SPORTING NOVELS.*
Tan department of fiction which we have selected as the subject of our remarks on the present occasion has, as far as we know, not a single representative in the literature of any European nation, except our own. Nor, if we consider for a moment the meaning of the term, can it be at all a matter for wonder that the complete monopoly of the genuine Sporting Novel should, as yet, remain exclusively in our hands. Under this denomination we include that class of stories whose interest mainly depends upon matters con- nected with horse-racing, or with those forms of hunting the attraction and excitement of which is not dependent on the strength or ferocity of the animal pursued. It is scarcely necessary to remark that novelsof this kind are, by the very nature of their subject, precluded from dealing with incidents of a tragical, or even of a serious, description. Few, we think, will deny that hunting, shooting, and racing are plants that attain their full growth and development only in a British soil. Attempts have, indeed, been made to naturalize them in France ; but, in spite of all the efforts of the most energetic members of the " Joe-kei Clob," they cannot be induced to take a firm root in a foreign soil, and le sport is as yet but a weak and sickly caricature of its healthy and vigorous pro- totype. Could we conceive a story of which it sport was the prin- cipal motive, it would be a very different article from the genuine sporting novel. We must be thoroughly at home with a subject before we can hope to handle it so familiarly, and our acquaint- ance with it must be especially intimate before we can venture to treat it in a comic manner. Where real sportsmen are abun- dant, a pretender is a fair an dobvions subject for ridicule; but where all are pretenders, the case is very different. There is plenty of absurdity in the races over the dusty and stony course of the Champ de Mars, in the steeple-chases of La Marche, and in the sparrow-shooting in the environs of Paris; but its exist- ence is not suspected for a moment, even by the most earnest and accomplished votary of any of these pursuits. And not only is a Frenchman absolutely incapable even of conceiving anything like a sporting novel, but he makes a very poor hand of it when he essays to write about the higher and more adventurous branches of the hunter's craft, whose attraction depends in great measure upon the presence of actual danger. We are far from wishing to cast any doubt Market Harberosgh; or, How Mr. Sawyer went to the Shires. London : Chapman and HalL upon the reality. of Jules Gerard's prowess in the field ; but we have no hesitation in saving that his account of his exploits, when compared with similir narrations by English sportsmen, is deficient in the genuine ring of good metal. In describing adventures of this kind, no style is so effective as a plain and simple recital of facts ; and this is precisely what a Frenchman is constitutionally unable to give. A curious instance of the innate inability of a Frenchman to comprehend this obvious truth occurs in the last number of the Revue des Deux Honda, in which there is a partial translation of some of the episodes contained in Captain Shakespeare's capital account of his hunting adventures, which, though faithful in the main, transforms, by a few almost imperceptible touches, the vigorous and straightforward hunter into an airy and graceful raconteur, whose principal object in killing a tiger is to qualify himself to narrate the feat in a spirituel and epigrammatic manner.
Even in England the writers of the genuine sporting novel are far from being a numerous class. Facile princeps among them is Mr. Surtees, the author of "Handley Cross," "Sponge's Sporting Tour," and many other equally well-known works. So undoubted is the supremacy of this gentleman in his own peculiar line, that we, almost unconsciously, adopt his books as the standard by which all produc- tions of the same kind may most appropriately be measured. Although it would be quite superfluous, not to say impertinent, to enter into any detailed criticism of works which are so universally known and so widely appreciated, we may, perhaps, be allowed to venture a few remarks upon the place which they occupy in the literature of fiction, and to point out some of the peculiar excellences by which they are specially distinguished. While sporting pursuits, in one form or another, supply the principal motive of all Mr. Surtees' works, their interest as novels depends rather upon the delineation of character than upon the narration of startling events, or the development of a skilfully-constructed plot. In all of them the incidents are of a more or less comic character, admirably told, and exceedingly amusing, and in not one of them is there, strictly speaking, any plot at all; so that, if the possession of a plot be regarded as essential to a novel, it becomes necessary to describe them by some other name. In this respect they stand upon precisely the same footing as the "Pickwick Papers," and must be placed in the same category with that immortal work, whatever that maybe. Mr. Surtees' principal qualifications as a writer appear to be a faculty of expressing himself in vigorous and racy English, a remarkable power of describing common-place scenery, and a singularly keen sense of humour andperception of the ridiculous in all classes of society. His own natural tendency to, and great ex- perience in, all matters connected with sporting have served to deter- mine the direction in which these qualifications should finally be em- ployed; but, though his novels deal almost exclusively with sporting scenes and pursuits, their interest is by no means confined to that clasj of readers whose tastes in this respect coincide with those of their author. We will venture to say that many of those who read Mr. Surtees' works with the keenest interest and the greatest enjoy- ment have no practical knowledge whatever either of horses, dogs, or guns. It requires no special training to enable us to appreciate the admirably humorous sketches of life and character which are scat- tered so profusely throughout Mr. Surtees' books. Anyone who can enjoy Thackeray 's "Book of Snobs" can enjoy any of Mr. Surtees' works, so that their popularity cannot be circumscribed within very narrow limits. Mr. Surtees has, in fact, devoted himself to the study and illustration of the sporting snob,—an important branch of the great British family to which Mr. Thackeray, probably from a want of ac- quaintance with his peculiar