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Sherston Trilogy #1
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Book 1 of 3: The George Sherston Trilogy
First published in 1928, now public domain in the United States and Canada. It won both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, being immediately recognized as a classic of English literature. In the years since its first appearance, it has regularly been a set text for British schoolchildren.
Sassoon elected to publish Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man anonymously. It is a depiction of his early years presented in the form of an autobiographical novel, with false names being given to the central characters, including Sassoon himself, who appears as "George Sherston". He was motivated to write the work by a war incident, when a fox was loose in the trenches and one of his friends shot and killed it. However, the book draws heavily on his pre-war life, with riding and hunting being among the favorite pastimes of the author.
In this first novel of the semi-autobiographical George Sherston trilogy, Sassoon wonderfully captures the Edwardian English countryside. Never out of print since its original publication in 1928, when it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Sassoon's reminiscences about childhood and the beginning of World War I are channeled through young George Sherston, whose life of local cricket tournaments and fox-hunts falls apart as war approaches and he joins up to fight. Sassoon's first novel, though rife with comic characters and a jaunty sense of storytelling, presents his own loss of innocence and the destruction of the country he knew and loved.
First published in 1928, now public domain in the United States and Canada. It won both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, being immediately recognized as a classic of English literature. In the years since its first appearance, it has regularly been a set text for British schoolchildren.
Sassoon elected to publish Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man anonymously. It is a depiction of his early years presented in the form of an autobiographical novel, with false names being given to the central characters, including Sassoon himself, who appears as "George Sherston". He was motivated to write the work by a war incident, when a fox was loose in the trenches and one of his friends shot and killed it. However, the book draws heavily on his pre-war life, with riding and hunting being among the favorite pastimes of the author.
In this first novel of the semi-autobiographical George Sherston trilogy, Sassoon wonderfully captures the Edwardian English countryside. Never out of print since its original publication in 1928, when it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Sassoon's reminiscences about childhood and the beginning of World War I are channeled through young George Sherston, whose life of local cricket tournaments and fox-hunts falls apart as war approaches and he joins up to fight. Sassoon's first novel, though rife with comic characters and a jaunty sense of storytelling, presents his own loss of innocence and the destruction of the country he knew and loved.
341 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1928
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3340 people want to read
About the author
Siegfried Sassoon
175 books178 followersSiegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was born into a wealthy banking family, the middle of 3 brothers. His Anglican mother and Jewish father separated when he was five. He had little subsequent contact with ‘Pappy’, who died of TB 4 years later. He presented his mother with his first ‘volume’ at 11. Sassoon spent his youth hunting, cricketing, reading, and writing. He was home-schooled until the age of 14 because of ill health. At school he was academically mediocre and teased for being un-athletic, unusually old, and Jewish. He attended Clare College, Cambridge, but left without taking his degree. In 1911, Sassoon read ‘The Intermediate Sex’ by Edward Carpenter, a book about homosexuality which was a revelation for Sassoon. In 1913 he wrote ‘The Daffodil Murderer,’ a parody of a John Masefield poem and his only pre-war success. A patriotic man, he enlisted on 3rd August, the day before Britain entered the war, as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry. After a riding accident which put him out of action, in May 1915 he joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant. At the training depot he met David Thomas, with whom he fell in love.
In November, Sassoon received word that his brother Hamo had died at Gallipoli. On 17th November he was shipped to France with David Thomas. He was assigned to C Company, First Battalion. It was here that he met Robert Graves, described in his diary as ‘a young poet in Third Battalion and very much disliked.’ He took part in working parties, but no combat. He later became transport officer and so managed to stay out of the front lines. After time on leave, on the 18th May 1916 he received word that David Thomas had died of a bullet to the throat. Both Graves and Sassoon were distraught, and in Siegfried’s case it inspired ‘the lust to kill.’ He abandoned transport duties and went out on patrols whenever possible, desperate to kill as many Germans as he could, earning him the nickname ‘Mad Jack.’ In April he was recommended for the Military Cross for his action in bringing in the dead and wounded after a raid. He received his medal on the day before the Somme. For the first days of the Somme, he was in reserve opposite Fricourt, watching the slaughter from a ridge. Fricourt was successfully taken, and on the 4th July the First Battalion moved up to the front line to attack Mametz Wood. It was here that he famously took a trench single handed. Unfortunately, Siegfried did nothing to consolidate the trench; he simply sat down and read a book, later returning to a berating from Graves. It was in 1917, convalescing in 'Blighty' from a wound, that he decided to make a stand against the war. Encouraged by pacifist friends, he ignored his orders to return to duty and issued a declaration against the war. The army refused to court martial him, sending him instead to Craiglockhart, an institution for soldiers driven mad by the war. Here he met and influenced Wilfred Owen. In 1918 he briefly returned to active service, in Palestine and then France again, but after being wounded by friendly fire he ended the war convalescing. He reached the rank of captain. After the war he made a predictably unhappy marriage and had a son, George. He continued to write, but is best remembered as a war poet.
In November, Sassoon received word that his brother Hamo had died at Gallipoli. On 17th November he was shipped to France with David Thomas. He was assigned to C Company, First Battalion. It was here that he met Robert Graves, described in his diary as ‘a young poet in Third Battalion and very much disliked.’ He took part in working parties, but no combat. He later became transport officer and so managed to stay out of the front lines. After time on leave, on the 18th May 1916 he received word that David Thomas had died of a bullet to the throat. Both Graves and Sassoon were distraught, and in Siegfried’s case it inspired ‘the lust to kill.’ He abandoned transport duties and went out on patrols whenever possible, desperate to kill as many Germans as he could, earning him the nickname ‘Mad Jack.’ In April he was recommended for the Military Cross for his action in bringing in the dead and wounded after a raid. He received his medal on the day before the Somme. For the first days of the Somme, he was in reserve opposite Fricourt, watching the slaughter from a ridge. Fricourt was successfully taken, and on the 4th July the First Battalion moved up to the front line to attack Mametz Wood. It was here that he famously took a trench single handed. Unfortunately, Siegfried did nothing to consolidate the trench; he simply sat down and read a book, later returning to a berating from Graves. It was in 1917, convalescing in 'Blighty' from a wound, that he decided to make a stand against the war. Encouraged by pacifist friends, he ignored his orders to return to duty and issued a declaration against the war. The army refused to court martial him, sending him instead to Craiglockhart, an institution for soldiers driven mad by the war. Here he met and influenced Wilfred Owen. In 1918 he briefly returned to active service, in Palestine and then France again, but after being wounded by friendly fire he ended the war convalescing. He reached the rank of captain. After the war he made a predictably unhappy marriage and had a son, George. He continued to write, but is best remembered as a war poet.
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February 8, 2018
”My memory of that summer returns like a bee that comes buzzing into a quiet room where the curtains are drawn on a blazing hot afternoon.”
Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot
The poet Siegfried Sassoon made the decision to write his memoirs as fiction, but as I read this book, it became readily apparent that whatever was fictionalized was a marginal part compared to the pages devoted to preserving his memories of England before the hell of world war changed things forever.
George Sherston, AKA Siegfried Sassoon, is a young man of modest means. His family left him a small legacy that allows him to drift through life without working for a living. His Aunt Evelyn susses him up properly:
”’George is a boy who ought not to be interfered with too much,’ she would say. And I agreed with her opinion unreservedly.”
If truth be known, more than fame or money or prestige, I most crave to not ”be interfered with too much.” I’ve thought about trying to put my personal desire into words for many years, but until I read those words by Sassoon, I’d never really found the proper ones before.
The first two thirds of this book is devoted to fox-hunting, horse racing, cricket matches, reading, gazing longingly at young men he admired, and enjoying what would turn out to be the last few years of a naivety that England would never be able to reclaim. These memories of halcyon days sustain Sassoon as he fights the mud, the Germans, and the creeping fear of insanity. There has to be a thought, a niggling belief, that if he survives the war that he can return to those days when his most pressing concern was the color of his hunting jacket or the fit of a new pair of boots.
There are reviewers/readers who find this section of the book tedious because they are unable to associate themselves with fox-hunting or cricket or a seemingly aimless life, but knowing what awaits Sassoon over the very next horizon certainly gives me perspective on why he wants to capture his memories of this time in print. It establishes not only what he loses, but similar stories can be told of many of the officers summoned to fight in the war that was supposed to end all wars.
His sensitivity, that would later plague him in war but make him an excellent poet, is also apparent by an utterance that he makes during his first fox hunt. ””Don’t do that; they’ll catch him!’ I exclaimed.” He is referring to the fox and to someone about to alert the other riders and dogs to the proper direction taken by the fox. Of course, this statement is baffling to the rest of the field. Sherston is not there to catch the fox. He is there to enjoy the ride, the jumping of fences, and the comradery of men intent on the same purpose.
