The English Sportsman, However, Does Not Cut, Or
Carve, Or In Any Way Shape His Gun-Stock To His Imagination.
The stock is
as smooth and as plain as polished wood can be.
There is a sort of
speckling on the barrels, and there is a conventional design on the
lock-plate; conventional, indeed, in the most - blase - sense of the
word - quite - blase - and worn out, this scratch of intertwisted lines, not
so much as a pheasant even engraved on the lock-plate; it is a mere
killing machine, this gun, and there is no Art, thought or love of nature
about it. Sometimes the hammers are filed, little notches crossing,
and there imagination stops. The workman can get no farther than his
file will go, and you know how that acts to and fro in a straight groove.
A pheasant or hare at full speed, a few trees - firs as most
characteristic - could be put on the plate, and something else on the
trigger guard; firs are easily drawn, and make most appearance for a few
touches; pheasants roost in them. Even a coat of arms, if it were the
genuine coat-of-arms of the owner's family, would look well. Men have
their book-plates and stamp their library volumes, why not a gun design?
As many sportsmen scarcely see their guns for three-fourths of the year,
it is possible to understand that the gun becomes a killing machine
merely to them, to be snatched up and thrown aside the instant its office
is over. But the gamekeeper carries his gun the year through, and sits in
the room with it when indoors, still he never even so much as scratches
an outline of his favourite dog on it. In these landscape days we put our
pictures on the walls only, and no imagination into the things we handle
and use. A good deal of etching might be done on a gun, most of it being
metal, while more metal could be easily inlaid for the purpose. Etching,
I suppose, is the right word; at all events, designs, records of actual
sporting feats, or outlines of favourite sporting places - nooks in the
woods, falls of the stream, deep combes of the hills - could be cut in
with aquafortis. So many draw or paint nowadays, and in this manner they
could make some use of their skill, drawing perhaps for those who only
understand the use of cartridge-paper when it has gunpowder inside it.
Sportsmen see the very best of scenery, and come across old hollow trunks
and curious trees, effects, and 'bits' of every kind, from a twisted
hawthorn to an antlered stag; if they could get an artistic friend to see
these, there would be some good gun-etchings done.
BIRDS' NESTS
'Perfectly lovely!' 'Such pretty colours!' 'So neat; isn't it wonderful
how the little things do it with their beaks?' 'The colours are so
arranged as to conceal it; the instinct is marvellous;' and so on.
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