Hunting Is A Mimicry Of The Mediaeval Chase, And This Is The
Nineteenth Century Of The Socialist, Yet Every Man Of The Fields Loves To
Hear The Horn And The Burst Of The Hounds.
Never was shooting, for
instance, carried to such perfection, perfect guns made with scientific
accuracy, plans of campaign among the pheasants set out with diagrams as
if there was going to be a battle of Blenheim in the woods.
To be a
successful sportsman nowadays you must be a well-drilled veteran, never
losing presence of mind, keeping your nerve under fire - flashes to the
left of you, reports to the right of you, shot whistling from the second
line - a hero amid the ceaseless rattle of musketry and the 'dun hot
breath of war.' Of old time the knight had to go through a long course of
instructions. He had to acquire the - manege - of his steed, the use of the
lance and sword, how to command a troop, and how to besiege a castle.
Till perfect in the arts of war and complete in the minutiae of falconry
and all the terms of the chase, he could not take his place in the ranks
of men. The English country gentleman who now holds something the same
position socially as the knight, is not a sportsman till he can use the
breechloader with terrible effect at the pheasant-shoot, till he can
wield the salmon-rod, or ride better than any Persian. Never were
people - people in the widest sense - fonder of horses and dogs, and every
kind of animal, than at the present day. The town has gone out into the
country, but the country has also penetrated the mind of the town. No
sooner has a man made a little money in the city, than away he rushes to
the fields and rivers, and nothing would so deeply hurt the pride of the
- nouveaux riches - as to insinuate that he was not quite fully imbued with
the spirit and the knowledge of the country. If you told him he was
ignorant of books he might take that as a compliment; if you suggested in
a sidelong way that he did not understand horses he would never more be
friends with you again.
Nothing has died out, but everything has grown stronger that appertains
to the land. Heraldry, for instance, and genealogy, county
history - people don't want to be sheriffs now, but they would very much
like to be able to say one of their ancestors was sheriff so many
centuries ago. The old crests, the old coats of arms, are more thought of
than ever; every fragment of antiquity valued. Almost everything old is
of the country, either of the mansion or of the cottage; old silver
plate, and old china, and works of the old masters in the one, old books,
old furniture, old clocks in the other.
The sweet violets bloom afresh every spring on the mounds, the cowslips
come, and the happy note of the cuckoo, the wild rose of midsummer, and
the golden wheat of August. It is the same beautiful old country always
new. Neither the iron engine nor the wooden plough alter it one iota, and
the love of it rises as constantly in our hearts as the coming of the
leaves. The wheat as it is moved from field to field, like a quarto
folded four times, gives us in the mere rotation of crops a fresh garden
every year. You have scented the bean-field and seen the slender heads of
barley droop. The useful products of the field are themselves beautiful;
the sainfoin, the blue lucerne, the blood-red trifolium, the clear yellow
of the mustard, give more definite colours, and all these are the merely
useful, and, in that sense, the plainest of growths. There are, then, the
poppies, whose wild brilliance in July days is not surpassed by any hue
of Spain. Wild charlock - a clear yellow - pink pimpernels, pink-streaked
convolvulus, great white convolvulus, double-yellow toadflax, blue
borage, broad rays of blue chicory, tall corn-cockles, azure
corn-flowers, the great mallow, almost a bush, purple knapweed - I will
make no further catalogue, but there are pages more of flowers, great and
small, that grow at the edge of the plough, from the coltsfoot that
starts out of the clumsy clod in spring to the white clematis. Of the
broad surface of the golden wheat and its glory I have already spoken,
yet these flower-encircled acres, these beautiful fields of peaceful
wheat, are the battle-fields of life. For these fertile acres the Romans
built their cities and those villas whose mosaics and hypocausts are
exposed by the plough, and formed straight roads like the radii of a
wheel or the threads of a geometrical spider's web. Thus like the spider
the legions from their centre marched direct and quickly conquered. Next
the Saxons, next the monk-slaying Danes, next the Normans in
chain-mail - one, two, three heavy blows - came to grasp these golden
acres. Dearly the Normans loved them; they gripped them firmly and
registered them in 'Domesday Book.' They let not a hide escape them; they
gripped also the mills that ground the corn. Do you think such blood
would have been shed for barren wastes? No, it was to possess these
harvest-laden fields. The wheat-fields are the battle-fields of the
world. If not so openly invaded as of old time, the struggle between
nations is still one for the ownership or for the control of corn. When
Italy became a vineyard and could no more feed the armies, slowly power
slipped away and the great empire of Rome split into many pieces. It has
long been foreseen that if ever England is occupied with a great war the
question of our corn supply, so largely derived from abroad, will become
a weighty matter. Happy for us that we have wheat-growing colonies!
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