INTRODUCTION xvii 



The immortal Peter is a very human person we should have much less 

 regard for him were he otherwise and he is not above exalting one sport 

 by depreciating the other. He cannot persuade us that those are his true 

 sentiments at the beginning of Letter X. He would have run his pen through 

 the words ere he sent the MS. to the printers, but it was his pleasure to have 

 a little fling at ' brother hare-hunters ' from the lofty pedestal of a fox- 

 hunter. 



There are certain allusions in Beckford which would have been readily 

 understood of his contemporaries, but inasmuch as time may have made 

 them a little misty it seems due to a classic to notice them, despite their 

 unimportance from the sporting point of view. In Letter V, when discussing 

 the names proper for hounds, he mentions a gentleman ' who intends naming 

 his hounds from the p[eerag]e ; and I suppose he, at the same time, will not 

 be unmindful of the p[riv]y c[ouncill]ors.' This, I venture to think, can only 

 refer to the feeling roused in England by George Ill's action in 1776, when 

 he made no fewer than twenty-one new peers and promotions in the peerage. 

 Not all the new peers were regarded as deserving of the honour bestowed 

 upon them, and the gentleman who proposed to ' name his hounds from 

 the peerage ' expressed in this left-handed compliment the feelings of country 

 gentlemen. Beckford's assumption that his friend would not be unmindful 

 of the Privy Councillors is in the same sense. Those were dark days for 

 England ; the King, who has been described as ' the sole minister ' during 

 Lord North's feeble administration (1770-82), was at the height of his 

 unpopularity at this period ; and his Privy Council, consisting as it did of 

 ' the King's friends,' shared the odium attaching to him by reason of the 

 American War and the dangers which threatened from France, Spain and 

 Holland. 



In the example of ' coffee-housing ' given in Letter XI we obtain glimpses 

 of the matters which occupied men's minds when the book was written. ' Do 

 you think both the admirals will be tried ? ' refers to Admirals Keppel 

 and Palliser : the retirement 'of the fleet under KeppeFs command before 

 the French in July, 1778 ; the abortive action in August off Ushant ; and 

 the quarrels which'arose thereout between Keppel and his second-in-command 

 Palliser, upon whom he sought to throw the blame, created an immense 

 sensation at the time. Keppel was tried by court-martial, and acquitted, 

 in January, 1779. The affair would naturally have rivalled the standing 

 interest of the time, suggested in the stock query ' What is the news 

 from America ? ' 



In Letter XIV Beckford observes that the ' profession of fox-hunting 

 is much altered since the time of Sir John Vanburgh.' a This is an allusion 

 to the conventional fox-hunter of the stage half a century earlier. That 



1 Sir John Vanburgh died in 1726. 



c 



