I feel some difficulty in dealing with the character I am now about
to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn the hunting
parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his profession; and, for
myself, I am not prepared to say that the world is wrong. Had my pastors
and masters, my father and mother, together with the other outward
circumstances of my early life, made a clergyman of me, I think that I
should not have hunted, or at least, I hope that I might have abstained;
and yet, for the life of me, I cannot see the reason against it, or tell
any man why a clergyman should not ride to hounds. In discussing the
subject, and I often do discuss it, the argument against the practice
which is finally adopted, the argument which is intended to be
conclusive, simply amounts to this, that a parish clergyman who does
his duty cannot find the time. But that argument might be used with much
more truth against other men of business, against those to whose hunting
the world takes no exception. Indeed, of all men, the ordinary parish
clergyman, is, perhaps, the least liable to such censure. He lives in
the country, and can hunt cheaper and with less sacrifice of time than
other men. His professional occupation does not absorb all his hours,
and he is too often an idle man, whether he hunt or whether he do not.
Nor is it desirable that any man should work always and never play. I
think it is certainly the fact that a clergyman may hunt twice a week
with less objection in regard to his time than any other man who has
to earn his bread by his profession. Indeed, this is so manifestly the
case, that I am sure that the argument in question, though it is the one
which is always intended to be conclusive, does not in the least convey
the objection which is really felt. The truth is, that a large and most
respectable section of the world still regards hunting as wicked. It is
supposed to be like the Cider Cellars or the Haymarket at twelve o'clock
at night. The old ladies know that the young men go to these wicked
places, and hope that no great harm is done; but it would be dreadful
to think that clergymen should so degrade themselves. Now I wish I could
make the old ladies understand that hunting is not wicked.
But although that expressed plea as to the want of time really amounts
to nothing, and although the unexpressed feeling of old ladies as to the
wickedness of hunting does not in truth amount to much, I will not
say that there is no other impediment in the way of a hunting parson.
Indeed, there have come up of late years so many impediments in the way
of any amusement on the part of clergymen, that we must almost presume
them to be divested at their consecration of all human attributes except
hunger and thirst. In my younger days, and I am not as yet very old,
an elderly clergyman might play his rubber of whist whilst his younger
reverend brother was dancing a quadrille; and they might do this without
any risk of a rebuke from a bishop, or any probability that their
neighbours would look askance at them. Such recreations are now
unclerical in the highest degree, or if not in the highest, they are
only one degree less so than hunting. The theatre was especially a
respectable clerical resource, and we may still occasionally see
heads of colleges in the stalls, or perhaps a dean, or some rector,
unambitious of further promotion. But should a young curate show himself
in the pit, he would be but a lost sheep of the house of Israel. And
latterly there went forth, at any rate in one diocese, a firman against
cricket! Novels, too, are forbidden; though the fact that they may be
enjoyed in solitude saves the clergy from absolute ignorance as to that
branch of our national literature. All this is hard upon men who, let
them struggle as they may to love the asceticisms of a religious life,
are only men; and it has a strong tendency to keep out of the Church
that very class, the younger sons of country gentlemen, whom all
Churchmen should wish to see enter it. Young men who think of the matter
when the time for taking orders is coming near, do not feel themselves
qualified to rival St. Paul in their lives; and they who have not
thought of it find themselves to be cruelly used when they are expected
to make the attempt.
But of all the amusements which a layman may follow and a clergyman may
not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst. There is a savour of
wickedness about it in the eyes of the old ladies which almost takes it
out of their list of innocent amusements even for laymen. By the term
old ladies it will be understood, perhaps, that I do not allude simply
to matrons and spinsters who may be over the age of sixty, but to that
most respectable portion of the world which has taught itself to abhor
the pomps and vanities. Pomps and vanities are undoubtedly bad, and
should be abhorred; but it behooves those who thus take upon themselves
the duties of censors to be sure that the practices abhorred are in
truth real pomps and actual vanities, not pomps and vanities of the
imagination. Now as to hunting, I maintain that it is of itself the
most innocent amusement going, and that it has none of that Cider-Cellar
flavour with which the old ladies think that it is so savoury. Hunting
is done by a crowd; but men who meet together to do wicked things meet
in small parties. Men cannot gamble in the hunting-field, and drinking
there is more difficult than in almost any other scene of life. Anonyma,
as we were told the other day, may show herself; but if so, she rides
alone. The young man must be a brazen sinner, too far gone for hunting
to hurt him, who will ride with Anonyma in the field. I know no vice
which hunting either produces or renders probable, except the vice of
extravagance; and to that, if a man be that way given, every pursuit in
life will equally lead him A seat for a Metropolitan borough, or a love
of ortolans, or a taste even for new boots will ruin a man who puts
himself in the way of ruin. The same may be said of hunting, the same
and no more.
