28o STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



charming heroines, by taking her out riding. After hearing 

 that she ' bondissait legerement sur sa selle,' I confess I took 

 less interest in her perplexed future. 



There is no room either for horses in the French novel 

 heroes, excepting perhaps for the brougham horse who devours 

 the paved street on his way to an assignation. Provincial 

 celebrities like the stout yeoman's white mare in ' Coningsby ' ; 

 character parts like Mr. Sponge's Multum in Parvo or 

 like Marathon in ' Market Harborough,' can never hope to 

 emerge into real life from the horse community as they 

 do here. The French have never had — it is equivalent to 

 saying that they have never wanted — a Whyte Melville or a 

 Surtees. There is never any story in modern French books 

 about hunting. They discourse of its etiquette and techni- 

 calities. To warrant his writing at all, a French writer 

 on sport must write as a scientist, and evolve a text- 

 book. Nor is this to be wondered at. Kate Coventry, Lord 

 Scamperdale, the Hon. Crasher, would be unintelligible 

 marionettes in a French novel. Mr. Sponge would never 

 have set out upon his tour, Mr. Jorrocks never have left 

 Great Coram 'Street. Hunting and all that has to do with 

 it is popular in England, in the sense of its being in the bone 

 and sinew of the people at large. In France it is the ex- 

 clusive amusement of a small class and in no sense national, 

 Mme. Bovary and M. de Camors, Sappho and Bel Ami did 

 not hunt. Their tastes and talents lay in other directions. 



However, I must remember I have a train to catch. 

 Three or four gentlemen in moderate boots and velvet caps 

 were unostentatiously keeping their toes warm on the plat- 

 form. On the other hand, the observed of all observers, two 

 sportsmen with high-hammered pin-fire guns en bandouliere, 

 and a pigeon-toed liver-and-white pointer called Byron, had 

 gathered around them a knot of well-wishers. Byron mean- 

 while assiduously quartered the platform in fine style, in spite 



