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MEMOIRS OF A FOX-HUNTING MAN

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This beautifully written account of a well-to-do youth growing up in sleepy rural England in the years leading upto and including the Great War. Siegfried Sasson was one of the finest poets of the Great War, which he experienced first hand (he famously threw his medal into the sea in disgust at the war), however he only touches on the war in this book -- the incredible restraint just adds pogniancy though. I was deeply moved by this book (and Siefrieds war poetry). The book, perhaps somewhat autobiographical(?) describes in some detail the growth of a young rider into an accomplished hunter. There is also some interesting insight into early golf and cricket. While Fox-hunting may not interest some (indeed it is now scorned my many) -- do not let that deter you from reading this excellent book. The book captures, accurately I think, the flavor of rural Britain -- and the relationships that grow up regardless of class in many English villages (the English country village was in many ways the ideal community -- perhaps a model for the world to adopt). This is a wonderful book intended for anybody and everybody -- not just fox hunters.

This is a very good place to commence the life of Sassoon, better known in my country as a great poet of the First World War. Having only the briefest of equestrian experience in rural Dorset and the slightest of brushes with the class structure existing even in a small village, most of Sassoon's marvellously recounted youth falls well beyond this Aussie's radar. I found the quaint rituals of horseriding and foxing fascinating; the fact of a life so given to the pursuit of pleasure, utterly bemusing. Sassoon's everpresent sense of how protected all this was, and how he could place such significance, say, on the purchase of a riding cap, saves this work from charges of class pretension. Though an acute observer, he is amazingly free, in his writing, from the sense of superiority exuding from many of the class he aspires to join.The idyll comes crashing down with the outbreak of War, and the loss of his closest friends are sobering moments, never milked for any self-pity. His writing is exquisite,full of easy phrasings that scroll as readily on his page as the gentle topography of those pleasant pastures green. As eloquent as the succeeding volumes of this series are, I believe this is the most satisfying. Is that, perhaps, because the catostrophe of the trenches was so brilliantly trapped on silent film? iMAGES OF The Great War jittered across our tele screens in the mid 1960s, possibly with the hidden message of consolidating youthful support for our conscription to the Vietnam conflict. I was almost paralysed with fear each Sunday as I sat hypnotised before the unspooling of those oancient black and white atrocities. The effect induced a wholesome loathing of nationalism and all futile expressions on foreign soils.

Perhaps the best way to classify "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is as an autobiographical novel; the details and events described are Sassoon's personal experiences in disguise. This book serves as the first of a trilogy, covering the author's early days up through his initial military service during WWI. Even though it is written as a novel, the truth of the author's life shines through.

The narrator of "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is George Sherston, a young orphan left to live with his aunt in the remote English countryside. He is a shy, reticent and awkward boy who learns gradually to flourish under the tutelage of his aunt's stablehand, Tom Dixon. Dixon teaches young George to ride and play cricket, and as he grows he eventually makes a name for himself among the fox hunting circuit and among horse racers. George drops out of Cambridge to pursue a life of leisure (one that he cannot afford) and finds himself entering the military just before war is declared.

The narrative is surprisingly fast-paced and evocative to begin with. Sassoon has a manner of drawing readers into the story through the quaint and idyllic reminisences of a spoiled young man. Yet readers may soon become distracted with George Sherston's snobbery, his diffidence towards those who care about him and have his best interests at heart, and his pretentious attitude towards his station in life. There are also times when readers can see the author shining through his characters, in scattered asides he drops the mask he holds before him and tells it as it is. "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" may not be for everyone, but is a definite must-read for any fan of Sassoon's poetry; it is a window into the world of a man who helped to shape the course of literature after WWI.

I read this book because of my early love of the War Poets, Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves.
What I had not expected was to find myself transported into a nearly forgotten time where Summer was glorious and England was feeling safe, secure and on top of the world.
Yes, they knew that things were a "bit iffy" in Europe. Yes they could see that the USA and Germany could challenge them economically - if not on the seas.
I had read Robert Massie's book Dreadnought which had a solid military-political perspective of the time following Bismarck and his unification of Germany.
This book filled in the missing pieces in my mind to show just why the English and Europeans were so unprepared to fight a total war. And why the aristocracy was so casually careless of the lives of ordinary soldiers.
I wept for the innocence of young men suddenly thrown into the teeth of machine gun fire and massive explosive shells. I smiled and felt comfortable at the descriptions of park cricket at a time that this was the noblest conflict that a young man might pursue.

There are 100,000 pretentious academic dissertations @ Siegfried Sassoon. Don't read them. Read "Memoirs," instead.

This is a hell of a book. The complexity of Siegfried's writing - aside from its often spell-binding beauty - forced me to read it very carefully, like a jeweler confronted to slowly examine a stone to be cut - a gem he's never seen before.

