CHAPTER V 



MR. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT 



MR. WILLIAM BROMLEY-DAVENPORT of Capes- 

 thorne in the county of Cheshire was born in 1821, 

 was educated at Eton and Christ Church, and was 

 a Tory, a Member of Parhament, a Colonel of Yeomanry, an 

 accomplished sportsman, and a witty writer and speaker. 

 There was no branch of field sports in which he was not 

 thoroughly proficient, and he could write about them like 

 few other people. Just before he died in 1884 he wrote 

 the last lines of a volume entitled * Sport, ^ illustrated 

 by General Hope-Crealocke, which is doubtless familiar 

 to many who read these pages. It contains four papers : 

 upon Fox-hunting, salmon-fishing, deer-stalking, and covert- 

 shooting respectively ; each one of them a charming little 

 descriptive essay on its own subject, with much good advice 

 which every young sportsman will do well to read and 

 follow, 



Mr. Bromley-Davenport was, however, something more 

 than a sporting writer. He not only thoroughly understood 

 the values of field sports, but he also had a shrewd apprecia- 

 tion of the signs and portents of the age in which he lived. 

 What Disraeli called * the miserable philosophy of the day 

 which ascribes everything to "the spirit of the age'** 



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