Sassoon/Sherston is just beginning to get a glimmering of what he wants to do with the rest of his life. It will all be compressed very shortly when he finds himself among the bombs, blood, and horror of war. When you believe you will die at any moment, long term life goals become irrelevant, even painful to contemplate.
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.
Siegfried Sassoon
This changes with the death of his friend Dick Tiltwood, who is based on Sassoon’s friend David Cuthbert Thomas. Sassoon never gets over this death. It is the one that disperses all the illusions of detachment. ”A sack was lowered into a hole in the ground. The sack was Dick. I knew Death then.”
The war is a shock for men on many levels. Discovering that you are expendable. That you are just a faceless number, a cog in a wheel of a grinding machine. You might be the apple in the eye of your family, but in the military, you are a sacrifice to send into No Man’s Land, into the teeth of machine gun fire. The way men are recklessly expended in World War One is frankly criminal. War crime trials should be held for the victors as well as the losers.
I’m going to continue on with book two in the trilogy, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. The writing is mostly rather light for Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. I have a feeling the tone will change for the second book. Hopefully, the Whizz-Bangs will fly high and wide.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot
The poet Siegfried Sassoon made the decision to write his memoirs as fiction, but as I read this book, it became readily apparent that whatever was fictionalized was a marginal part compared to the pages devoted to preserving his memories of England before the hell of world war changed things forever.
George Sherston, AKA Siegfried Sassoon, is a young man of modest means. His family left him a small legacy that allows him to drift through life without working for a living. His Aunt Evelyn susses him up properly:
”’George is a boy who ought not to be interfered with too much,’ she would say. And I agreed with her opinion unreservedly.”
If truth be known, more than fame or money or prestige, I most crave to not ”be interfered with too much.” I’ve thought about trying to put my personal desire into words for many years, but until I read those words by Sassoon, I’d never really found the proper ones before.
The first two thirds of this book is devoted to fox-hunting, horse racing, cricket matches, reading, gazing longingly at young men he admired, and enjoying what would turn out to be the last few years of a naivety that England would never be able to reclaim. These memories of halcyon days sustain Sassoon as he fights the mud, the Germans, and the creeping fear of insanity. There has to be a thought, a niggling belief, that if he survives the war that he can return to those days when his most pressing concern was the color of his hunting jacket or the fit of a new pair of boots.
There are reviewers/readers who find this section of the book tedious because they are unable to associate themselves with fox-hunting or cricket or a seemingly aimless life, but knowing what awaits Sassoon over the very next horizon certainly gives me perspective on why he wants to capture his memories of this time in print. It establishes not only what he loses, but similar stories can be told of many of the officers summoned to fight in the war that was supposed to end all wars.
His sensitivity, that would later plague him in war but make him an excellent poet, is also apparent by an utterance that he makes during his first fox hunt. ””Don’t do that; they’ll catch him!’ I exclaimed.” He is referring to the fox and to someone about to alert the other riders and dogs to the proper direction taken by the fox. Of course, this statement is baffling to the rest of the field. Sherston is not there to catch the fox. He is there to enjoy the ride, the jumping of fences, and the comradery of men intent on the same purpose.
Sassoon/Sherston is just beginning to get a glimmering of what he wants to do with the rest of his life. It will all be compressed very shortly when he finds himself among the bombs, blood, and horror of war. When you believe you will die at any moment, long term life goals become irrelevant, even painful to contemplate.
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.
Siegfried Sassoon
This changes with the death of his friend Dick Tiltwood, who is based on Sassoon’s friend David Cuthbert Thomas. Sassoon never gets over this death. It is the one that disperses all the illusions of detachment. ”A sack was lowered into a hole in the ground. The sack was Dick. I knew Death then.”
The war is a shock for men on many levels. Discovering that you are expendable. That you are just a faceless number, a cog in a wheel of a grinding machine. You might be the apple in the eye of your family, but in the military, you are a sacrifice to send into No Man’s Land, into the teeth of machine gun fire. The way men are recklessly expended in World War One is frankly criminal. War crime trials should be held for the victors as well as the losers.
I’m going to continue on with book two in the trilogy, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. The writing is mostly rather light for Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. I have a feeling the tone will change for the second book. Hopefully, the Whizz-Bangs will fly high and wide.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
March 12, 2014
Hard to believe it's been ten years since Britain banned traditional fox hunting. I was working for the BBC when the ban came in, and I remember going up to spend a day with one hunt in the midlands, filming them as they defiantly flouted the act, and then following them down to London for yet another huge tweed-clad protest outside Parliament. It was widely bruited about that animal welfare was just a smokescreen for a more sinister attack on country life by the urban classes.
The ban marked the formal end to an era that was, I suppose, in practice already long gone – the time of local hunts that brought small country communities together, ruddy-faced farmers doffing their caps as the squire rode past in hunting pink, everyone knowing everyone else and everyone knowing their place. Nowadays these same picturesque little villages are more likely to hold bankers on weekend retreats, adulterous retirees, and women pulling in six figures selling gold lamé tea-towels on Etsy.
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:
To watch the day breaking from purple to dazzling gold while we trotted up a deep-rutted lane; to inhale the early freshness when we were on the sheep-cropped uplands; to stare back at the low country with its cock-crowing farms and mist-coiled waterways; thus to be riding out with a sense of spacious discovery – was it not something stolen from the lie-a-bed world and the luckless city workers – even though it ended in nothing more than the killing of a leash of fox-cubs? (for whom, to tell the truth, I felt an unconfessed sympathy).
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.
I knew Sassoon as a war poet, of course, but this book showed me a completely new side to him – dry, witty, full of a kind of naïve and faux-pompous enthusiasm that allows for some admirable characterisations – of hens (‘the providers of that universally respected object, the egg’), for instance, or a local churchwarden (‘his impressive demeanour led us to suppose that, if he was not yet on hat-raising terms with the Almighty, he at any moment expected to be’). Supporting characters have cartoonish names like Nigel Croplady, Fred Buzzaway, Joe Barless, and Sir Jocelyn Porteus-Porteous (‘note the majestic variation in spelling’).
All of this Edwardian badinage only makes it the more painful when he sees his cosy world come crashing down with the outbreak of the First World War, a narrative intrusion that is carefully held off until near the end of the book. It's consequently quite horrific to head off to the trenches with such a jovial narrator after endless chapters of cheerful rural pranks – like seeing Bertie Wooster given a rifle and thrown in a dug-out.
Our narrator's natural Conservatism and patriotism evaporate on exposure to the realities of trench warfare. And the measured judgements of this cheerful innocent are much more powerful than any number of angry denunciations from other quarters.
To him, as to me, the War was inevitable and justifiable. Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees, was a crime against humanity.
This is the first of three volumes, the second and third of which focus more closely on Sassoon's wartime experiences. But he clearly wants to root their power in this long, dreamy remembrance of pre-war country life, so that we all understand what was lost. For me it worked well. (And if you're one of those ‘humanitarian cranks’ who worry about animal cruelty, I'm pretty sure they barely catch a single fox in the whole book.)
February 17, 2023
Up front: Fox-hunting is not why I read this book. The now illegal, bygone aristocratic sport does nothing for me but raise my heckles.
Siegfried Sassoon’s unembellished war poems are renowned and admirable, but I’m not a poetry buff, therefore, after I enjoyed reading a detailed biography, I was keen to see how he tackled prose.
Thankfully, it’s not entirely about ‘the hunt’. He wrote about other things he loved: the English countryside, horses in general, music and cricket. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not without some early 20th Century snobbery.
He jumped the hurdles of expressing his attraction for men without overtly writing about his homosexuality, obviously for fear of insulting norms and risk of imprisonment back then. There’s the smell of leather saddles, whips, players sweating it out on the cricket field, detailed descriptions of masculine faces, clothing and dapper soldiers in uniform. Yes, Mr Sassoon, a clever ‘read-between-the-lines’ approach but, in the same token, it must have been agonising to default to subterfuge and not be permitted to express yourself honestly.
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.
Thomas Hardy’s flair for describing English pastoral and village life came through as inspiration for Sassoon (they were friends):
“Thrushes and blackbirds hopped and pecked busily on the dew-soaked lawn, and a pigeon was cooing monotonously from the belt of woodland which sloped from the garden toward the Weald.”
“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.”
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.
Another takeaway: I was amused by copies of correspondence between Sassoon, his UK and a potential US publisher, added as postscripts. By telegram, the latter suggested entire passages about cricket be deleted:
“ALL OPINIONS FAVOR (sic) OMITTING CRICKET PAGES THIRTY TO NINETY GAME NOT UNDERSTOOD HERE AND DESCRIPTION SO NEAR BEGINNING WILL INJURE SALE…”
Sassoon stood his ground!
