Part 13

“Dorothy Wordsworth ... lived first with her maternal grand-parents, and was not happy with them. She loved an open-air life, and was held closely indoors--serving in fact in a mercer’s shop which they kept.... In 1788 a change came, for she went to live with her uncle at Forncett Rectory near Norwich. The Rector was also a Canon of Windsor, and in the Summer of 1792 ... Dorothy was meeting King George III and his family--the princesses at least ... and going to races and balls.”

Trade was no bar to good society till it was able to buy it and there was a great mingling of classes now rigidly separated. This feeling of shame for having practised some perfectly reputable calling has had I believe very serious results. It has made for the separation of employers and employed. It has caused people to take less pride in integrity and thoroughness and made them desirous of amassing wealth in order to enjoy ease. It has tended to make those of the second generation more desirous to pose as nobles than to follow the calling of their fathers. It has destroyed a commercial aristocracy and has put a plutocracy in its place. It tended for a time to substitute prudery and respectability for real Christianity; and, before the war at least, even these poor substitutes were growing so out of fashion as to be regretted. It has also deepened the rift between classes. Between the old nobility and the poor there was a certain sympathy. The humbler class appreciated the fact that their rulers were gentlemen, they liked their courage, their courtesy, they did not even object to being ordered by them, their very vices were comprehensible. But they have never had any fellow feeling with a plutocracy; with their present pay-masters they have been more impatient than with their former rulers; and the difficulties of the present age are in no small degree due to the snobbery which Thackeray denounced.

LECTURE VIII

SPORT, AND RURAL ENGLAND

I hope you will pardon the flippancy of the subject I am about to introduce; but I may say that it is not possible to understand English life without studying it. Though we are getting close to our own times, yet it is evident that society has undergone an almost complete change since the scenes were depicted in the works I am using to-day. Surtees caught the exact moment when the change was coming; and the old order was awaiting the signal to quit the world. In the rural England of the ‘forties’ and ‘fifties,’ when the railway was just beginning to invade the countryside, the hunting field was still a national playground where neighbours met, the county family still the pivot round which rural life moved. But everywhere are signs of the coming change. The _nouveau riche_ was buying the old estates, and the Jewish magnate beginning to make his appearance; but the fabric of county society remained as yet unshaken. I can myself remember the gulf that parted socially the county from the town, the landed gentry from the professional classes, when the ownership of land was far more important than the possession of wealth.

I propose to treat my subject from two aspects. First I shall take the so-called sporting novels, which are in themselves a literature, though I mean to confine myself practically to a single author; and, after having touched on this subject, I shall ask you to notice how Anthony Trollope, a writer sometimes tedious, but always observant and often witty, deals with the hierarchy, clerical and lay, of county society.

When St. Thomas a Becket was escaping from his enemies in England, he travelled through Flanders in humble disguise. Once, however, he nearly betrayed himself by stopping and admiring a beautiful falcon. Such discrimination raised the suspicion that the traveller was not a mere peasant or itinerant merchant, but an English gentleman of rank. However, the archbishop managed to escape detection and passed on. This little incident, however, shows that, even in the twelfth century, an expert knowledge of sport was deemed to be characteristic of gentility, and Becket, who had spent his early days in the king’s court, instinctively looked with interest on a good bird. Four centuries later a very different archbishop of Canterbury, though he too died a martyr’s death, was known as an excellent rider. Thomas Cranmer, the son of a country squire, was, we are specially told, remarkable for the firm and easy way he sat his horse. Unlike Becket, Cranmer was bred a scholar; but, in later days, he too would have been called a sportsman. About a century later another English primate distinguished himself less creditably in the field. George Abbott, the Puritan predecessor of Laud, was shooting deer; and by pure accident killed a keeper; for which an attempt was made to declare the see of Canterbury canonically vacant. It is much the same with less exalted ecclesiastics. In the middle ages the clergy of England were honourably distinguished for their morality as compared with their continental brethren. Their besetting sin was that nothing could restrain them from hunting. The “hunting” abbot of the middle ages was succeeded by the “hunting parson” of later days. Thackeray’s description of the Rev. Bute Crawley would, _mutatis mutandis_, apply to many an English clergyman, from the earliest times down to our own days.

“A tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hatted man.... You might see his bay mare a score of miles away from the Rectory house whenever there was a dinner party.... He rode to hounds in a pepper-and-salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in the county.”

