INTRODUCTION 



on "Gourds" in Bones and I \s as characteristic 

 of his style as any that could be chosen. He 

 excelled as a delineator of the phases of fashion- 

 able life, and enjoyed an advantage over many 

 novelists who attempt to deal with it, in that his 

 perfect and daily familiarity with its ways and 

 peculiarities steered him clear of those blunders 

 which so often raise a smile at the expense of 

 observers less perfectly qualified than Whyte- 

 Melville. 



But he was at his best — and therein almost 

 unrivalled — in describing the incidents of the 

 hunting-field. " Nimrod " could stir the pulses of 

 his readers by recounting the business of the 

 chase and the performance of individuals ; Surtees 

 had the knack of throwing a lifelike picture on 

 the screen and imparting a sense of wind and 

 weather, of scents and sounds, of life and move- 

 ment in the open air and a wild country. But 

 neither of them had the secret of Whyte-Melville's 

 glamour, which invested the rapturous reality 

 with an air of romance and gave to technical 

 details the momentous import of the operations of 

 war ; neither of them kept before his readers, as 

 Whyte-Melville did, the ideal of a cultivated, 

 accomplished, lofty-minded, warm-hearted English 

 gentleman. To him must be given the palm 

 among all who have hitherto celebrated the 

 glories of the noblest among British field sports. 



xvii 