Siegfried Sassoon’s unembellished war poems are renowned and admirable, but I’m not a poetry buff, therefore, after I enjoyed reading a detailed biography, I was keen to see how he tackled prose.
Thankfully, it’s not entirely about ‘the hunt’. He wrote about other things he loved: the English countryside, horses in general, music and cricket. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not without some early 20th Century snobbery.
He jumped the hurdles of expressing his attraction for men without overtly writing about his homosexuality, obviously for fear of insulting norms and risk of imprisonment back then. There’s the smell of leather saddles, whips, players sweating it out on the cricket field, detailed descriptions of masculine faces, clothing and dapper soldiers in uniform. Yes, Mr Sassoon, a clever ‘read-between-the-lines’ approach but, in the same token, it must have been agonising to default to subterfuge and not be permitted to express yourself honestly.
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.
Thomas Hardy’s flair for describing English pastoral and village life came through as inspiration for Sassoon (they were friends):
“Thrushes and blackbirds hopped and pecked busily on the dew-soaked lawn, and a pigeon was cooing monotonously from the belt of woodland which sloped from the garden toward the Weald.”
“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.”
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.
Another takeaway: I was amused by copies of correspondence between Sassoon, his UK and a potential US publisher, added as postscripts. By telegram, the latter suggested entire passages about cricket be deleted:
“ALL OPINIONS FAVOR (sic) OMITTING CRICKET PAGES THIRTY TO NINETY GAME NOT UNDERSTOOD HERE AND DESCRIPTION SO NEAR BEGINNING WILL INJURE SALE…”
Sassoon stood his ground!
November 15, 2014
4.5 stars
This is the first of Siegfried Sassoon’s trilogy relating to the First World War; part of my reading for the anniversary this year. Although a novel, this is strongly autobiographical and there is no doubt that the protagonist, George Sherston, is Sassoon.
On the surface this is a picture of a rural idyllic England that was shattered by the war, a lost paradise of a particular middle class type. I have also read the criticisms of Sassoon’s work being anti-modernist and rather maudlin. The one interesting point about that criticism is that two of the great early Modernists Eliot and Pound, did not fight. Graves and Sassoon did fight and saw the chaos of war and the shattering of lives and they both went off on other tangents rather than embracing modernism. Not sure where that idea goes (if anywhere) and I am also reading David Jones at the moment and he may well contradict the above. However back to Sassoon. There was a moment when I suddenly realised that there was a great deal more going on than was immediately apparent on the surface. Sassoon’s message is clear and his evocation of the rural idyll has a double edge to it.
Sassoon is looking back in much the same way Proust did and having read Proust fairly recently the influence is clear. He picks out small incidents and reflects on them. The story of his aunt making tea on the train with a small spirit lamp is hilarious as is Sassoon’s own embarrassed reaction trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.
You cannot avoid the fox hunting in this novel, however there appears again to be ambivalence from Sassoon. Never once does he describe the death of a fox and all his focus is on riding and the horses. Stephen Colwood, Dennis Milden and Dixon are all sympathetic characters, but the rest of the hunting fraternity are a pretty grim set of cowards, bullies and reckless idiots. There are some colourfully drawn comic creations and Sassoon also includes those who expressed contrary opinions; clergy and farmers who were critical of hunting. Sassoon can also be self-critical;
“The mental condition of a young man who asks nothing more of life than twelve hundred a year and four days a week with the Packlestone is perhaps not easy to defend”
Not the attitude of someone longing for a lost past.
This volume takes Sherston into the war years, through training and into France. Sherston (and Sassoon’s) entry into the war was delayed by a riding accident. The novel ends at the beginning of Sherston’s time in the trenches, when the horror of it all was becoming clear. At one point Sassoon refers to the war as a “crime against humanity”, quite a modern turn of phrase. The term had only been coined about 20 years earlier and was confined to diplomatic paperwork. This may even be its first use in literature.
Sassoon fell in love in the army with David Thomas (Dick Tiltwood in the novel). Thomas’s death deeply affected him. He describes his reactions at the end of the novel when he says he no longer wanted to live. This led to a reckless disregard for his own safety and he was nicknamed “Mad Jack”. Robert Graves remembered Sassoon’s suicidal bravery in his own recollections. He took a German trench single handed, but instead of reporting back he sat and read poetry for over an hour. Sassoon was nominated for a Victoria Cross and was awarded a Military Cross:
“For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained for 1½ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all the killed and wounded were brought in”
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.
This is an interesting novel, not the simple evocation of a lost past that I was expecting; there is much more nuance and Sassoon was clearly expressing a good deal of ambivalence (sitting on the fence if I am being cynical). The asides make it more interesting as do the evocations of Proust.
Another thought on the tensions with modernism. Sassoon is essentially a rural writer and modernism is a little more urban. Max Egremont, in his excellent biography explains that after the chaos of the war Sassoon wanted a sense of order, which may be why he struggled with the “disorderly writing” of the modernists. The scars of war can show up in odd places.
This is the first of Siegfried Sassoon’s trilogy relating to the First World War; part of my reading for the anniversary this year. Although a novel, this is strongly autobiographical and there is no doubt that the protagonist, George Sherston, is Sassoon.
On the surface this is a picture of a rural idyllic England that was shattered by the war, a lost paradise of a particular middle class type. I have also read the criticisms of Sassoon’s work being anti-modernist and rather maudlin. The one interesting point about that criticism is that two of the great early Modernists Eliot and Pound, did not fight. Graves and Sassoon did fight and saw the chaos of war and the shattering of lives and they both went off on other tangents rather than embracing modernism. Not sure where that idea goes (if anywhere) and I am also reading David Jones at the moment and he may well contradict the above. However back to Sassoon. There was a moment when I suddenly realised that there was a great deal more going on than was immediately apparent on the surface. Sassoon’s message is clear and his evocation of the rural idyll has a double edge to it.
Sassoon is looking back in much the same way Proust did and having read Proust fairly recently the influence is clear. He picks out small incidents and reflects on them. The story of his aunt making tea on the train with a small spirit lamp is hilarious as is Sassoon’s own embarrassed reaction trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.
You cannot avoid the fox hunting in this novel, however there appears again to be ambivalence from Sassoon. Never once does he describe the death of a fox and all his focus is on riding and the horses. Stephen Colwood, Dennis Milden and Dixon are all sympathetic characters, but the rest of the hunting fraternity are a pretty grim set of cowards, bullies and reckless idiots. There are some colourfully drawn comic creations and Sassoon also includes those who expressed contrary opinions; clergy and farmers who were critical of hunting. Sassoon can also be self-critical;
“The mental condition of a young man who asks nothing more of life than twelve hundred a year and four days a week with the Packlestone is perhaps not easy to defend”
Not the attitude of someone longing for a lost past.
This volume takes Sherston into the war years, through training and into France. Sherston (and Sassoon’s) entry into the war was delayed by a riding accident. The novel ends at the beginning of Sherston’s time in the trenches, when the horror of it all was becoming clear. At one point Sassoon refers to the war as a “crime against humanity”, quite a modern turn of phrase. The term had only been coined about 20 years earlier and was confined to diplomatic paperwork. This may even be its first use in literature.
Sassoon fell in love in the army with David Thomas (Dick Tiltwood in the novel). Thomas’s death deeply affected him. He describes his reactions at the end of the novel when he says he no longer wanted to live. This led to a reckless disregard for his own safety and he was nicknamed “Mad Jack”. Robert Graves remembered Sassoon’s suicidal bravery in his own recollections. He took a German trench single handed, but instead of reporting back he sat and read poetry for over an hour. Sassoon was nominated for a Victoria Cross and was awarded a Military Cross:
“For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained for 1½ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all the killed and wounded were brought in”
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.
This is an interesting novel, not the simple evocation of a lost past that I was expecting; there is much more nuance and Sassoon was clearly expressing a good deal of ambivalence (sitting on the fence if I am being cynical). The asides make it more interesting as do the evocations of Proust.
Another thought on the tensions with modernism. Sassoon is essentially a rural writer and modernism is a little more urban. Max Egremont, in his excellent biography explains that after the chaos of the war Sassoon wanted a sense of order, which may be why he struggled with the “disorderly writing” of the modernists. The scars of war can show up in odd places.
January 6, 2025
3.5
Whilst it’s marketed as fiction, this is clearly, at least partly, autobiographical. Orphaned George brought up by his doting aunt. The book is set in late 19th century England, often in rural Sussex. It ends after the First World War, in which George/ Sassoon fights.
It depicts a different world/way of life to the one we have now. George is keen on hunting but less keen on killing foxes. He loves his horses and has close male relationships. Life will never be the same again after the Great War.
