Part 4

"But you shoot?" I asked, seeing it was necessary to say something.

"Oh yes! I shoot, and fish occasionally, when the May-fly is up--anything but hunting. There, what do you think of that bull?"

Shooting, too, is wonderfully changed. Where are the high stubbles we so eagerly sought on the first of September?--gone, gone for ever. The reaping-machine cuts it off now as close as the cloth on a billiard table.

It has often been said the birds are wilder at present than they were: admitting this to be the case, the cause probably is the high state of cultivation, and nothing more. There is not the cover there was formerly to hold them, and therefore they are more difficult to get at. Turnips are now sown in drills, and not broadcast, as grain usually was. If you work down the drills, the birds see you, and are off the other end: the only way is to take them across. Yet there are thousands of places where the cover is good and plentiful; and where this is the case the birds lie as well as ever.

Game is scarcer than it was, except on manors that are highly preserved: it must be remembered that where there was one shooter formerly, there are twenty now. It is a difficult matter at present to rent a shooting, for directly there is anything good in the market it is snatched up at once.

The general style of shooting of the present day is odious--large bags are "the go." In some countries it has done away with the noble pointer and setter altogether; nothing but retrievers are used. The guns, beaters, and keepers are all in a line: a gun, then a keeper with a retriever, a beater, another gun, and so on. The word is given, and away they go, taking a field in a beat. As you fire--possibly there are two or three guns popping at the same bird--a keeper falls out, and finds it with his retriever, whilst you are going on. Can this be called sport? It is nothing more than pot-hunting, wholesale butchery. Give me my brace of pointers and setters, and let me shoot my game to points; there is some pleasure in that. What can be a more beautiful sight to the shooting man than to see a brace of well-bred dogs, ranging and quartering their ground like clockwork, backing and standing like rocks, steady before and behind, and dropping to fur and wing, as if they were shot? Working to hand, and obeying your slightest word--beautiful, intelligent creatures--there is some pleasure in shooting over such animals as these.

Then driving is another pot-hunting system, and does no end of harm; and so those who practise it will find out before many years are over. More game is wounded and left to pine away and die than many have an idea of--a more cruel and unsportsmanlike system has never been thought of, and I much regret it has its votaries. A heavy hot luncheon from a Norwegian kitchener is now the correct thing--heavy eating and drinking must form a prominent feature in the day's programme, otherwise it is not sport.

A few men are still content with their sherry-flask and sandwich, and I would back these to beat the others into fits in a day's sport. One does not go out to eat, but to shoot, and a man that has laid in a heavy luncheon can neither walk well up to his dogs nor shoot straight after it.

Great improvements have been made in guns. The old flint that took half an hour to load was a bore; the flint had every now and then to be chipped and renewed, the pans fresh steeled, the touch-hole pricked, powder put in the pan, and even then there were constant misfires and disappointments. The flint in time gave way to the percussion, a great improvement; but there are many inconveniences with this; unless the nipples are kept clean, and the gun washed each time after using, constant misfires are the consequence. Then, in cold weather it is no end of trouble to get the caps on. With half-frozen fingers it is a difficult job; but this has been remedied by a cap-holder, which sends the caps up with a spring as you want them. With both flint and percussion there were great inconveniences in loading; the spring of your powder or shot flask might break, and then you had to judge your charge till they were repaired. All this trouble was put an end to by the introduction of the breech-loader, which has not half the danger, is ten times quicker, and much more convenient in every way; the ammunition more easily carried, and there are very few misfires. The gun wants no washing, merely a rag passed through, and it is clean. But I am not going into the subject of guns and all their improvements; I have merely mentioned these to show the great stride that has been made in the last fifty years in shot guns.

Steeplechasing and racing I must touch on, and the little I have to say will not be in its favour.

The hateful passion of betting is slowly but surely ruining the turf; for there are not the same class of men on it that there were thirty years ago.

Where do you see fine old sportsmen like the late Sir Gilbert Heathcote? He raced for the pleasure of racing, and so did many others who never betted a shilling; but it is all altered now, and not for the better.

Young men--ay, and old ones too--ruin themselves by betting; Government and other clerks squander their salaries away, which might maintain them, and perhaps a mother or a sister who is totally dependent upon them; the butlers and footmen pawn the family plate to meet their engagements; and the shop-boy is often detected in flagrante delicto, with his hands in the till, purloining a half-crown or two to enable him to go with Mary Hann to 'Ampton. You are pestered with letters from tipsters--scoundrels who know just as much of a horse or racing as they do of the man in the moon. The man from whom you can get nothing else, is always ready with his advice on the momentous subject of "what to back" for this race or that, quite ignoring the question of whether he really does or does not "know anything," to use turf parlance.

