Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 99, August 16, 1890

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 99.

August 16, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

(BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER.)

NO. XVII.--THE SPURIOUS SPORTSMAN.

There is in sport, as in Society, a class of men who aspire perpetually towards something as perpetually elusive, which appears to them, rightly or wrongly, to be higher and nobler than their actual selves. But whereas a man may be of and in Society, without effort, by the mere accident of birth or wealth, in sport, properly understood, achievement of some kind is necessary before admission can be had to the sacred circle of the elect. What the snob is to Society, the Spurious Sportsman is to sport; and thus where the former seeks to persuade the world that he is familiar with the manners, and accustomed to the intimate friendship of the great and highly placed, the latter will hold himself out as one who, in every branch of sport has achieved many notable feats on innumerable occasions.

Such a man, of course, is not without knowledge on the matters of which he speaks. He has probably hunted several times without pleasure, or fished or shot here and there without success. But upon these slender foundations he could not rear the stupendous fabric of his deeds unless he had read much, and listened carefully to the narrations of others. By the aid of a lively and unscrupulous imagination, he gradually transmutes their experiences into his own. What he has read becomes, in the end, what he has done, and thus, in time, the Spurious Sportsman is sent forth into the world equipped in a dazzling armour of sporting mendacity. And yet mendacity is, perhaps, too harsh a word; for it is of the essence of true falsehood that it should hope to be believed, in order that it may deceive. But, in the Spurious Sportsman's ventures into the marvellous, there is generally something that gives ground for the exercise of charity, and the appalled listener may hope that even the narrator is not so thoroughly convinced of the reality of his exploits as he would, apparently, desire others to be. And there is this also to be said in excuse, that sport, which calls for the exercise of some of the noblest attributes of man's nature, not infrequently leads him into mean traps and pitfalls. For there are few men who can aver, with perfect accuracy, that they have never added a foot or two to their longest shot, or to the highest jump of their favourite horse, and have never, in short, exaggerated a difficulty in order to increase the triumph of overcoming it. But the modesty that confines most men within reasonable limits of untruthfulness has no restraining power over the Spurious Sportsman, to whom somewhat, therefore, may be forgiven for the sake of the warning he affords.

He is, as a rule, a dweller in London, for it is there that he finds the largest stock of credulity and tolerance. To walk with him in the streets, or to travel with him in a train, is to receive for nothing a liberal education in sport. No man has ever shot a greater number of rocketing pheasants with a more unerring accuracy than he has--in Pall Mall, St. James's Street, or Piccadilly. He will point out to you the exact spot where he would post himself if the birds were being driven from St. James's Square over the Junior Carlton Club. He will then expatiate learnedly on angle, and swing, and line of flight, and having raised his stick suddenly to his shoulder, by way of an example, will knock off the hat of an inoffensive passer-by. This incident will remind him of an adventure he had while shooting with Lord X.--"A deuced good chap at bottom; a bit stiff at first, but the best fellow going when you really know him"--through the well-known coverts of his lordship's estate. When travelling safely in a railway-carriage, he is the boldest cross-country rider in existence. He will indicate to you a fence full of dangers, and having taught you how it may best be cleared, will add, that it is nothing to one that he jumped last season with the Quytchley. "My dear Sir," he will say, "a man who was riding behind me was so astounded that he measured it then and there with a tape he happened to have with him; Six foot of post and rail as stiff as an iron-clad, and twenty foot of gravel-pit beyond." He will also speak with infinite contempt of those who "crane" or stick to the roads. It will sometimes happen to him to get invited--really invited--to an actual country house where genuine sport is carried on. Here, however, he will generally have brought with him his wrong gun, or his "idiot of a man" will have packed the wrong kind of cartridges, or his horse will have suddenly developed an unaccountable trick of refusing, which results in a crushed hat and a mud-stained coat for his rider. These little accidents will by no means dash his spirits, or impair his volubility in the smoking-room, where he may be heard conducting a dull discussion on sporting records, or carrying on an animated controversy about powder, size of shot or bore, choke, the proper kind of gaiter, or the right stamp of horse for the country. Having shot with indifferent results on a very big day through coverts, he will afterwards aver that such sport is very poor fun, and that what he really cares about is a tramp over heather or turnips, and a small bag at the end of the day; but if he should ever be found on a grouse moor, or a partridge shooting, he will sneer at the inferior quality of a sport which requires that a man should exhaust himself with useless walking exercise before he gets near his birds. "Covert-shooting is the game, my boy;" he will say, "most difficult thing in the world when the pheasants are tall, and the finest test of a real sportsman," and with that he will miss his twentieth grouse, and call down imprecations on the dogs, the light, the keeper, and his own companions.

The Spurious Sportsman is often an officer of the auxiliary forces. He knows by heart every button of the British Army, talks much upon questions of discipline, and has a more sharply defined and more permanent mark of sunburn across his forehead than any regular officer. He is also a great stickler for etiquette, and prefers to be addressed as Major or Colonel, as the case may be. He bears his rank upon his visiting-cards, and frequents a military Club. In the society of other Spurious Sportsmen he is at his best and noblest. They gather together at their resorts, each with the sincere conviction that every other member of the little coterie is a confirmed humbug. Yet they never fail to bring their store of goods, their anecdotes, their experiences, their adventures, and their feats, to a market where admiration and applause are paid down with a liberal hand; for though all know their fellows to be impostors, they are content to sink this knowledge in the desire to gain acceptance and credence for themselves, and thus there never comes a whisper of doubt, hesitation, or disbelief to mar the perfect harmony in which the Spurious Sportsmen live amongst themselves. Yet, when they have separated, they never fail to hold one another up to ridicule and contempt.

The Spurious Sportsman thus spends the greater part of his life in building up a reputation out of nothing. As time goes on, he becomes more and more anecdotically experienced, and, if possible, even less actual. He will have lost his nerve for riding, and a sight which gets daily weaker will have caused him to abandon even the pretence of handling his gun; but he will seek a recompense by becoming a sporting authority, and will pass a doddering old age in lamenting over the decay of all those qualities which formerly made a sportsman a sportsman, and a man a man.