A classic and probably worthy of 4*s but I was feeling mean...
Whilst it’s marketed as fiction, this is clearly, at least partly, autobiographical. Orphaned George brought up by his doting aunt. The book is set in late 19th century England, often in rural Sussex. It ends after the First World War, in which George/ Sassoon fights.
It depicts a different world/way of life to the one we have now. George is keen on hunting but less keen on killing foxes. He loves his horses and has close male relationships. Life will never be the same again after the Great War.
A classic and probably worthy of 4*s but I was feeling mean...
May 19, 2014
The last portion of this book throws the first into stark relief. While I enjoyed the first section, it didn't grab me - it was a calm meandering from hunting meet to hunting meet, from a quiet life to brief flurries of activity on a horse. Nothing really happened, nothing changed.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
May 29, 2012
3 – 3.5 stars
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.
George Sherston (a semi-autobiographical stand-in for Sassoon) is the ‘hero’ of our tale, a young upper-middle class/lower-aristocratic orphan being raised by his well-meaning and generally absent aunt in the idyllic English countryside. His main concerns are cricket and fox hunting, and he is saved from seeming to be an utter upper class prig by virtue of his relatively shy nature and well-meaning intentions (not to mention his fairly impecuniary status compared to most other members of his social circle). Young Sherston also seems to take quite some time to grow into himself, and his longstanding feelings of being a virtual outsider in his own society, exiled to live in the far-flung environs of his aunt’s estate while the rest of the fashionable world seems to mostly pass him by, also allows him to be a fairly sympathetic narrative voice for readers who are also looking in on his world from the outside.
Sherston is something of a loner, his education being mostly the result of ‘home schooling’ under a tutor and his university experience cut short when he decides he’d rather play cricket and follow the hunt than take a degree. The best friend of Sherston’s youth is probably his groom and all-around gentleman’s gentleman Tom Dixon who is the primary influence in making young George into a “sporting man”. His solitary life does not seem to be broken up by much companionship of his own age until he meets Stephen Colwood, the son of a rector and fellow enthusiast in both the hunt and the related point-to-point races they spawn. The two soon grow quite close, aiding each other in their attempts to ensure they come up to the requirements of a model huntsman (which really in their case means horseman since their primary concern is having a good piece of horseflesh with which to jump over fences and race across the countryside) and take part in the best outings of the season. The only other significant character in these memoirs (aside from genial old Aunt Evelyn who remains mostly a passive and amiable figure in the background) is the enigmatic Denis Milden, a young fox hunter hero-worshipped by Sherston in his younger days who eventually reappears as a Master of the Hunt whose friendship and approval George prizes above almost all else. Peppered throughout all of these reminiscences, however, are a host of amusing and varied secondary characters who make up the bulk of the hunting society and rural village community that are Sherston’s entire world.
So far it sounds pretty priggish and boring, doesn’t it? I have to admit that there isn’t exactly a lot of high octane action, but Sassoon keeps things moving as each chapter highlights various events of signal importance to young Sherston’s growth as both a horseman and a man, from his initial successful cricket matches and his time spent with various hunting groups, to his purchase of his first excellent “piece of horseflesh” and eventual success at the all-important point-to-point races. Ultimately everything leads to the final two sections and his enlistment in the army as WWI looms unexpectedly from out of the quiet pastoral background in which he has been snuggly swaddled up to this point. The latter segments are likely where most reader’s main interest will lie (as well as in the next volume of the trilogy that makes up the memoirs of George Sherston’s experiences as an Infantry officer at the front) in order to get some insight into how a relatively feckless young man could grow into a soldier and leader in one of the most crushing episodes of the modern era. This is probably especially the case given the book’s semi-autobiographical nature and Sassoon’s place as one of the premier War Poets of the day, not to mention his position as a famous agitator for peace while still a soldier (of course we must always keep in mind that there is not a one-to-one correlation of Sherston to Sassoon regardless of the shared experiences they may have had). The early segments are certainly still of interest, though, for they do a good job of showing us the kind of inexperienced young men, whose heads were filled with thoughts of gallantry and were raised in days of relatively placid complacence, who were ultimately called upon to sacrifice themselves in the midst of horror and chaos. I even found myself carried along with Sherston’s own anxiety mixed with expectation as he ran his first great point-to-point race and was holding my breath until the very end. He really is such a likable young man that you can’t help but be infected by his inner thoughts and concerns, no matter how trivial they appear when you examine them from a wider context. Sherston himself, as narrator, is distinctly aware of this as he remembers his worries on the eve of a race:
When he first gets to the front, Sherston finds that he is one of the lucky ones, posted as Transportation Officer for his platoon and thus stationed behind the trenches. Still, he has to experience the hardships of army life and quietly, almost without comment in the memoirs, he experiences the deaths of his best friend Stephen Colwood and mentor Tom Dixon (the latter having joined up even though he was nearing fifty). All of the tragedies he witnesses are treated in this way, matter of fact; they are something to be regretted, but not something that one has any real power to change. It is in this context that, while on leave in England, Sherston ponders what has become of his life stating simply: “…I began to realize that my past was wearing a bit thin. The War seemed to have made up its mind to obliterate all those early adventures of mine. Point-to-point cups shone, but without conviction. And Dixon was dead…” That simple final statement of fact seems to contain in it a world of loss, expressed in the most austere manner possible. Sherston soon discovers that whether it is terrifying danger or mind-numbing boredom, the only way to deal with the horrors of his new life is to forget what he had left behind to “…try and feel secretly heroic, and to look back on the old life as pointless and trivial.”
One of the most feeling, though still poignantly understated, episodes is when Sherston loses a friend he had only met after enlisting and with whom he had managed to get posted to the same battalion:
It is this constant, trudging experience, even expectation, of death and loss, that begins to form a change in Sherston. The happy-go-lucky cricketer and huntsman is beginning to appreciate some of the darker realities of the wider world outside of his limited and parochial experience. Men under his charge die instantly and largely without comment, or quietly suffer a life of indignity and squalor in the name of a country whose concerns and existence seem more than a world away. It is in the midst of these harsh experiences that we begin to see a true echo of the feelings of Sassoon the writer come forth most boldly in Sherston the character. He remembers a period in the early days when he could still feel that…”the War was inevitable and justifiable. Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees, was a crime against humanity.” The hardening of George Sherston’s heart has begun and when the opportunity comes for him to escape his cushy posting in favour of joining his comrades at the front he jumps at it. This quiet and gentle young man has been so desensitized by his quiet losses that he has reached the point where he could cold-bloodedly decide to go “…to the trenches with the intention of trying to kill someone. It was my idea of getting a bit of my own back.” Not a feeling we are likely to find surprising, or all that blameworthy given his circumstances, but even then Sherston is conflicted and we are left with a final sight of the young officer standing watch across no-man’s land as a bird sings to the sunrise on Easter morning: “Standing in that dismal ditch, I could find no consolation in the thought that Christ was risen. I sploshed back to the dug-out to call the others up for ‘stand-to’.”
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.
George Sherston (a semi-autobiographical stand-in for Sassoon) is the ‘hero’ of our tale, a young upper-middle class/lower-aristocratic orphan being raised by his well-meaning and generally absent aunt in the idyllic English countryside. His main concerns are cricket and fox hunting, and he is saved from seeming to be an utter upper class prig by virtue of his relatively shy nature and well-meaning intentions (not to mention his fairly impecuniary status compared to most other members of his social circle). Young Sherston also seems to take quite some time to grow into himself, and his longstanding feelings of being a virtual outsider in his own society, exiled to live in the far-flung environs of his aunt’s estate while the rest of the fashionable world seems to mostly pass him by, also allows him to be a fairly sympathetic narrative voice for readers who are also looking in on his world from the outside.
Sherston is something of a loner, his education being mostly the result of ‘home schooling’ under a tutor and his university experience cut short when he decides he’d rather play cricket and follow the hunt than take a degree. The best friend of Sherston’s youth is probably his groom and all-around gentleman’s gentleman Tom Dixon who is the primary influence in making young George into a “sporting man”. His solitary life does not seem to be broken up by much companionship of his own age until he meets Stephen Colwood, the son of a rector and fellow enthusiast in both the hunt and the related point-to-point races they spawn. The two soon grow quite close, aiding each other in their attempts to ensure they come up to the requirements of a model huntsman (which really in their case means horseman since their primary concern is having a good piece of horseflesh with which to jump over fences and race across the countryside) and take part in the best outings of the season. The only other significant character in these memoirs (aside from genial old Aunt Evelyn who remains mostly a passive and amiable figure in the background) is the enigmatic Denis Milden, a young fox hunter hero-worshipped by Sherston in his younger days who eventually reappears as a Master of the Hunt whose friendship and approval George prizes above almost all else. Peppered throughout all of these reminiscences, however, are a host of amusing and varied secondary characters who make up the bulk of the hunting society and rural village community that are Sherston’s entire world.
