Corsican Lament
Years ago, turning out industrial articles for transport and engineering magazines, I used to relax by writing short stories. Some of these ended up in print in one form or another. This was stream-of-consciousness writing, not the succinct tec-spec work of the day job. Usually I knew what was coming, but late one night a story about a French girl working as a trail layer high in the Welsh mountains slipped unbidden across the page. The first thousand words went well enough then sleep beckoned.
Hunting fiction proves equally elusive. Look for modern pro-hunting novels and they’re hard to find. Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man’ is still the best book about the sport, in my opinion. Published in 1928, I’ve read it several times. I think it essential reading for anyone interested in Sassoon’s war poetry. Then there’s RS Surtees who wrote novels back in the nineteenth century. Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour is excellent and all his work worth reading. Then there is the inestimable partnership of Somerville and Ross. The two cousins, Edith Somerville (1858-1949) and Violet Martin (1862-1915), wrote of hunting and Ireland.
Nowadays post-war modern literature is sadly lacking in hunting novels. We get tantalising glimpses of the hunt in various books, but it is at best a scene or two. Should the sport pass into history it is doubly sad that it may leave little trace upon the page.
The occasional novel carries an oblique reference to hunting – it’s just part of the furniture. We assume it’ll always be there. For instance in the police novel, ‘Ghostmaker’ by Victor Davis, two detectives are discussing the case of a rogue MI6 officer with a journalist who knew her. The hack had spotted her in the south of France. How did he know her, the police inspector, Ringrose, asks him.
‘She’s a woman I sometimes go hunting with.’
‘Another reporter?’ asked Ringrose.
‘Sorry I’m not putting this as well as I might. Perhaps because I’m still puzzled. Her name is – was – Nancy Tintagel. She’s Lord Tintagel’s daughter – you know, the old politician. She and I sometimes went out with the Eridge.’
The two detectives looked blank
‘The Southdown and Eridge Hunt, down on the Kent-East Sussex border. Fox hunting.’
The two policeman looked incredulously at Peter Lancing’s portly frame.
‘You? Foxhunting?’ said Ringrose.
The illustrator and writer, John Verney, writing in the early 60s, describes a fox hunt through the eyes of his teenage daughter, February, in his book, ‘February’s Road.’ She relates rising before dawn to bring in her pony and groom it to perfection before tacking up. Then comes the hunt, brilliantly described. At one point she and several friends are waiting in a wood. Hounds are drawing through covert. A boy following on foot starts talking to her. ‘Before I could answer, the Huntsman’s horn rang out a hundred yards away outside the wood and the hounds, at the same instant, changed their note to that deeper barking chorus which means business. The real hunt had started.’ Of they go at furious pace. The book was long out of print but has been reissued.
Jilly Cooper in her excellent Rutshire series alludes to hunting, an integral part of the equestrian world. Mud-spattered fox hunters turn up on the doorstep at all hours. Her horses are real heroes. Cooper herself hunted in her youth.
The short story started that night grew, emerging as a novel: ‘Corsica Girl’. The heroine in the title is not French now at all, but a Brit who had married an officer in the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment stationed at Calvi in Corsica. The Foreign Legion’s motto is ‘Pro Legio Patria Nostra.’ (For the Legion Our Country.) But its unofficial statement of belief reflects the indomitable strength of the hunting-farming movement: No Surrender.
To protect our farms and small holdings, herds, flocks, horses and hounds, will take a huge effort of will, courage, and strength. The book, like every song, poem, and pub get-together is another weapon in the fightback. We have before us, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, an ordeal of the most grievous kind if we are to win and safeguard our country and our heritage for generations yet unborn.
‘Corsica Girl’ is published by Border Tales on 12 December 2024