21 DECEMBER 1872, Page 17

THE IDSTONE PAPERS.*

To old sportsmen who are troubled with the " anno domini com- plaint "—as a friend of the present writer's expressively denomi- nates the ailments of increasing years, a joke of which we are reminded by a similar one of "Idstone's," who says that "Anne Domini is no respecter of persons "—or to men who have the sportsman instinct strong within them, and yet have never been in circumstances to gratify the longing for country-life, dogs, horses and guns, and adventures in pursuit of game, the book before us and those of a like kind are the next beat thing,—for the old men, indeed, an infinitely better and more comfortable thing than sport itself. And perhaps even the town man-of-business or the poor country gentleman who has passed early youth might only find his ideal of earthly enjoyment rudely-broken if he tried mounting a hunter or tramping out into the wet turnips on a raw autumn morning. Better, perhaps, put up his feet on the hobs of his study-fireplace, and there, in snug comfort, rise on The crisp October morning, breakfast with his brother sportsmen in the banqueting-room, sally forth with the high-bred setters and the dignified retrievers, the trusty, testy gamekeeper, the experienced " guns," and the obsequious beaters, enjoy the mid-day snack when he comes up with " the thick- set cob which carries the luncheon-pannier and the flagon," ascend the " high cart with a brown harness, and a very promising young * The lerstone Papers. By "Idrtone," of the Field. London: Horace Cox.

animal between the shafts," which is to carry him back to the Baronial hall, and finish the night, when "the more gentle sex " " have ascended the old black-oak staircase," in the " large rock- ing and easy chairs, with strong waters, coffee, cavendish, and best brands of llavannah." Taken in this way, sport yields all the delights which attach to anticipation and retrospect, without the drawbacks which invariably beset actual experience. At any rate, it is unattended with early rising, drizzle, bitter wind, numbed

fingers, misses, incautious "guns," chaff, or sneers. But this—The ldstone Papers—is not altogether a book for this class of sportsmen in imagination ; if it were, we should have enjoyed it more ; it is meant rather for those who are engaged in sport, or for the retired veterans of the field ; and principally for the former, as it is full of

practical suggestions about everything of a sporting nature, from the treatment of assistants and the breaking of horses and dogs to the greasing of shooting-boots. We have descriptions of the qualities and points in the beat masters of hounds, huntsmen, gamekeepers, beaters ; hunters, shooting-ponies, hounds, setters, retrievers ; we are told the hours, wind, weather, and meals most conducive to successful sport, and how to make or where to pro- cure the most unequalled carriages, harness, whips, guns, ammuni- tion and dress. Nothing escapes "Idstone," whose heart is in his subject, and whose life seems to have been given to its practice, and who has been in the habit of carrying about a note-book in which to record or sketch anything that struck him in the way of novelty or improvement. But though there is so much that is not meant for the general reader, yet the book is not tedious. Generally this information comes in incidentally, to beguile the way, as it were, to the meet or the covert, and it is interspersed with anecdotes and the history, perhaps, of the comical or disastrous experience on which the author's knowledge or opinion is founded. And the whole book has the freshness of real country about it, and the vividness of description that is only found when it is taken from the life and on the spot. Here is a specimen taken hap-hazard :-