So far it sounds pretty priggish and boring, doesn’t it? I have to admit that there isn’t exactly a lot of high octane action, but Sassoon keeps things moving as each chapter highlights various events of signal importance to young Sherston’s growth as both a horseman and a man, from his initial successful cricket matches and his time spent with various hunting groups, to his purchase of his first excellent “piece of horseflesh” and eventual success at the all-important point-to-point races. Ultimately everything leads to the final two sections and his enlistment in the army as WWI looms unexpectedly from out of the quiet pastoral background in which he has been snuggly swaddled up to this point. The latter segments are likely where most reader’s main interest will lie (as well as in the next volume of the trilogy that makes up the memoirs of George Sherston’s experiences as an Infantry officer at the front) in order to get some insight into how a relatively feckless young man could grow into a soldier and leader in one of the most crushing episodes of the modern era. This is probably especially the case given the book’s semi-autobiographical nature and Sassoon’s place as one of the premier War Poets of the day, not to mention his position as a famous agitator for peace while still a soldier (of course we must always keep in mind that there is not a one-to-one correlation of Sherston to Sassoon regardless of the shared experiences they may have had). The early segments are certainly still of interest, though, for they do a good job of showing us the kind of inexperienced young men, whose heads were filled with thoughts of gallantry and were raised in days of relatively placid complacence, who were ultimately called upon to sacrifice themselves in the midst of horror and chaos. I even found myself carried along with Sherston’s own anxiety mixed with expectation as he ran his first great point-to-point race and was holding my breath until the very end. He really is such a likable young man that you can’t help but be infected by his inner thoughts and concerns, no matter how trivial they appear when you examine them from a wider context. Sherston himself, as narrator, is distinctly aware of this as he remembers his worries on the eve of a race:
Anyone who cares to do so is at liberty to make fun of the trepidations which a young man carries about with him and conceals. But there is a risk in such ridicule. As I remember and write, I grin, but not unkindly, at my distant and callow self and the absurdities which constitute his chronicle. To my mind the only thing that matters is the resolve to do something...even though [these thoughts] are only about buying a racing-cap.
When he first gets to the front, Sherston finds that he is one of the lucky ones, posted as Transportation Officer for his platoon and thus stationed behind the trenches. Still, he has to experience the hardships of army life and quietly, almost without comment in the memoirs, he experiences the deaths of his best friend Stephen Colwood and mentor Tom Dixon (the latter having joined up even though he was nearing fifty). All of the tragedies he witnesses are treated in this way, matter of fact; they are something to be regretted, but not something that one has any real power to change. It is in this context that, while on leave in England, Sherston ponders what has become of his life stating simply: “…I began to realize that my past was wearing a bit thin. The War seemed to have made up its mind to obliterate all those early adventures of mine. Point-to-point cups shone, but without conviction. And Dixon was dead…” That simple final statement of fact seems to contain in it a world of loss, expressed in the most austere manner possible. Sherston soon discovers that whether it is terrifying danger or mind-numbing boredom, the only way to deal with the horrors of his new life is to forget what he had left behind to “…try and feel secretly heroic, and to look back on the old life as pointless and trivial.”
One of the most feeling, though still poignantly understated, episodes is when Sherston loses a friend he had only met after enlisting and with whom he had managed to get posted to the same battalion:
Once the chaplain’s words were obliterated by a prolonged burst of machine-gun fire; when he had finished a trench-mortar ‘cannister’ fell a few hundred yards away, spouting the earth up with a crash. A sack was lowered into a hole in the ground. The sack was Dick. I knew Death then.
It is this constant, trudging experience, even expectation, of death and loss, that begins to form a change in Sherston. The happy-go-lucky cricketer and huntsman is beginning to appreciate some of the darker realities of the wider world outside of his limited and parochial experience. Men under his charge die instantly and largely without comment, or quietly suffer a life of indignity and squalor in the name of a country whose concerns and existence seem more than a world away. It is in the midst of these harsh experiences that we begin to see a true echo of the feelings of Sassoon the writer come forth most boldly in Sherston the character. He remembers a period in the early days when he could still feel that…”the War was inevitable and justifiable. Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees, was a crime against humanity.” The hardening of George Sherston’s heart has begun and when the opportunity comes for him to escape his cushy posting in favour of joining his comrades at the front he jumps at it. This quiet and gentle young man has been so desensitized by his quiet losses that he has reached the point where he could cold-bloodedly decide to go “…to the trenches with the intention of trying to kill someone. It was my idea of getting a bit of my own back.” Not a feeling we are likely to find surprising, or all that blameworthy given his circumstances, but even then Sherston is conflicted and we are left with a final sight of the young officer standing watch across no-man’s land as a bird sings to the sunrise on Easter morning: “Standing in that dismal ditch, I could find no consolation in the thought that Christ was risen. I sploshed back to the dug-out to call the others up for ‘stand-to’.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2015
Most British people of a certain age will know of Siegfried Sassoon as one of the WWI soldier poets. When I was at high school in the 1970s his anti-war poems, and those of Wilfred Owen, featured prominently in our English lessons, a fashion that seems to have passed. This book is however the first part of his best known prose work, a "fictionalised autobiography" in three parts, with Sassoon thinly disguised as one George Sherston.
There are differences between Sassoon and Sherston. Sherston does not write poetry, no mention is made of the author's Jewish ancestry, nor of his parents' divorce. Unsurprisingly, no overt mention is made of Sassoon's homosexuality (which at the time would have meant a prison sentence) but the book does feature 3 "friendships" with other young men. Certainly in the last of these Sherston/Sassoon does little to disguise his own feelings.
What remains is a well-written coming of age tale combined with a nostalgic picture of rural England in the Edwardian era. Sassoon is quite open in viewing these as halcyon days, but then he was one of the lucky few born to a life of privilege. Possessed of an inherited income that allowed him to avoid work, Sherston spends his winters fox hunting and his summers playing cricket, and very little else. Nevertheless, this is a very enjoyable read. Sassoon is an excellent writer and in his hands a village cricket match or a local point-to-point race are made to seem like events of high tension and drama. Sassoon is also able to be reflective, portraying his alter ego as a callow youth, one who has far more interest in the cricket scores than in the great political events of 1912-14.
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.
There is a sudden change of mood with the last two chapters of the book, which cover the beginning of WWI and the destruction of Sherston's pleasant if directionless lifestyle. Sassoon doesn't hold back from describing the impact of the war and the contrast between his life as a soldier and the convivial hunt gatherings from before the war. He goes to war out of duty, patriotism and the desire to protect the world he loves. The story continues with the second book of the trilogy - "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer."
There are differences between Sassoon and Sherston. Sherston does not write poetry, no mention is made of the author's Jewish ancestry, nor of his parents' divorce. Unsurprisingly, no overt mention is made of Sassoon's homosexuality (which at the time would have meant a prison sentence) but the book does feature 3 "friendships" with other young men. Certainly in the last of these Sherston/Sassoon does little to disguise his own feelings.
What remains is a well-written coming of age tale combined with a nostalgic picture of rural England in the Edwardian era. Sassoon is quite open in viewing these as halcyon days, but then he was one of the lucky few born to a life of privilege. Possessed of an inherited income that allowed him to avoid work, Sherston spends his winters fox hunting and his summers playing cricket, and very little else. Nevertheless, this is a very enjoyable read. Sassoon is an excellent writer and in his hands a village cricket match or a local point-to-point race are made to seem like events of high tension and drama. Sassoon is also able to be reflective, portraying his alter ego as a callow youth, one who has far more interest in the cricket scores than in the great political events of 1912-14.
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.
There is a sudden change of mood with the last two chapters of the book, which cover the beginning of WWI and the destruction of Sherston's pleasant if directionless lifestyle. Sassoon doesn't hold back from describing the impact of the war and the contrast between his life as a soldier and the convivial hunt gatherings from before the war. He goes to war out of duty, patriotism and the desire to protect the world he loves. The story continues with the second book of the trilogy - "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer."
Read
March 16, 2025This biographical roman à clef takes us from the early childhood of George Sherston to his participation on the battlefield in France during the First World War. Both parents having died in his youth, he is raised in the country town of Butley by his unmarried Aunt Evelyn. I took a liking to Aunt Evelyn since “the radius of her activities extended no further than the eight or ten miles which she could cover in a four-wheeled dog-cart driven by Tom Dixon, the groom. The rest of the world was what she described as ‘beyond calling distance.’”