But not the less is the general feeling very strong against the hunting
parson; and not the less will it remain so in spite of anything that I
may say. Under these circumstances our friend the hunting parson usually
rides as though he were more or less under a cloud. The cloud is not
to be seen in a melancholy brow or a shamed demeanour; for the hunting
parson will have lived down those feelings, and is generally too
forcible a man to allow himself to be subjected to such annoyances; nor
is the cloud to be found in any gentle tardiness of his motions, or an
attempt at suppressed riding; for the hunting parson generally rides
hard. Unless he loved hunting much he would not be there. But the cloud
is to be perceived and heard in the manner in which he speaks of himself
and his own doings. He is never natural in his self-talk as is any
other man. He either flies at his own cloth at once, marring some false
apology for his presence, telling you that he is there just to see the
hounds, and hinting to you his own knowledge that he has no business to
ride after them; or else he drops his profession altogether, and speaks
to you in a tone which makes you feel that you would not dare to speak
to him about his parish. You can talk to the banker about his banking,
the brewer about his brewing, the farmer about his barley, or the
landlord about his land; but to a hunting parson of this latter class,
you may not say a word about his church.
There are three modes in which a hunting parson may dress himself for
hunting, the variations having reference solely to the nether man. As
regards the upper man there can never be a difference. A chimney-pot
hat, a white neckerchief, somewhat broad in its folds and strong with
plentiful starch, a stout black coat, cut rather shorter than is common
with clergymen, and a modest, darksome waistcoat that shall attract no
attention, these are all matters of course. But the observer, if he will
allow his eye to descend below these upper garments, will perceive that
the clergyman may be comfortable and bold in breeches, or he may be
uncomfortable and semi-decorous in black trowsers. And there is another
mode of dress open to him, which I can assure my readers is not an
unknown costume, a tertium quid, by which semi-decorum and comfort are
combined. The hunting breeches are put on first, and the black trowsers
are drawn over them.
But in whatever garb the hunting parson may ride, he almost invariably
rides well, and always enjoys the sport. If he did not, what would tempt
him to run counter, as he does, to his bishop and the old ladies? And
though, when the hounds are first dashing out of covert, and when
the sputtering is beginning and the eager impetuosity of the young is
driving men three at a time into the same gap, when that wild excitement
of a fox just away is at its height, and ordinary sportsmen are rushing
for places, though at these moments the hunting parson may be able to
restrain himself, and to declare by his momentary tranquillity that
he is only there to see the hounds, he will ever be found, seeing
the hounds also, when many of that eager crowd have lagged behind,
altogether out of sight of the last tail of them. He will drop into the
running, as it were out of the clouds, when the select few have settled
down steadily to their steady work; and the select few will never look
upon him as one who, after that, is likely to fall out of their number.
He goes on certainly to the kill, and then retires a little out of
the circle, as though he had trotted in at that spot from his ordinary
parochial occupations, just to see the hounds.
For myself I own that I like the hunting parson. I generally find him
to be about the pleasantest man in the field, with the most to say for
himself, whether the talk be of hunting, of politics, of literature, or
of the country. He is never a hunting man unalloyed, unadulterated, and
unmixed, a class of man which is perhaps of all classes the most tedious
and heavy in hand. The tallow-chandler who can talk only of candles,
or the barrister who can talk only of his briefs, is very bad; but the
hunting man who can talk only of his runs, is, I think, worse even than
the unadulterated tallow-chandler, or the barrister unmixed. Let me
pause for a moment here to beg young sportsmen not to fall into this
terrible mistake. Such bores in the field are, alas, too common; but the
hunting parson never sins after that fashion. Though a keen sportsman,
he is something else besides a sportsman, and for that reason, if for no
other, is always a welcome addition to the crowd.
But still I must confess at the end of this paper, as I hinted also
at the beginning of it, that the hunting parson seems to have made a
mistake. He is kicking against the pricks, and running counter to that
section of the world which should be his section. He is making
himself to stink in the nostrils of his bishop, and is becoming a
stumbling-block, and a rock of offence to his brethren. It is bootless
for him to argue, as I have here argued, that his amusement is in itself
innocent, and that some open-air recreation is necessary to him. Grant
him that the bishops and old ladies are wrong and that he is right in
principle, and still he will not be justified. Whatever may be our walk
in life, no man can walk well who does not walk with the esteem of his
fellows. Now those little walks by the covert sides, those pleasant
little walks of which I am writing, are not, unfortunately, held to be
estimable, or good for themselves, by English clergymen in general.