Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man: The Memoirs of George Sherston: 1 (George Sherston Trilogy)

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Times Literary Supplement, July 11, 1918; June 3, 1926; November 1, 1947; September 18, 1948; January 4, 1957; December 7, 1973. Anyway, it's that lost world of rural Britain that is evoked in this affecting memoir – fictionalised memoir, I should say, because Sassoon also wrote some ‘straight’ non-fiction versions of his childhood, which most critics seem to think were less interesting than this putative novel. It is full of very beautiful Hardyesque descriptions of the English countryside: I liked this memoir. It’s likely not for everyone and I would find it difficult to filter out to whom I could recommend it, but if anyone gives it a go, I’d be interested in any thoughts. Mine maybe slightly biased by the benefit of reading previous works about and by the author. This is a long-term project for me. I do intend to read the follow-up semi-autobiographical memoirs at some stage.

Here is a book that has made me feel a bit nostalgic about my childhood and youth. It has reminded me of the days when I was in primary school and we had something called 'dictation'. The first volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell The impact of the deaths of those he loved (he gave them pseudonyms), killed in WWI, was expertly recounted. Absent was his famous turnaround and stance against WWI, but perhaps that comes in the next instalment given this is the first in a trilogy.

by Siegfried Sassoon

On the one hand Siegfried Sassoon’s _The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man_ (the first volume in a trilogy)can be seen as a paen to the idyllic way of life of a country gentleman before the war to end all wars destroyed any pretence to concepts of chivalry and gallant action. On the other hand it can be seen as an indictment (knowing or otherwise) of the generally indolent and purposeless lives of the idle rich before an entire generation was nearly decimated. Either way it is a well-written and interesting picture of Edwardian life seen from the point of view of someone definitely in the upstairs portion of the upstairs/downstairs equation.

He spends most of his time in careless and meaningless pursuits, still finding ways to fund his occasional spending sprees in London despite his trustee’s limiting the amount of money he receives as punishment for failing at Cambridge. He becomes a well-respected hunter and rider, buying bigger and better horses and winning “point to point” races against other aristocrats. This led me to revisiting the War Poets, and, lo and behold, on my bookshelf, was a somewhat tatty school copy of 'Memoirs'. Nowadays in the UK fox hunting is only permitted in a modified form, but in the 80s and 90s it was a very divisive political issue. This book reveals that it was also so even a century ago. At one point Sassoon relates how a village parson shakes his fist at the hunters and calls them "brutes" (Sherston dismisses him as a "silly old buffer"). Elsewhere another huntsman refers to "those damned socialists who want to stop us hunting." Typically, the author comments that "Socialists, for me, began and ended in Hyde Park, which was quite a harmless place for them to function in." [Hyde Park is a London park, one corner of which became established as a location for political and religious speakers]. Probably there are quite a few people who will be put off reading this book by its title, but the author does not actually describe the death of any fox, and his motivation for hunting seems to be the companionship of like minded people and the opportunity for a good gallop around the countryside. I live in a rural area and, though I don't hunt myself, I know that fox hunting is still seen as a social event by the farming and landowning sector. Knowing something about horses probably also adds to the enjoyment of reading this book. In 1917, famously, Sassoon was supposed to have thrown a Military Cross he won for "conspicuous gallantry" into the River Mersey. But even this wasn't such a simple thing. He later explained: "Weighted with significance though this action was, it would have felt more conclusive had the ribbon been heavier. As it was, the poor little thing fell weakly on to the water and floated away as though aware of its own futility … Watching a big boat which was steaming along the horizon, I realised that protesting against the prolongation of the war was about as much use as shouting at the people on board that ship." Talking of weight, it turns out he only actually lobbed the ribbon. The medal was found in an attic in 2007. Of course, when war breaks out, George Sherston does his duty, as do most young men of English descent. He volunteers. Given his level of education and pedigree, he begins life in the military as a second lieutenant. He lands a cushy job directing matters of transportation that keeps him out of the trenches. Messages start coming in of friends who have been killed, but these are abstract thoughts, like hearing about a natural disaster that happened two thousand miles away.He is also left-wing. His sympathies are with the "simple soldier", and against the "Majors at the Base" who "speed glum heroes up the line to death". He publishes poems in magazines like the Nation (which nowadays trades as the New Statesman). Poems scarlet with rage: I expected to find the fox hunting part of the book dull and perhaps even offensive - it's a practice not to modern tastes for reasons of elitism and cruelty - but was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Sassoon seemed to enjoy it as an opportunity to enjoy the countryside and jump a lot of fences at high speed; an early extreme sport, if you will. The death of foxes, game and deer in the tally-ho pastimes of his class are glossed over in favor of amusing sketches of upper-class twittage. Sassoon has a great ear for speech and a dry line in self-deprecation. Many of these descriptions are shot through with a generalised melancholy (‘It is with a sigh that I remember simple moments such as those, when I understood so little of the deepening sadness of life…’), whose source looms up through the text although it is rarely mentioned. Instead we just have an uneasy sense that everything we read about has somehow been lost, and this gave the detailed explanations of fox hunting an interest that they wouldn't otherwise have had for me.

Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7855542M Openlibrary_edition I can hear the creak of the saddle and the clop and clink of the hoofs as we cross the bridge over the brook by Dundell Farm; there is a light burning in the farmhouse window, and the evening star glitters above a broken drift of half-luminous cloud.”Funny because Sassoon wants it to be, not because he is lapsing, DH Lawrence-style, into absurd nature-fetishism. Green's Cold Comfort Farm analogy is unfair. Sassoon's evocation of the English countryside is so lovely partly because it is gentle (give or take a few too many references to Elysium) – even when he is writing with emotion:

Some of these ideas been echoed by Reading group contributors. TimHannigan, who first nominated the book for discussion, wrote: Siegfried Sassoon is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. I had a difficult time relating with the old english customs and lifestyle as they are the kind of stuff we dont practice here in Kenya.

Where the war verses are bayonet-hard and sharp, this prose is soft and gentle as the "river mist" George lovingly describes, down in a valley, where "a goods train whistled as it puffed steadily away from the station with a distinctly heard clanking of buffers. How little I knew of the enormous world beyond the valley and those low green hills." All this, for the establishment, made Sassoon’s later outspoken opposition to the war all the more difficult to handle because he couldn’t be branded a coward. Hence the resort to mental illness. It will be interesting to see how Sassoon handles this journey in the second novel. George is a boy who ought not to be interfered with too much,’ she would say. And I agreed with her opinion unreservedly.”