'It did not take long to put on tho harness, and wo soon hoard the muffled sound of wheels at the front door. Into the dog-basket which is slung under the body of the carriage we put a capital snipe-dog I had bought of Bill George, chaining her short ; and my retriever could jump in it or out of it as we bowled along. As we hardly know the boundaries, we picked up my odd man — the night-watcher, rat-catcher, earth- stopper, and loader all in one—and began to climb the steep bill that led us to the main turnpike road. We had to pass within half a mile of the lake, and could see the teal whirling about over the fir trees, and the ducks, singly and sometimes throe or four together, flying from one part of the water to another. Our old mentor, who knew the 'short cuts,' suggested he should take a look at the water as we drove on, adding, he could meet us farther on without causing us any material delay. We at once fell in with this idea of his, and he made for an opening Into the plantation and disappeared. We had another hill t o climb over—a steep one—. and through a rude cutting on the crest of it we could see the wide heath stretching miles away, beyond the back water ' and the line of hills like a sheet of silver. As we dropped down the steep incline cautiously, and got into the level ground again, we caught sight of a couple of roebuck which were lying under a hayrick to our right, and which, when they saw us, gave a leisurely stretch and trotted to the embankment of the turnpike road. This they cleared with an ease and indifference that appeared marvellous to me, con- sidering the state of the ground, and making for the fir plantation to our right, they were soon in the shelter of the covert. We had scarcely reached the old bridge at the bottom before we saw our emissary coming up the valley, making us signs of grotesque exultation at the success of his visit to the water. As he kicked the snow from his feet against the parapet of the bridge, and gradually recovered his breath, he informed us that there was only about twenty feet square of ' bright water '— that is, water unfrozen—and that the rest was skimmed over, some of it an inoh thick. ' There are lots of teal all on the ice,' he said, ' and some widgeon, and about ton score of ducks, but they are terrible wild, and they keep whistling over your head every minute,' ho added. Hadn't you bettor go and have a shot at 'em?' " We have scarcely a right, perhaps, to make the criticism that a book professedly about sport, and which is equal to its profession,

does not show by its tone that it is also written by a clergyman. The clergyman—for there is sufficient internal evidence, to say nothing of the preface dating from a " Vicarage," that the author is a clergyman—might reply that he could write a book proving just as loving a devotion to his parishioners and his duties as to his dogs and sports. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the enjoy- ment of the book is marred by a conviction that this is not quite so ; that dogs and not parishioners are his chief care and have his deepest sympathies, and that the latter arc, in fact, rather bores than otherwise. That the condition of his poorer neighbours is a fit subject for his papers, the opening one of the series is practi- cally an admission, and yet this is the only one of all the forty in which he touches upon it. The sort of jovial slang in which ho addresses his friends and is addressed by them—for instance :—

" Just then a rap at the door, and one of our party gives me the tip, ' A knickerbocker breakfast, and we are going to kill partridges to " We start at last, have just cleared the gates, and I congratulate myself on a good start, too, when Brown says, Wey ! I say, do you think your friend would object to my taking my retriever ? You know one of your fellows can lead him, and he will follow us capitally.' I don't like to hurt Brown's feelings, so my man runs back. I didn't know that Brown had brought a dog. He said nothing to me about it ; but I soon saw him now. He bad been tied up in the stable, but with a length of chain allowing him to so effectually gnaw the stable door, that in the morning my groom saw half his head protruding—as far, in fact, as his lynx eyes—and, as he told me afterwards, he really thought it was some wild beast out of a show. The matt ran back and released this monster—a knock-kneed, bitter-beer-coloured one, and having done so, not looking to see where he went, ran to resume his place with us ; but no dog appeared. We tried the usual plan. Every one called 'Rock '—that was the brute's name ; and the stable-boy whistled, standing exactly in the wrong place, of course. Five minutes gone and a long hill to climb, with a very fair load too' Brown sug- gested that we should lose him if we didn't take him up.' I thought such a contingency possible, and I regret to add that I rejoiced at it. What could be better than to escape the responsibility of such a sinister- eyed, bat-eared, shambling, flat-sided street dog ? And then I didn't care about the responsibility of introducing a friend's dog as well as a friend. There was not much time lost in deliberation, for when we stopped he eyed us auspiciously, and turned for home. Brown's hurried descent from the vehicle was his signal to mend his pace (he didn't know Brown wen and with a look over his shoulder, he brbke into a sort of long wolf's gallop until he came to four cross roads, when he took the wrong turn of course, and was immediately out of sight. There is something ridiculous in the pursuit of a dog. It is more humiliating than a hat-chase in a high wind. In fact you are following an animal which is supposed to follow you, and at a manifest disadvantage. In this case the dog was not worth following—nor, indeed, worth catching —which deprived the catastrophe of all excitement. The truant didn't awake any feeling but fear. Two young ladies and a governess behind a gate told us a mad dog with his tongue out was just gone on ; and a clodhopper, with hedging gloves and a billhook, who listened to their remarks with grave interest from the opposite hedge, corroborated their statement, and showed us by arm-measurement in pantomime that the animal's tongue hung out about a foot and a half. We nearly reached the dog in about a mile, when some labourer, evidently badly impressed by his appearance, gave him a cut with his prong to help him bn, and merely regarded Brown's clenched fiat and objurgations with a look of stolid indifference as we drove by. We are up with him again now ! for we have been doing twelve miles good in the hour, and every stride makes us proportionately late foF our engagement ; but this time I feel sure we have him. He seems to recognise Brown's endearments just as we approach a mended piece of road ; but the rattle of the wheels on the loose stones starts him, and I suggest giving up the chase. Brown agrees, and I am afraid that he consigned the dog to a very different