characteristics, has entirely omitted to allude. The sketches of Major Yammerton, Mr. Jawleyford, Mr. Puffington, Sir Moses Mainchance, and many others, are quite worthy to be placed side by side with that of Major Ponto; and higher praise than this it would scarcely be possible to award. Besides this power of producing a sustained and elaborate delineation of character, Mr. Surtees has a faculty of drawing a portrait in a single stroke, which is almostpeculiar to himself; as, for instance, when he cha- racterizes Tom Hetherington, of Bearbinder Park, as "what may be called an intermediate gentleman, that is to say, he could act the gentleman up to a pint of wine or so, after which quantity nature gradually asserted her supremacy, and he became himself again." Another very noticeable feature in Mr. Surtees' character is his healthy and hearty contempt and abhorrence for all the varied and complicated forms of rascality of which the horse, himself one of the honestest animals in creation, is the unconscious parent ; a feeling to which his peculiarly intimate knowledge of this very intricate subject enables him to give expression in a peculiarly forcible and effective manner. One very pleasant and satisfactory result of the fidelity to nature with which he depicts his characters is that his heroes are never distressingly and impossibly perfect. We can read his books without feeling even the slighest tendency to that vindic- tive itching to be guilty of assault and battery which the intolerable perfection of the hero of the ordinary three-volume novel so com- monly excites. So far from feeling ourselves to be in any way inferior to Mr. Surtees' heroes, we have a comfortable sense of our superiority over them in almost every respect in which superiority is at all desir- able. Without running any material risk of self-deception, we may be. pretty sure that we are not such fools as Mr. Jorrocks or Billy P le, or such rogues as Mr. Spong.e. The best of Mr. Surtees' novels is, to our mind, "Mr. Sponges Sporting Tour;" and in the very unlikely contingency of any of our readers being unacquainted with this gentleman's brooks, it is with this that we should recom- mend him to commence his study of them. Lord Scamperdale and Jack Spraggon are irresistibly comic ; and we have seldom laughed more heartily over anything than over the description of Mr. Sponge's
visit to Facey Romford. On the whole, we think we care least for the three works of which Mr. Jorrocks is the hero. Not only is the burlesque rather too broad, and the comic business somewhat over- done, but there is in all of them a needless coarseness of tone from which Mr. Surtees' later books are comparatively free. Mr. Jorrocks' "sporting lectors" are, however, exceedingly well done, Take, for instance, the following passage, in which the lecturer is instructing his hearers as to the " points" of a horse : " It seems agreed on all hands that the less an 'oss lifts his fore-legs, the easier he will move for his rider, and he will likewise brush al the stones out of his way, which might otherwise throw him down. Gambado thinks if he turns his toes well out, he will disperse them right and left, and not have the trouble of kickin' the same stone a second time, but I don't see much adwantage in this, and think he might as well be kieldn' the same stone as a fresh one." Most of Mr. Surtees' novels enjoy the inestimable advantage of being illustrated by some of the best sketches which Leech has ever drawn. No reader of Punch requires to be told that this artist is unrivalled in the drawing of horses ; but no one can fully appreciate his wonderful power of ex- pressing the most varied phases of equine character who is miac- quainted with the numerous portraits of Arterxerxes in " Handley Gross,".with those of 'Ercles and Multum-in-Parvo in "Sponge's Tour," and, above all, with that of the pumped-out Napoleon the Great at page 243 of " Ask Mamma." Only those who made their first acquaintance with "Handley Cross" in its original three-volume form can be fully sensible of all the advantages it has derived from Leech's illustrations.
Markel Harborovh, the latest representative of the class of sport- ing novels, is certainly not equal to any of those of which we have hitherto been speaking. It appears without any author's name ; but its authorship is generally attributed to a gentleman who has already attained to considerable and well-deserved distinction in a different department of fiction. If popular rumour be correct in this instance, we can only say that we think the author of Market Harborovh will do well to confine himself for the future to the department which he originally selected, and in which he has fairly won a position more distinguished than he is likely to reach in any other. The highest position to which the volume now before us can possibly aspire is that of being a pleasant and fairly-written sketch of a few days' hunting in Leicestershire. Its author is an enthusiastic sportsman, and is evidently well acquainted with his subject. He is also well acquainted with the works of Mr. Surtees, and, probably without being conscious of it, copies that gentleman to a slight extent in one or two instances. But he does not follow Mr. Surtees' example in bestowing a distinct and complete individuality upon the different characters which he introduces ; and the consequence is that his book is decidedly less interesting, if not to the sporting, at least to the general, reader. His hero is a much more gentlemanly fellow than Mr. Sponge, but he has no objection whatever to accommo- dating a friend with a worthless horse at a fancy price ; and though the very flagrant piece of rascality by which this particular trans- action is effected is represented as originating; with, and being carried out by, the groom, we cannot but think that the master must come in for some share of whatever credit or discredit may be con- sidered as attaching to the affair. And it is certainly somewhat diffi- cult to believe that an experienced stud-groom could possibly have been taken in by so transparent a device as was employed in the in- stance to which we refer. A very slight thread of a love-affair runs through the story—far too slight, indeed, to bear the weight of the marriage which is ultimately attached to it in a singularly abrupt fashion. We must not, however, expect too much from what pro- fesses to be nothing. more than a slight sketch, and, on the whole, acts up to its professions in a fairly satisfactory manner.
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