At Butley, George is introduced to horse riding, fox-hunting particularly, at first through the tutelage of Dixon. He further develops a keen delight in equine pursuits. Through most of this book, George’s greatest concern is how he’ll pay for his next horse purchase since he has both a competitive spirit and an unaccommodating trust administrator. As for concerns for his future, provided a secure annuity and ample outdoor interests, he lacked compelling reason to complete his Cambridge education, the same can be said when he considered permanent employment. His life is simple.
But then comes the war and George is suddenly awakened from his bucolic dreamscape, age twenty-eight in 1915. Sent to the front in France, he experiences the deaths of several close relationships. He lived to reveal truth, “Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees was a crime against humanity.” My mind also gravitated to the final words of this volume where in a “dismal ditch” on Easter Sunday the image of Christ’s resurrection is replaced with the reality of troops rising for battle.
At Butley, George is introduced to horse riding, fox-hunting particularly, at first through the tutelage of Dixon. He further develops a keen delight in equine pursuits. Through most of this book, George’s greatest concern is how he’ll pay for his next horse purchase since he has both a competitive spirit and an unaccommodating trust administrator. As for concerns for his future, provided a secure annuity and ample outdoor interests, he lacked compelling reason to complete his Cambridge education, the same can be said when he considered permanent employment. His life is simple.
But then comes the war and George is suddenly awakened from his bucolic dreamscape, age twenty-eight in 1915. Sent to the front in France, he experiences the deaths of several close relationships. He lived to reveal truth, “Courage remained a virtue. And that exploitation of courage, if I may be allowed to say a thing so obvious, was the essential tragedy of the War, which, as everyone now agrees was a crime against humanity.” My mind also gravitated to the final words of this volume where in a “dismal ditch” on Easter Sunday the image of Christ’s resurrection is replaced with the reality of troops rising for battle.
March 20, 2008
An early love of Sassoon's poetry (trench warfare poetry is as good for gothic teenage tastes as Sylvia Plath) led me to finally read this book, the first in the Sherston trilogy, a fictionalised trio of biographies written by Sassoon between the two world wars.
It's a picture of the Edwardian world caught in aspic just before it fades - the troubles of the young George Sherston, standing in for Sassoon, are no more dire than finding good horseflesh, a well-made pair of riding boots, and enough money to hunt each season - something he can only manage by going into debt when he moves to a more toffy part of the country with his local Master of Hunt as a kind of assistant, and must hide the fact that although well educated, his yearly income is smaller than your average well-bred chappie.
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.
It's a fascinating record of lost language and standards of behaviour and politeness, expectation and strictly defined class boundaries. Particularly because of what Sassoon leaves out - his alter-ego is an only child raised by an aunt, while he in reality had a brother whose death at Gallipoli devastated him. Sherston is not Jewish either - something which mattered a great deal in England, and made Sherston's sense of being an impostor, not quite up to the task of being what he was expected to become, ring a little false. By excising his Jewishness (he was not religious, his father having been rejected by his very correct anglo-indian family for marrying a christian for love) Sassoon removes the most obvious barrier to Sherston's social mobility and makes him seem reticent in a manner which rings false to his personality.
Later in life he wrote a real autobiography - would love to read it for comparison.
There is a nostalgic cast to this book that would normally be cloying to me, but I found it balanced by the dread I felt anticipating what was to come in the last 50 pages of hte book - Sherston's mobilisation to France in the first total war the world suffered, and which his generation were blithely unprepared for, their heads full of duty, bravery, glory.
Characters whom we have come to love die meaninglessly, and Sherston only can record the facts of it - he doesn't reflect on his grief at all, as though the awfulness of it utterly dulled his pen.
Many aspects of Sassoon's actual life are missing here - he would have you think Sherston is a bumbler - whereas he was known for being madly brave, a committed post-war socialist, and a closeted gay man.
I'd like to read the rest of the trilogy - but I need a rest at the moment from reading about war.
It's a picture of the Edwardian world caught in aspic just before it fades - the troubles of the young George Sherston, standing in for Sassoon, are no more dire than finding good horseflesh, a well-made pair of riding boots, and enough money to hunt each season - something he can only manage by going into debt when he moves to a more toffy part of the country with his local Master of Hunt as a kind of assistant, and must hide the fact that although well educated, his yearly income is smaller than your average well-bred chappie.
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.
It's a fascinating record of lost language and standards of behaviour and politeness, expectation and strictly defined class boundaries. Particularly because of what Sassoon leaves out - his alter-ego is an only child raised by an aunt, while he in reality had a brother whose death at Gallipoli devastated him. Sherston is not Jewish either - something which mattered a great deal in England, and made Sherston's sense of being an impostor, not quite up to the task of being what he was expected to become, ring a little false. By excising his Jewishness (he was not religious, his father having been rejected by his very correct anglo-indian family for marrying a christian for love) Sassoon removes the most obvious barrier to Sherston's social mobility and makes him seem reticent in a manner which rings false to his personality.
Later in life he wrote a real autobiography - would love to read it for comparison.
There is a nostalgic cast to this book that would normally be cloying to me, but I found it balanced by the dread I felt anticipating what was to come in the last 50 pages of hte book - Sherston's mobilisation to France in the first total war the world suffered, and which his generation were blithely unprepared for, their heads full of duty, bravery, glory.
Characters whom we have come to love die meaninglessly, and Sherston only can record the facts of it - he doesn't reflect on his grief at all, as though the awfulness of it utterly dulled his pen.
Many aspects of Sassoon's actual life are missing here - he would have you think Sherston is a bumbler - whereas he was known for being madly brave, a committed post-war socialist, and a closeted gay man.
I'd like to read the rest of the trilogy - but I need a rest at the moment from reading about war.
January 7, 2011
An English classic, now somewhat out of fashion but a great source of both humour and pathos. Sassoon's anonymously-published "novel" is of course autobiographical, and we empathize with the lonely little boy as he grows into a hapless youth, eventually beginning to find himself as Britain heads towards the dark days of World War I.
Want to read
October 2, 2023you see one 45 second video on how an archivist has the copy the author inscribed with love to the man he was in love with and suddenly you’re like yk what. maybe this is interesting to me!
November 29, 2025
First it was about horses and then it was about war… I was unexpectedly moved by both
June 27, 2015
It is amazing what books can do in your life, where they can take and how they can change the cause of your life.
Some books have showed me the future, others have taken me back in the past, while others have enabled me to cope with the present.
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'.
Memoirs of a fox hunting man, written by Siegfried Sasssoon, is a book about the growing up. The main character, George, takes us through the course his life. He is a sportsman as well as a hunter.
He is so passionate about what he does that he drops out of cambridge university where he was to study the law and become a barrister.
He also decides to enlist into the army when he is at the rectory with his friend, Stephen.
This book reminds me of other titles like 'the Folded leaf' and 'All creatures great and small'.
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.
As for the author, I first heard of him from Pat Baker's book, the eye in the door. This is what motivated me to buy it.
It is simple to read and very satisfying.
Some books have showed me the future, others have taken me back in the past, while others have enabled me to cope with the present.
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'.
Memoirs of a fox hunting man, written by Siegfried Sasssoon, is a book about the growing up. The main character, George, takes us through the course his life. He is a sportsman as well as a hunter.
He is so passionate about what he does that he drops out of cambridge university where he was to study the law and become a barrister.
He also decides to enlist into the army when he is at the rectory with his friend, Stephen.
This book reminds me of other titles like 'the Folded leaf' and 'All creatures great and small'.
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.
As for the author, I first heard of him from Pat Baker's book, the eye in the door. This is what motivated me to buy it.
It is simple to read and very satisfying.
August 18, 2025
There are not many things I am less interested in than fox hunting. Car racing perhaps. On the other hand this book is quite famous. At least it gets mentioned from time to time and I once bought this fine Albatross edition. So I thought I should give it a chance.
The bad news is that it is indeed mainly about fox hunting. However, it is written in a relaxed style with lots of observations about people and situations. In fact, it reminded me heavily of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. The difference is that the author of this book is much more likeable. He comes across as self-deprecating without being self-deprecating. He's just a bit like Bertram Wooster, but without any deliberate humour: “There was no doubt that I had a fondness for books--especially old ones. But my reading was desultory and unassimilative. Words made a muddled effect on my mind while I was busy among them, and they seldom caused any afterthoughts”.
When he went to a concert this is what he has to say about it:
We are in the happy days before World War I. This is what he thinks of soldiering:
But then the war does start and the last 70 page of the book describe a different world. He enters the army but in the ranks. At least at first. But realisizes that he cannot talk about fox hunting with his comrades.
The idiocy of the war is perhaps best summarized by this: “The newspapers informed us that German soldiers crucified Belgian babies. Stories of that kind were taken for granted; to have disbelieved them would have been unpatriotic.”
