a rocket till clear of
the boughs.
Now for it: the wind, hardly felt before under shelter of the banks
and trees, strikes the chest like the blow of a strong man as you
rush against it. The chest responds with a long-drawn heave, the
pliable ribs bend outwards, and the cavity within enlarges, filled
with the elastic air. The stride grows longer and longer--the
momentum increases--the shadow slips over the surface; the fierce
joy of reckless speed seizes on the mind. In the glow, and the
speed, and the savage north wind, the old Norse spirit rises, and
one feels a giant. Oh that such a sense of vigour--of the fulness of
life--could but last!