"Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS"—Shakespeare.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
| No. 289.] | SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1855. | Price 2d. |
| Stamped 3d. |
SPORTSMANSHIP IN EARNEST. WE have most of us, wlien boys, written edifying themes on gratitude, virtue, and luxury. The latter was a particularly favorite j subject ; but we never suspected, nor do we now suspect, the conclusion of that theme to be applicable to ourselves. When we have said our say about Lucullus's suppers in the Hall of Apollo and Heliogabalus's dishes of peacocks' brains, we think there is an end of the matter. Not a squire amongst us, nor a clergyman either, ventures to point to his neighbour and boldly utter, "Thou art the man ! " Bui facts are better teachers than sixth-form themes. Our national shortcom- ings in the prosecution of war (redeemed, it is true, by a heavy penalty of blood), give us the hint that we may have too much yielded to the blandishments of pacific civilisation. I have conversed with sensible Frenchmen in easy circumstances, wealthy even, who have not hesitated to say, "You English are too nice, too dainty in your personal ways, too luxurious. You think too much about your ' confortable ' in your every-day life at home ; and that's why you began so badly in the Crimea." Now, although we certainly were not com- fortable in the Crimea when the French had succeeded in making themselves perfectly so, the main question is none the less de- serving of attention. Is it true, that fastidious gentility has threatened to be the ruin of England f That genteel young men, from smart linen-drapers' and druggists' as- sistants upwards, have thrust willing young women aside from employment in offices they would admirably fill, while themselves have forgotten every manly exercise the cricket- bat, the long pedestrian journey, the amateur firebrigade, and the volunteer drill'? Have we been wearing out our hearts after points of etiquette, the patronising smile of aristocratic acquaintances, high places in the synagogues and streets, contemptuous puttings-down of dusty working-men, attempts at "mimicking novel heroes of the exquisite class, and other mint-and-cummin tithiiigs of social welfare, have we been doing this, leaving : unthought-of the means of strengthening the national sinews by physical training and the acquirement of practical knowledge ? It is really a serious affair, if true, as many say and believe. Gentlemen are, at this moment of our publication, popping their guns at partridges and pheasants, sport in which active women, with a slight change of attire, might participate. Many a French vivandidre would succeed very well after a few days' practice. In a French village which I now and then frequent, there died, not very long since, a lady, the entrance-hall of whose chateau was hung with skins of wolves of her own killing. What would she have said of a battue of pheasants reared under coops, with barn-door hens for their foster-mothers ? But my friend Dr. Whipemwell means to set his boys a theme on luxury, as evinced in Eng- lish sport. They will be required to leave the Romans out of the question altogether, and to discuss the moral and corporal ten- dency of the preservation of hares and par- tridges on the nation at large ; whether, in consequence of the penalties on poaching, the majority of our population know the right end of a gun from the wrong one ; and whether, supposing a few thousand armed Russians landed on the Suffolk coast (a pos- sible, though I hope not a probable hypo- thesis j but the Muscovite fleet at Cronstadt remains intact), they would not butcher the inhabitants with almost as little effective re- sistance as Captain Cook's sailors experi- enced when, landing on some desert isle, they knocked the penguins and noddies on the head with bludgeons. Our Indian sportsmen have done themselves credit by their onslaughts on wild pigs (mis- chievous brutes and capital eating), lions and tigers. Our Indian ladies have proved them- selves heroines. Gordon Camming is to be com- mended for having started fresh ideas as well as fresh game ; I only wish he had killed more carnivora and fewer innocent cameleopards and antelopes. You remember the en- graving, in Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, of the tiger carrying off a child in the presence of its mother, as she entered a jungle to gather sticks. The man who followed and shot that tiger would make by far a better bag than if he had killed five hundred leash of birds between his hot luncheon and his footbath previous to dressing for dinner. I am acquainted with a family who lived ten VOL. XIL 289.