master= Let him go to the —.' I didn't catch the last word, owing to those freshly-broken flints ; and with that Brown lit a fresh cigar, and dropped his cigar-case. Woa one minute, old fellow ; now we are right again. Thank you' (to my groom, who had got down to recover it, and now handed it back to him). 'A dog,' Brown moralised as we went on, 'a dog, especially when he doesn't know you, is the moat inf—' but here we got to some rough road again, and I lost what I have heard old people call 'the thread' of his discourse."

Clumbers.'—' Make haste, he has been riding the young 'an ever since six this morning.'"

—the constant reference to, and dwelling upon, good cigars, dry sherty, billiards, &c., and the frequent use of a semi-jocular, slightly vulgar style—as when in mentioning the payment to a cabman of a shilling, he calls it giving "him an admirable bas-relief likeness of Her Majesty in silver "—deepen our impression that the author does not rise to the dignity of his calling, nor above that of his subject. In any educated man, too, the following passage about setters, though we sympathise warmly in his love for dogs, seems to us to reveal a rather bumble, not to say low ideal of even earthly happiness :-

"I don't hesitate to say that pointers or setters are my strength (my weaknesses, if you will), and that no pleasure on earth is equal or superior to mine when I see a pair of high rangers crossing each other independently and bringing up well on game ; but at times I am de- lighted with each a bit of discipline and intelligence as I saw that October morning, and kept up till dark, in spite of severe walking and that flinty soil.

But to turn from this perhaps too serious view of our subject, —for certainly we think a hearty enjoyment of sport indulged in moderately is a recreation quite compatible with the duties and

position of a clergyman. Idatone has not only an appreciation of sport and country, but also of humour, of which there are many instances in these pleasant papers. The description of his town visitor, Brown, is amongst these, though we suspect the particu- lars of his " get-up " are suggested by those of Major Peudennis, to which they bear a very remarkable resemblance. The influence of Brown's man upon our author's country servants, and their

behaviour to him, and Brown's inability to appreciate the narrow resources of a country parsonage, and his over-appreciation of their pleasures—"such a pleasure to grow your own cabbages,"—

are all very amusing. Brown brings down a newly-bought retriever, and we must extract the passage which relates the loss of this dog at a moment most inconvenient to his host, who was pledged to put in an early appearance at the squire's, with " the gentleman from London." It reads almost like a chapter from Happy Thoughts:—

Of the few chapters that have no reference to sport, one—the first—is on farm labourers, in which, by the bye, we learn that an honest, trustworthy and altogether invaluable carter and horse- keeper in Dorsetshire gets only 9s. a week, with a eottage and small garden and a few trifling extras, and has to pay for ground for potatoes in- addition. Another is on the construction and arrangements of a country gentleman's sanctum, which are admirable, except in one important particular, namely, that on his plan the sanctum would have only outside walls, and be con- sequently miserably cold in winter and hot in summer.

In collecting his papers into a volume, " Idstone" is no longer writing for the Field and for sportsmen exclusively, and he should have endeavoured to popularise his style by avoiding so much technicality, and by explaining in foot-notes the meaning of special terms, of which we have a great abundance. We may, perhaps, be allowed to suggest, also, that many passages want more care in their composition ; we could point out several of which the meaning is ambiguous, confused, self-contradictory and sometimes even incomprehensible ; and further, between our- selves and our author, that his publisher has scarcely done him justice in the soiled and ragged edges of the leaves.