Musings...a 1st Edition (Am.), there'll be no marking up this book; this isn't Roberts' ten-dollar Napoleon & Wellington (& what idiot previous owner - the Fox was bought in the Ballad - threw the dust jacket away?!)...Odd realization: For once, I was reading a writer's memoir...that had nothing to do with the death of standards at The New Yorker ("Gone," "A Life of Privilege, Mostly," etc.).

MFH did not get off to a smooth start - or rather, I with it. A good deal of the first third of the book should have been trimmed. Our apprehensions at the ages of four & seven - who cares? His interminable, meaningless cricket games - what an incomprehensible morass (the terminology is bewildering).

And the dotty story @ his aunt's preparation of a hot cup of tea, on a cold primitive train, derailed the narrative as well. The author in real life dropped out of Cambridge - & these first 100 pages - weed-choked with century-old slang - almost motivated me to do the same with his memoir.

But perseverance paid off. The ending of the chapter, "A Day With The Potsford" - with its narrative tone down-shifting from a high octave of excitement then being lowered to his aunt's self-sensible concern @ the matted hair of her pet Persian cat - is so impressive, it is breath-taking.

And from then on, there are individual sentences as beautiful as anything I've ever read - & splendidly unique, a quality adding an allure I've never seen. MFH "appeared anonymously in October 1928 & delighted the public with its sensitive charm & wit." It still does, & how.

"As the [church] service proceeded, I glanced furtively around me at the prudent Sunday-like faces of the congregation. I thought of the world outside, & the comparison made life out there seem...unreal. I felt as if we were all on our way to next week in a ship."

"Memory enchants even the dilatory little train journey which carried my expectant simplicity into the freshness of a country seen for the first time."

Having first read "The Sassoons," of course, I know that this (mostly) idyllic story of his gradual development into a fox hunting gentleman must come to a brutal end, for he was primarily famous then, & noted today, as a heroic & disillusioned wartime infantry officer.

John Keegan broadly claims that at the time, almost no one in Europe saw World War I coming - that the possibility of war, on the immense scale that it did become, had been preemptively dismissed out of hand. This is stated in miniature in MFH, six years before Keegan had been born.

"War had become an impossibility" - something that would never disrupt the world of the admired huntress, Mrs. Oakfield - "She had the secret of style" - & her Midland fox hunting set, "it's uniqueness as it was when I was a unit in its hurry of hoofs & covert-side chatter."

War, instead, became everything. The hunts disappeared, the horses themselves conscripted for service. He immediately signed up as an enlisted man. "Never before had I known how much I had to lose...as I sat on the ground with my half-cleaned saddle...I felt very much a man dedicated to death." During his last village cricket game at home, "outwardly, the match had been normally conducted, but there was something in the sunshine which none of us had ever known before that calamitous Monday."

He broke an arm in a training accident & was laid up for an extraordinary time when the bone resisted healing. Then, finally whole, he received a transfer to another unit, was promoted to subaltern (2nd lieutenant?), & sent to London to Craven & Stone for a tailored officer's uniform. The officious Mr. Stoving was there to measure & outfit him.

He "chatted his way courageously through the War; 'business as usual' was his watchword. Undaunted by the ever more bloated bulk of the Army List, he bobbed like a cork on the lethal inundation of temporary [military] commissions, & when I last saw him, a few months before the Armistice, he was still outwardly unconscious of the casualty lists which had lost (& gained) him such a legion of customers."

His friends & acquaintances start getting it, even before he was finally shipped over with hordes of other replacement soldiers to France in mid-1915 - where he was then (fortuitously) posted with a battalion recently decimated up in battle. The reconstituted unit was then sent to the rear for the benefit of its few surviving, silent veterans. The "grumble & rumble" of distant heavy artillery exchanges tailed off as they slowly made their way to the west, the front-line night flares still illuminating the sky.

After a final grueling 17-mile nighttime hike, they were finally assigned to a small village where "we were all five of us sitting around the fire in my billet, which had...a clock that ticked sedately, as if there were no war on."

He received a letter from Dixon, the man who had most skillfully guided his development as a juvenile rider while working for Sassoon's aunt as carriage driver (Sassoon's parents had both died prematurely & he had been sent to live with his aunt. See Footnote One, below).

By then, R&R was over; the battalion had been moved up & into a stationary position much closer to the fighting. They're not engaged in battle, but the sniper fire & the maintenance work in trenches damaged by artillery & mine explosions was still very, very lethal. It was now a completely grim existence.