It is hardly necessary to dilate upon the sporting vocabulary of Shakespeare; or to point out that the correct use of hunting and shooting and hawking terms was considered as test of a man’s gentility--nor need I appeal to the severity of the old Forest Laws and the more modern Game Laws, both of which were powerless to restrain the English peasants’ inveterate propensity to sport.

Little wonder is it, therefore, that there arose a veritable literature which revolved round the pivot of sport and especially that of hunting.

I need hardly say that the conditions of the pursuit of game changed with the state of the country. In the middle ages the greater part of England was wooded. The greenwood was the home of the outlaw; and it was said that a squirrel could cross England without touching the ground. The chase was therefore pursued in glades and thickets; and could never have been a very rapid affair. What riding was done in the open country was connected with hawking--a very favourite pastime. Gradually, as the country became more open and the forests disappeared, the fox, which our ancestors regarded as vermin, began to be looked upon as a sacred animal, because of the excellent runs he gave. For a long time the hunting was slow and its arrangements very primitive; those who joined in it being the squire, his friends, and his dependants; but gradually the crack riders began to gather from all parts to where the best hunting was to be had; and Leicestershire became the chief centre. Fashionable hunting, as opposed to the rural and purely local sport, seems to have begun at the time of the Regency in the days of the “dandies”; and I have a recollection of an oft-quoted description by “Nimrod” of the way in which a stranger was gradually recognised and welcomed when he came among the hunting fraternity at Melton Mowbray. But it is my intention to speak of a later period when hunting had become a sport in which men, who had no connection with the locality, came down from London to take part. In olden days the town sportsman was a theme of constant derision. John Gilpin’s ride, and Mr. Winkle’s difficulties with his horse, were typical stories. The caricaturists were never tired of depicting the quaint and somewhat dangerous antics of the Londoner with a shotgun, and jokes at his ignorance of all sports were the stock in trade of the humourist. Gradually however these began to fall flat. As the country became accessible, first by good roads, and then by railways, men from London joined in its pastimes, and proved themselves anything but ridiculous where horse and gun were concerned.

“Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour” is valuable for our purpose because it illustrates so many sides of English country life. The hero is a somewhat shady adventurer who spends half the year in hunting and the rest in talking about it, and is famed for being a guest whom, once you get into your house, it is impossible to eject. He hires his hunters, and sells them if he can at a profit; and, as he can ride almost anything, he is able to show a vicious brute to the greatest advantage, sell him for a good sum, and then make a great favour of taking him back. He generally succeeds in getting invitations, partly because he is supposed to be a rich man, and also on account of a rumour, of which, to do him justice, he is unaware, that he is able to give people, anxious for notoriety, a good notice in the newspapers.

One can almost smell the English country in winter time as one reads the book and in imagination plough one’s way, as the dusk draws on, through the muddy lanes on a tired horse after a long run, which has left one several miles from home with the short winter day closing rapidly. Or, one can feel the exhilaration which the sight of a fox gives when he goes away with the hounds at his heels, apparently their certain prey, and then vanishes as he slips through the next fence, not to be caught, if caught at all, for many a long mile.

The author’s description of the different houses visited by Mr. Sponge in his tour gives no bad idea of rural life and sport in the “fifties.” The first house which Mr. Sponge honours is Jawleyford Court, inhabited by Mr. Jawleyford, a gentleman of good lineage, but only moderate means, on which he manages to make an appearance of living in great state. Jawleyford, as his name implies, is a pretentious fellow, apparently hearty and hospitable, but very deceptive to those who come in close contact with him. He poses as a man of culture and refinement, and also as an ardent devotee of the chase. Sponge cares for only one thing on earth, and that is hunting; and he is emphatically a man of one book, namely, a work on London cab fares by a certain Mogg--whether the title is an invention or not, I do not know. When Mr. Sponge has nothing better to do, he takes this work and studies imaginary drives about London, amusing himself by calculating the price of each. One can imagine how this ill-assorted couple--Sponge, who cared for nothing but hunting, and Jawleyford, who liked to pose as a man of culture and refinement--got on together. But Mrs. Jawleyford was impressed with the idea that Sponge was a man of wealth and was a most eligible suitor for one of her pretty daughters. Consequently she received her guest with much hospitality, and gave him a hearty welcome. The first day was unsuitable for hunting; and Sponge had to amuse himself in the house with his host, who conducted him over his picture gallery, and was intensely disgusted when Sponge failed to recognise the bust of Jawleyford, which was considered a speaking likeness.