I do wish I could have given more attention to fox hunting.
The bad news is that it is indeed mainly about fox hunting. However, it is written in a relaxed style with lots of observations about people and situations. In fact, it reminded me heavily of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. The difference is that the author of this book is much more likeable. He comes across as self-deprecating without being self-deprecating. He's just a bit like Bertram Wooster, but without any deliberate humour: “There was no doubt that I had a fondness for books--especially old ones. But my reading was desultory and unassimilative. Words made a muddled effect on my mind while I was busy among them, and they seldom caused any afterthoughts”.
When he went to a concert this is what he has to say about it:
The name itself was suggestive of eminence, and I was aware that he was a great violinist, though I did not know that he would afterwards become the most famous one in the world. I was also unconscious that I was incapable of discriminating between a good violinist and a second-rate one. My capacity for admiration was automatic and unlimited, and his photograph on the programme made me feel that he must be a splendid man. I was influenced, too, by the audience, which showed its intensity of expectation by a subdued hub-bub of talk which suddenly ceased altogether and was swept away by the storm of clapping which greeted the appearance of Kreisler.
We are in the happy days before World War I. This is what he thinks of soldiering:
I had sometimes thought with horror of countries where they had conscription and young men like myself were forced to serve two years in the army whether they liked it or not. Two years in the army! I should have been astonished if I'd been told that socialists opposed conscription as violently as many fox-hunting men supported the convention of soldiering.
But then the war does start and the last 70 page of the book describe a different world. He enters the army but in the ranks. At least at first. But realisizes that he cannot talk about fox hunting with his comrades.
The idiocy of the war is perhaps best summarized by this: “The newspapers informed us that German soldiers crucified Belgian babies. Stories of that kind were taken for granted; to have disbelieved them would have been unpatriotic.”
I do wish I could have given more attention to fox hunting.
February 13, 2025
siegfried sassoon’s semi-autobiographical memoirs have been on my list for enough time for me to skim many of the diaries, autobiographies, and biographies that inspired it (though admittedly; never in full). still, these are sassoon’s memories of his early life in his own words, in what he had deemed acceptable to release to the public, and that certainly counts for something.
george sherston is a curious young fellow. he’s an uncomplicated echo of sassoon, i’d say; sherston is an only child (sassoon had two brothers, one of whom died at gallipolli in 1915), anglo-saxon (sassoon’s father’s side of the family were iraqi jews) and the prototypal figure of an edwardian sportsman. notably: sherston is not what sassoon is most remembered for: that is, his poetry, that seethes with anger and bitterness at the war. nevertheless sherston is sassoon — introverted, and for the vast majority of this volume, sort of ambling aimlessly through a parochial life.
for most of this book describes the halcyon edwardian summer before the first world war, and boy does it ever describe it. two hundred pages of fox hunting and cricket matches and elysian english fields. one almost tires of it, but sassoon’s prose is descriptive and delightful, a vivid splash of memory. he does not describe the trenches with such detail, but then again, he doesn’t need to; what is left unsaid is enough. memoirs from veterans, i find, tend to be very matter-of-fact, and so is this one, but the sense of loss sassoon felt as the war raged on is evident.
i find the publicity around this book really interesting too — notably, he published this a year after robert graves published goodbye to all that — graves, a fellow officer of the royal welch fusiliers, whom he met in france (i want to say near festubert?) in late 1915 and became quite close to, but graves doesn’t appear in this volume because at the time they were estranged due to details about sassoon’s life that graves included in goodbye to all that. for what it’s worth, graves accused sassoon of hiding behind fiction. sassoon accused graves of inaccuracy and misrepresentation in his non-fictional autobiography. memory, the truth, the facts. sassoon later published a trio of true autobiographies filling in the gaps of the sherston trilogy and had his diaries published posthumously. there’s a compulsion in there to tell the raw truth of the war, treading the paths of memory.
this book is a good place to start.
george sherston is a curious young fellow. he’s an uncomplicated echo of sassoon, i’d say; sherston is an only child (sassoon had two brothers, one of whom died at gallipolli in 1915), anglo-saxon (sassoon’s father’s side of the family were iraqi jews) and the prototypal figure of an edwardian sportsman. notably: sherston is not what sassoon is most remembered for: that is, his poetry, that seethes with anger and bitterness at the war. nevertheless sherston is sassoon — introverted, and for the vast majority of this volume, sort of ambling aimlessly through a parochial life.
for most of this book describes the halcyon edwardian summer before the first world war, and boy does it ever describe it. two hundred pages of fox hunting and cricket matches and elysian english fields. one almost tires of it, but sassoon’s prose is descriptive and delightful, a vivid splash of memory. he does not describe the trenches with such detail, but then again, he doesn’t need to; what is left unsaid is enough. memoirs from veterans, i find, tend to be very matter-of-fact, and so is this one, but the sense of loss sassoon felt as the war raged on is evident.
i find the publicity around this book really interesting too — notably, he published this a year after robert graves published goodbye to all that — graves, a fellow officer of the royal welch fusiliers, whom he met in france (i want to say near festubert?) in late 1915 and became quite close to, but graves doesn’t appear in this volume because at the time they were estranged due to details about sassoon’s life that graves included in goodbye to all that. for what it’s worth, graves accused sassoon of hiding behind fiction. sassoon accused graves of inaccuracy and misrepresentation in his non-fictional autobiography. memory, the truth, the facts. sassoon later published a trio of true autobiographies filling in the gaps of the sherston trilogy and had his diaries published posthumously. there’s a compulsion in there to tell the raw truth of the war, treading the paths of memory.
this book is a good place to start.
August 27, 2017
This book was given to me years ago. Although I had some interest in Sassoon I put the book down when it was apparent the book was actually about fox hunting. Too esoteric. I recently read " Sherston's Progress by Sassoon. It was such a good read I went back to Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. Rarely has a book given such enjoyment. Sassoon describes his youth in this thin veiled fiction. He tells how lonely he was and how he lacked any self confidence or direction. He drifts into playing Cricket for his village and then to fox hunting. The world of the latter sport is engrossing. The participants in the sport are a diverse group. Sassoon is a sharp observer and always alert to any humor that occurs. Sassoon is an engaging personality. He can make even mundane experiences speak of remembrance and emotion. He allows you to share his appreciation of the English country, horses, and the camaraderie of the fox hunt. Sassoon makes friends in this sport and emerges from his callowness. The Memoir will take you out of your life and thoroughly engage you in a time and culture that has passed.
April 14, 2021
A charming and poignant memoir. I have owned this book for fifty years and had thought that I had read it, only taking it up when a friend mentioned having enjoyed it. But I hadn’t read it, so a joy was in store. I have never read much about hunting but Siegfried Sassoon gets across how he developed his enthusiasm; the love of the horses, his pleasure in the English countryside, the companionship and the many and various hunting characters are all set out. And then the War ruins it all and friends are lost. And what elegant and beautiful prose.
December 14, 2012
This is the most wonderful account of the innocence of youth I have ever read. The effervescence and evanescence of the enthusiasms of a young sports mad Englishman are portrayed with perfect tone, and make a shocking contrast to the gruesome realities of trench death ( I nearly said life), that follow.
Pat Barker's 'Regeneration' trilogy closely follows some parts of Sassoon's life, and are very worth reading to understand the nature of the counselling process, if you are interested.
Pat Barker's 'Regeneration' trilogy closely follows some parts of Sassoon's life, and are very worth reading to understand the nature of the counselling process, if you are interested.
July 31, 2022
So beautifully written - powerful yet perfectly delicate and precise - I almost felt I was there with him, looking over his shoulder.
December 28, 2019
“I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city.”
4 stars.
A book for my thesis.
March 22, 2022
Interesting, I didn't appreciate just how much fox-hunting was a way of life, and a living, for some people. I enjoy the social history aspect of a period piece.
March 30, 2017
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (Faber and Faber 1928)
Part one of an autobiographical trilogy, the book starts off as a sort of Remembrance of Things Past for the horsy set. The story of British orphan George Sherston's growing to manhood and developing into an amateur athlete along the way, Sassoon published it anonymously so not to tarnish his reputation as a literary man, though the book has had a lasting popularity.
Critics may argue, but it frequently reads like a fictional account of Sassoon's same-sex love affairs (platonic in the book, but often otherwise in real life.) Coming not long after the Oscar Wilde scandal, it would have been unthinkable to have been forthright about such things at the time. (Witness EM Forster's decision not to publish Maurice in his lifetime—and alas that he lived so long.) Sherston's sublimated longing will be apparent mostly to the initiated, but there's a level of emotional explicitness that shines through in the poetry (Sassoon's and others', for he's fond of refashioning famous lines throughout the text.) For instance, on being asked to stay the night at the home of a huntmaster he's had a crush on since he was 11, the now-25-year-old Sherston shares only with his horse his great joy at what he call his ‘sublunary advancement.' Scholars will note that this unusual word's most famous usage is to be found in John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, where the poet speaks of ‘Dull sublunary lovers' love'. To disguise his love by echoing a metaphysical poet would have been the ultimate transmutation of such feelings, and Sassoon could not have been unaware of the full implications of the word.