Dixon, having earlier volunteered for a cavalry support unit also now stationed in France, "had been wondering, sir...whether it might possibly be fixed up for me to exchange into your battalion...it would be quite like old times for me to be your transport-sergeant. That was a rotten business @ Mr. Colwood being killed, sir. We shall all miss him very much when this War is over."

"Dixon's letter sent me off into pleasant imagining...everything I had known before the War seemed to be withering away & falling to pieces...I wanted the past to survive & begin again; the idea [of re-uniting with Dixon] was like daylight..."

An older, wiser officer - concerned for Dixon's safety should the unit suddenly be transferred into active battle: "Things change pretty quick nowadays" - persuaded Sassoon not to arraign the transfer. Three weeks later, the letter that Sassoon had sent his old fox hunt batman was answered by another, signed by a stranger. Dixon had died of pneumonia. And then his closest friend, Dick Tiltwood, was killed by sniper fire. In the sullen aftermath, sleep became "a wonderful thing when one came back from the Line [trench duty]; but to awake was to remember."

The book ends drenched in the unspoken feeling of the author's own remoteness from everything, on Easter Sunday in 1916. His past having completely vanished, so now, will he. It is the end of a book with no ending.

And I imagine that, subconsciously, that is exactly how Sassoon intended it to be. "For two years later...he published a sequel...recalling his experiences of the Somme & Arras with an understatement & integrity that have stamped 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' as a modern classic."


*****

Footnote One: A clarification: In the memoir, they both died when Siegfried was very young. But in real life, this was not the case.

Siegfried's father, Alfred (who had abandoned Sig's mother, Theresa) did die at the age of 34 in 1895. Sig, age nine, was traumatized, so much so that he could not attend the funeral.

But his mother, Theresa, lived long enough to sketch a picture of her teenage son engaged in a steeplechase jump, a photograph of which was inserted into the book. So her demise could not have arrived prematurely.

But that's all I can conclude. The numbskull who drew up the family genealogical map in "The Sassoons" omitted the years of Theresa's birth & death. And rounding out the Idiot Exacta was the same book's index preparer - who omitted "death of" from Theresa's listing, & "death of mother" from Siegfried's listing.

The trouble that these dual omissions created was incredible. It took forever to research these basic facts, one of which is still unresolved. And it will not be. I am not going to waste my time re-reading dozens of pages to see if I can discover the year in which she passed away.

***

Addendum to the last line: "The Sassoons," Stanley Jackson: The bibliography of this invaluable book lists the later-published "Memoirs of An Infantry Officer" (London, Faber, 1931), but not "Memoirs of A Fox Hunting Man" (1928; published anonymously).

I know it is a wonderful book because I own an original. I was able to aquire the entire trilogy from England, in first printing for about 80.00. Look around before you buy. Affordably priced may not be the best price...

I read this book because I entered Sassoon first by reading his "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer." Since Sassoon has always been one of my favourite poets I thought this would allow me to see into the mind of one raised in the English Countryside at the turn of the 20th Century.

There is a lot of fox hunting here and if I was encouraged to be more sympathetic to a bunch of upper-class twits running in their finest allowing hounds to do most the work, then this book, for all its description did not engender such feelings. (Being born in Canada, real men and women hunt their animals on foot, are forbidden from using dogs in any form of hunting and a real man shoots one's game over open sights... preferably after that person has hiked over a few mountains on foot. The game is then carried out of the bush, by yourself. There are no manservants, no shared drinking of spirits or chance to rest). But the descriptions of rural life and Sassoon's existence between some limited previledge yet not quite a member of the upper classes was an interesting perspective on this time.

Sassoon writes well and economical. There is little real adventure here and the book would be one that I could recommend to someone who is thinking of touring the quite country lanes of Kent in the summer time, or open whilst on top of Downs on a sunny day. It is a reflection of rural (but not country) life in the soft cotton covered English existence while the world heads for collective insanity.

Sassoon and book eventually drift to war and the last third of the book is about him forsaking Cambridge, taking a commission and eventually heading to the front. While around him his mates, his footmen and other collegues are blown to pieces or otherwise changed unalterably by the war. Sigfried ends the book after the disasterous battles of Loos (where Kipling's son was killed) and the writing style starts to take on a melancholy and more stark tone continued in his "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer".

A good book and one worth the read for the country vignettes.

The orphaned writer leads us lanquidly through his legacy-supported life. Days are filled with cricket, horses and fox hunting but they soon become distant memories for him as he becomes a cavalry officer in the Great War. We leave him there, before the conflict is ended, as he continues to paint a picture of rural England at the turn of the this century. Ideal millennium reading, perhaps!

P.S.This is a classic English work and, as such, is readily available in the UK so I am surprised that you have it as out-of-print. It is Part 1 of a trilogy which I should have read for school exams 30 years ago but only, finally, got round to in June 1999