The next day, however, Sponge, totally disregarding the enchanting Miss Jawleyfords, started, before breakfast, to a meet of the hounds. We are now introduced to a great county magnate, who is believed to be a caricature of a noble sportsman, well known in his day--the Earl of Scamperdale. He had been kept very short by his father, the previous earl; and, as Viscount Hardup, had acquired very penurious habits, which clave to him after his accession to fortune. Hunting was his only expensive taste: and on this he spared no necessary outlay. He was always well mounted and his hounds admirably chosen; but he would do almost anything sooner than take his horses through a turnpike gate. He lived in a sort of back room in his splendid house; and his food was of the coarsest description. His only companion was a Mr. Jack Spraggon, who was exactly like him in appearance, rode well, and was quite content to fare like his lordship, if he could get nothing better. This well-assorted couple between them possessed a fine flow of language, though Lord Scamperdale always said that people presumed on him because he was “a lord and could not swear nor use coarse language”; and they contrived to keep the field fairly select, by driving intruders away by their powers of satire and abuse. Now Sponge was a first-rate horseman, but could only afford mounts which were unsound or vicious. His horse, “Multum in Parvo,” was the latter. In appearance he was a low long-backed beast, splendidly made, and as a rule was a docile and tractable creature; but if he took it into his head to bolt, he did so with great determination and no power on earth could stop him. Directly the horse saw Lord Scamperdale’s hounds, this propensity asserted itself; and he carried his rider into the midst of the pack, scattering them like sheep and maiming several. Then the floodgates of the Earl’s copious vocabulary were opened and poor Sponge was assailed, first by him and, when he sank back exhausted into his saddle, by Jack Spraggon. If I recollect aright, the latter on this or some other occasion called Sponge a “sanctified, putrefied, methodistical, puseyite pig-jobber,” for Surtees is very careful to put no real bad language into the mouth of his characters. From this time forward Lord Scamperdale takes a violent dislike to Sponge and plots with all his might to get rid of him. His determination is increased when on another occasion Sponge’s horse bolts, not this time into the hounds, but into the Earl himself and knocks him off sprawling on the ground. The story, however, is useful to our purpose because it reveals the different types of country life, and the graduated hierarchy of its society. The Earl of Scamperdale is, of course, a caricature; but with all his boorishness and eccentricity, he is quite conscious that, as a nobleman, he is a great personage. His hounds are not a subscription pack, but are supported entirely at his own expense; and his bad language to strangers has at least the advantage of keeping his field small and select for the benefit of the residents in his neighbourhood, who put up with his eccentricities partly because they really regard his rank and position; and also because his lordship shows them the best of sport. Jawleyford, whose daughter Scamperdale ultimately married, represents the country squire, not well off but pretentious, keeping up a sort of pinchbeck dignity, yet a member of the hierarchy of which the peer was also a member, though more highly placed.

Less reputable, but of the same order, is Sir Harry Scattercash, of Non-Such Hall, on whom Sponge inflicts himself after he has been driven out of the Flat Hat hunt, as Lord Scamperdale’s pack was named. Sir Harry is a young man, who has come unexpectedly into his title and estate after marrying an actress; and he is engaged in drinking himself to death and dissipating his money. His house is full of his wife’s theatrical friends, who make themselves thoroughly at home, and Sir Harry has apparently inherited a pack of hounds, managed on a very different system to that adopted by Scamperdale, whose motto is efficiency with economy. Sponge, who, with all his vulgarity, is a first-rate sportsman, takes this motley pack in hand and makes even Sir Harry’s hounds kill their fox in fine style. In fact, on one occasion, when he has outdistanced the mixed field which attended the baronet’s meets, he actually changes foxes with Lord Scamperdale, and a fine scene ensues in which Mr. Spraggon surpasses himself in the variety of his language. Not that two such adventurers as Sponge and Spraggon are real enemies; and they meet on neutral ground in the house of a third type of Squire. Mr. Puffington, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, has bought an estate and set up a pack of hounds. The delineation of this character is extremely clever; and shows how the author realises the change which is coming over country life. Scamperdale, Jawleyford, and Sir Harry all belong to the old landed aristocracy. Puffington is a new man. His money is in the land like theirs; but he is independent of his estate. In his desire to be popular he allows his tenants to rob him and his labourers to poach his game. He maintains a pack of foxhounds, and entertains magnificently. But he is not really liked, and is regarded as an interloper. Thinking Sponge is a literary man and that he will trumpet the fame of his pack in the newspapers, Puffington invites him to stay in his house and entertains him royally.