Gay as well as being a father after a brief marriage to a woman, half-Anglo and half-Indian Jew, world famous as an English war poet but bearing the Christian name of a mythical German hero, Sassoon must surely rank as one of the most minority-strapped individuals of all time. That his earliest ambitions were simply to fit in with the English sporting classes was likely a result of wanting to mask his multifaceted identity in a land where xenophobia and homophobia had long held sway. That he would become one of the most celebrated poets of his day may ironically have been little more than an accident of a talent so obvious it ultimately could not disguise itself, no matter what its subject.
Only in the last 40 pages do the memoirs take a serious turn, as Sherston finds himself on the front lines of battle in France in 1915, as did Sassoon. Here the writing comes on full-force in one extraordinary passage after another, as Sassoon recounts the effects of war on those fighting it. Sherston's off-hand comments on the politics and social values of his times sound astonishingly contemporary, while the story's devastating intimacy has an almost paralysing effect on the reader. Some books leave you with vivid images, others with a notion of character and story arc, but very few leave you wishing you had known the author. For me, this is one of the latter.
Part one of an autobiographical trilogy, the book starts off as a sort of Remembrance of Things Past for the horsy set. The story of British orphan George Sherston's growing to manhood and developing into an amateur athlete along the way, Sassoon published it anonymously so not to tarnish his reputation as a literary man, though the book has had a lasting popularity.
Critics may argue, but it frequently reads like a fictional account of Sassoon's same-sex love affairs (platonic in the book, but often otherwise in real life.) Coming not long after the Oscar Wilde scandal, it would have been unthinkable to have been forthright about such things at the time. (Witness EM Forster's decision not to publish Maurice in his lifetime—and alas that he lived so long.) Sherston's sublimated longing will be apparent mostly to the initiated, but there's a level of emotional explicitness that shines through in the poetry (Sassoon's and others', for he's fond of refashioning famous lines throughout the text.) For instance, on being asked to stay the night at the home of a huntmaster he's had a crush on since he was 11, the now-25-year-old Sherston shares only with his horse his great joy at what he call his ‘sublunary advancement.' Scholars will note that this unusual word's most famous usage is to be found in John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, where the poet speaks of ‘Dull sublunary lovers' love'. To disguise his love by echoing a metaphysical poet would have been the ultimate transmutation of such feelings, and Sassoon could not have been unaware of the full implications of the word.
Gay as well as being a father after a brief marriage to a woman, half-Anglo and half-Indian Jew, world famous as an English war poet but bearing the Christian name of a mythical German hero, Sassoon must surely rank as one of the most minority-strapped individuals of all time. That his earliest ambitions were simply to fit in with the English sporting classes was likely a result of wanting to mask his multifaceted identity in a land where xenophobia and homophobia had long held sway. That he would become one of the most celebrated poets of his day may ironically have been little more than an accident of a talent so obvious it ultimately could not disguise itself, no matter what its subject.
Only in the last 40 pages do the memoirs take a serious turn, as Sherston finds himself on the front lines of battle in France in 1915, as did Sassoon. Here the writing comes on full-force in one extraordinary passage after another, as Sassoon recounts the effects of war on those fighting it. Sherston's off-hand comments on the politics and social values of his times sound astonishingly contemporary, while the story's devastating intimacy has an almost paralysing effect on the reader. Some books leave you with vivid images, others with a notion of character and story arc, but very few leave you wishing you had known the author. For me, this is one of the latter.
August 7, 2013
It has been a couple of years since I read this book but it left a deep impression and I commend it to everyone. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells one man's experience at the end of England's Edwardian summer. Sassoon, and so many others and so much more, went over the cliff in World War One. It is the first of the three books known as the Sherston trilogy. They are all excellent, but this one is the pick of the litter of prize winners. Sassoon was a poet too, of course, and a great one. He writes like an angel. Below is one of my favorite passages. It comes just near the end of the book as Sherston is thinking back to the period of time on the Western front, shortly after the death of his best friend.
"I can see myself sitting in the sun in a nook among the sandbags and chalky debris behind the support line. There is a strong smell of chloride of lime. I am scraping the caked mud off my wire-torn puttees with a rusty entrenching tool. Last night I was out patrolling with Private O'Brien, who used to be a dock labourer at Cardiff. We threw a few Mills' bombs at a German working-party who were putting up some wire and had no wish to do us any harm. Probably I am feeling pleased with myself about this. Now and and again a leisurely five-nine shell passes overhead in the blue air where the larks are singing. The sound of the shell is like water trickling into a can. The curve of its trajectory sounds peaceful until the culminating crash. A little weasel runs past my outstretched feet, looking at me with tiny bright eyes, apparently unafraid. One of our shrapnel shells, whizzing over to the enemy lines, bursts with a hollow crash. Against the clear morning sky a cloud of dark smoke expands and drifts away. Slowly its dingy wrestling vapours take the form of a hooded giant with clumsy expostulating arms. Then, with a gradual gesture of acquiescence, it lolls sideways, falling over into the attitude of a swimmer on his side. And so it dissolved into nothingness. Perhaps the shell has killed someone. Whether it has or whether it hasn't, I continue to scrape my puttees, and the weasel goes about his business."
"I can see myself sitting in the sun in a nook among the sandbags and chalky debris behind the support line. There is a strong smell of chloride of lime. I am scraping the caked mud off my wire-torn puttees with a rusty entrenching tool. Last night I was out patrolling with Private O'Brien, who used to be a dock labourer at Cardiff. We threw a few Mills' bombs at a German working-party who were putting up some wire and had no wish to do us any harm. Probably I am feeling pleased with myself about this. Now and and again a leisurely five-nine shell passes overhead in the blue air where the larks are singing. The sound of the shell is like water trickling into a can. The curve of its trajectory sounds peaceful until the culminating crash. A little weasel runs past my outstretched feet, looking at me with tiny bright eyes, apparently unafraid. One of our shrapnel shells, whizzing over to the enemy lines, bursts with a hollow crash. Against the clear morning sky a cloud of dark smoke expands and drifts away. Slowly its dingy wrestling vapours take the form of a hooded giant with clumsy expostulating arms. Then, with a gradual gesture of acquiescence, it lolls sideways, falling over into the attitude of a swimmer on his side. And so it dissolved into nothingness. Perhaps the shell has killed someone. Whether it has or whether it hasn't, I continue to scrape my puttees, and the weasel goes about his business."
September 26, 2011
The title is deceptive as this book is about so much more than foxhunting. It portrays a way of life at the turn of the 20th century which was a golden era for Britian's middle and upper classes. It is all here, told from the point of view of an over indulged spoilt young man whose life is one long round of hunting (of course) cross country riding, point to points, cricket, parties at great country houses, and honey for tea. However a change was coming and the catalyst was the slaughterhouse now known as WW1, although at the time it was known as the 'Great War' of 'The War to end all Wars.' In essence, the privileged life narrated in the first part of this book is thrown into stark relief as the horrors of life in the trenches is described in equally vivid detail.
'The War Poems' by the same author is still in print, and still being studied by students of English literature, but if you really want to get inside the mind of a war poet, read this book.
'The War Poems' by the same author is still in print, and still being studied by students of English literature, but if you really want to get inside the mind of a war poet, read this book.
June 12, 2021
This book was an absolute slog to get through- fairly boring and no real payoff. I enjoyed the first chapter about Sheraton as a young boy, but after that the charm evaporated into lengthy descriptions of fox hunts, random dudes in pink coats, and chestnut horses. Gah. I can’t even imagine reading the other two books in this trilogy, except perhaps during a bout of insomnia.
July 2, 2024
I read this at the same time as O the brave music. Both are coming of age stories set at the same period – late Victorian, pre-World War I. This is like a social document, catching way of life gone by. The authors gradual movement from carefree boyhood to careworn manhood is beautifully delineated. The words are lyrical, as you’d expect from a poet, but also mundane and understated.
January 6, 2010
I picked this up thinking the title was tongue in cheek. A knowing little nod to the cliched English country gent.
But no. It's all about horses. And bloody riding them.
I got to page 29 before I gave up. ONE STAR.
But no. It's all about horses. And bloody riding them.
I got to page 29 before I gave up. ONE STAR.
January 16, 2016
A matchless evocation of a graceful but vanished world..
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