X INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS 



show that the purity of Forester's writings has taught us all 

 not only to venerate him but one another. He said, 



"I have taught, I have inculcated, I have put forth 

 nothing that I did believe to be false, or anything which 

 I did not believe to be good and true. In all my writings 

 I have written no line of which I am ashamed — no words 

 which I desire to blot." 

 Viscount Grey of Fallodon in his address delivered on Recrea- 

 tion, at the Harvard Union, says, "Books are the greatest and 

 most satisfactory of recreations, I mean the use of books for 

 pleasure," and when you contemplate the size of my Lordvale 

 Library catalogue of the sporting books, stories and sketches 

 written by Forester, the biographies, historical novels, tales and 

 poems which came from his pen, and notice the number of works 

 edited and translated by the talented author, you will appreciate 

 how Henry William Herbert stands first not only in America but 

 the world over as the greatest sporting writer. 



Those who love the sheen of the silk at the starting post, the 

 swirl of the trout in the pool, the bustle of the partridge coming 

 out of cover, the skeap of the snipe, the variegated back of the 

 woodcock as you drop him under the birches* and the cry of the 

 hounds in the woodland, will, if they are not gathered here today 

 be glad as word is flashed out all over North America that we are 

 honoring the writer who made Warwick famous, and by his words 

 gave recreation, as Viscount Grey says, to all of us and our chil- 

 dren's children for all time. 



*0n Forester Day morning in Warwick, I was given a woodcock by 

 that rare sportsman, Dr. A. W. Edsall, who, with a friend, had shot three or 

 four brace the day before in the covers shot over and made historic by Tom 

 Draw and Frank Forester, and when I said, "The variegated back of 

 the Woodcock as you drop him under the birches" I took the cock from 

 my pocket and showed his black brown, mottled back to those gathered 

 around.— H.W.S. 



Copper etching of an impression from one of the 

 silver buttons engraved by John Scott for Thomas 

 Gosden, the celebrated sporting book binder and 

 publisher, from a drawing of a Woodcock by A. 

 Cooper, R. A., October 1, 1821 (100 years ago). 