Jack Spraggon is also one of the invited guests; and Sponge lends him one of his horses. They have a famous run with the hounds; and when they get home, in the interval before dinner, Spraggon tells Sponge that Puffington, their host, expects to have a flaming account of his hunt in the newspapers; and that their reception is due to the fact that Sponge is believed to be a great writer on sporting subjects. As, however, he does not know how to do it, Spraggon offers to dictate an account of the run; and Sponge settles down at the table, having used his friend’s razor to cut the pen. The run is described in true journalistic style; and, when Sponge, who is an indifferent penman, exclaims “Hard work authorship,” Jack Spraggon says that he could go on for ever. Sponge retorts, “It’s all very well for you to do the talking, but it’s the ‘writing’ and the craning and the spelling.” However, the manuscript is sent off to the local paper, and falls into the hands of a daughter of the proprietor. As she cannot make head or tail to Sponge’s writing, she edits it as best she can, calling “a ravishing scent” an exquisite perfume; and making the run not less than ten miles “as the cow goes” instead of as the “crow flies.”

That evening there is a grander banquet than ever; and Spraggon and Sponge get hold of a rich young fellow, a Mr. Pacey. Spraggon persuades Pacey, who fancies himself a very sharp blade indeed, that Sponge is a greenhorn, with the result that at the end of the dinner he buys Sponge’s horse, Multum in Parvo, at a very low figure. As, however, that famous quadruped manages to throw Mr. Pacey, and also his guardian Major Screw, Sponge gets the horse back with a sum of money as a compensation for the inconvenience to which he has been put, and generously gives Mr. Pacey a bit of valuable advice: never to try to trade in horses after dinner! Naturally Mr. Puffington is not pleased by all this, and when he reads the account of the run with his hounds he nearly has a fit; and he resolves to take to his bed till Sponge is well out of his house.

Here we take farewell of our hero; and I will say a few words on the way in which Surtees, in his sketches of country life, indicates his appreciation that a change is coming over the land. The Scamperdales, Jawleyfords, and the older families are disappearing and the new commercial and moneyed class is taking its place. Puffington and men of his type are beginning to come to the front. It is getting more difficult to live on the land, as the older gentry had done; and estates are becoming rather a tax on a commercial fortune than the support of an aristocratic family. Surtees represents the old landowners as somewhat out at elbows, trying in vain to compete with the new men who are buying up their estates. In one of his novels we have a great Jewish magnate, Sir Moses Mainchance, who would have been practically impossible twenty years earlier. Sport changes with society. The railway has made country and town one, as a few hours bring all England within reach of London. Hunting is ceasing to be the old friendly and almost family institution, where the neighbourhood gathered at the meet, and everybody was known and welcomed. It was already becoming an affair for the rich from all parts of the world; and the Scamperdales in vain tried to scare away the wealthy sportsman of the town by abusive language. The time was close at hand when his presence would be welcomed eagerly; and rural sport would be at an end.

* * * * *

We will now turn to another side of country life--namely, the social as portrayed by Anthony Trollope, who might also have been quoted as a writer on sport. Trollope, to my mind, has a real genius for interesting his readers in uninteresting people; because he describes so faithfully the characters one meets every day, gives their conversation exactly as they talked to one another, and exhibits them in the same commonplace attitude, in which we all are for the greater part of our lives. He wrote not by inspiration, when he felt in the mood, but regularly and systematically, turning out his novels, when he had leisure from his duties as a government official, at so many pages an hour. He says that he had little or no intimate knowledge of cathedral society; yet, to one who has opportunity of observing it somewhat closely, his descriptions appear to have the accuracy of a photograph.

In Trollope’s novels we have English life, especially well drawn; and though many scenes are laid in London, his characters always gravitate back to the country whence they derive their influence and prestige. It is not my intention to elaborate more than one side of this very versatile and copious writer. His political novels, for example, are well worth studying, especially “Phineas Finn.” In “The Bertrams” we have an excellent picture of Oxford life in the opening chapter. Personal experience gave Trollope unusual insight into the characters of the government officials of his time. He was wonderfully quick at seizing on types hitherto unknown in English society who were gradually becoming forces in the world. Even as a writer on sport he deserves a place. For what can be better than his description of the young, popular, able clergyman in “Framley Parsonage,” whose very success leads him into some very difficult situations? I need not remind you, for I find he is widely read in this country, of his treatment of social gatherings in great houses like that of the Duke of Omnium. All I intend to do is to ask you to examine his clerical types and, perhaps, to offer some explanations which may be useful.