Betting will never be put down entirely, but much might be done. Were I to commence racing again, I would hit the ring and the betting fraternity as hard as I could to scare them from backing my horses for the future. This cannot always be done, but after one or two such lessons people would be shy of burning their fingers over my stable. I daresay I should be called an "old curmudgeon," "selfish brute," and "no sportsman;" but after all said and done, you race to please yourself, not the public. You have to pay the hay and corn bill, trainer's expenses, and, above all, entry fees, far the heaviest item in the whole list; and surely, if any money is to be had over a race, the owner should be allowed "first run" at it.

We see no Alice Hawthorns or Beeswings now-a-days; racing men cannot afford to let their colts or fillies come to maturity: most are broken down before they are three years old. Government ought to interfere and put a veto on two-year-old races; this done, and the One and Two Thousand, the Derby, Oaks, and Leger made for four-year-olds, then we might hope to see our racehorses and hunters coming back to their former stout form. But this we shall never see. John Bull, with his proverbial stubbornness, will stick to his old line.

I was one and twenty years riding and racing in France, and was highly amused when the French first began sending over horses to us; we generously allowed them seven pounds--half a stone. How I laughed and chuckled in my sleeve when I heard this! After a little time Mr Bull found this would not do, so he came to even weights; but he received such a lesson with Fille de l'Air and Gladiateur, that it made the old gentleman stare considerably, and pull rather a long face.

Racing men, I will tell you what you probably already know, but will not admit--the French could better give us seven pounds than we them: their three-year-olds are nearly as forward as our four-year-olds.

The climate of France is warmer than ours, horses do better and furnish quicker there, and the time is not far distant when they will beat us as easily as we used to beat them. It is no use disguising it; it is a fact, and a fact, too, that is being accomplished; for no one will deny that the French already take a pretty good share of our best stakes. They have a climate better suited for horses, they buy our best sires and mares, have English trainers and riders, therefore what is to prevent them from beating us? They have done it already, and will continue doing so.

We have found out that when we take horses over there we are generally beaten, and this alone ought to convince us that the French horses are more forward than ours. Racing now-a-days is nothing more than a very precarious speculation, and the practice of some on the turf to gain their own ends is anything but (not to use a stronger word) creditable.

Within the last few years, gentleman after gentleman has left the turf disgusted and disheartened; and well they might be, for if a man is not very careful, there is no finer school than a racecourse to pick up swindling, dishonesty, and blackguardism.

Your fashionable light-weight jocks of the present day have their country houses, their valets, their broughams, hunters, and what-not. The old riding fee of £3 for a losing race and £5 for a winning one is seldom heard of except at little country meetings. Trainers and jockeys are at present much bigger men than their masters; and why? because they allow them to be so; they may owe them a long bill, or be foolishly good-natured in putting their servants on the same footing as themselves by undue familiarity--'Hail fellow well met' with them.

Racing will never be what it was again, for the reasons I have mentioned. Speculation is too rife to allow it a healthy tone. Shortly but few gentlemen will be left as racing men, and the turf will be represented by the lower five, and men to whom the meaning of the words honour, honesty, principle, and conscience, are unknown.

Coursing too, a healthy and fine amusement, even this cannot be enjoyed without the presence of the betting fraternity, bawling and shouting. A clean sweep should be made of them.

Pigeon-shooting as well. Although I am not an admirer of this pastime (sport I will not call it), yet one cannot stroll down to Hurlingham or the Bush, to look on, but what one must be pestered with odds offered on the gun or bird. Your shady and doubtful betting men are nuisances. Who on earth wants to lose a lot of money to moneyless scoundrels? But there are fools who do so, and they deserve to be fleeced.

Many of our old sports have died out. The Ring is a thing of the past, and so is the Cock-pit. I am savage enough to say I liked a prize-fight and a cock-fight. When it was on the square, a prize-fight was a most exciting scene. Yet both have very wisely been put down, and athletic sports take their place.

I seldom see the fine old game of bowls played now. Le gras, too, has gone out.

Polo, which I think nothing of, is the rage amongst gentlemen now. I see nothing in it whatever; it is a wretched game for the lookers-on; but then it is the fashion.

The fine old game of cricket is totally altered. I shall have the cricketing world down on me, but I care not. I think the present style of bowling has entirely ruined the game as a game of science. There are not many Graces in the present day, nor were there many Wards of the olden time. Cricketers of the present day look like so many hogs in armour; and where one man bowls tolerably over-handed, fifty who attempt it cannot bowl at all--they are never on the spot. Consequently the balls break anywhere. I would ten times rather stand before the fastest man in England who is true than I would to a middling fast one who is not.