The Pleasures of Surtees

Abstract

Surtees’ novels, and the Jorrocks books in particular, have long been regarded as the essence of fox-hunting literature, but in their day they were not lacking in critical edge. Virginia Blain has remarked how ironic it is that it should have been Surtees, the ‘demythologizer’, who transmitted the myth of foxhunting as a ‘ “glorious ideal” ’ to later generations.¹ But how ironic is it, in fact? Norman Gash describes Surtees as an example of ‘“the large ironic English mind” on which the fashionable moral and intellectual forces of the age were seeking to impose themselves’.²

On they go — now trotting gently over the flints — now softly ambling along the grassy ridge of some stupendous hill — now quietly following each other in long-drawn files, like geese, through some close and deep ravine, or interminable wood, which re-echoes to their never-ceasing holloas — every man shouting in proportion to the amount of his subscription, until day is made horrible with their yelling. There is no pushing, jostling, rushing, cramming, or riding over one another; no jealousy, discord, or daring; no ridiculous foolhardy feats; but each man cranes and rides, and rides and cranes, in a style that would gladden the eye of a director of an Insurance office.

Robert Smith Surtees, ‘The Swell and the Surrey’, Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities (1838)