Edward Array - The Master of Game - The Oldest English Book on Hunting

Neither of the two authors now under consideration comes in this undesirable class. Both were mighty men with their hands, terrible in battle, of imposing presence and turbulent spirit. Both were the patrons of art and letters, and both were cultivated in the learning of the day. For each of them the chase stood as a hardy and vigorous pastime of the kind which makes a people great. The one was Count Gaston de Foix, author of the most famous of mediæval hunting-books, a mighty lord and mighty hunter, as well as statesman and warrior. The other was Edward, second Duke of York, who at Agincourt "died victorious." He translated into English a large portion of Gaston de Foix's La Chasse , adding to it five original chapters. He called his book "The Master of Game."

Gaston's book is better known as Gaston Phœbus , the nickname of the author which Froissart has handed down. He treats not only of the animals of France, but of the ibex, the chamois, and the reindeer, which he hunted in foreign lands. "The Master of Game" is the oldest book on hunting in the English language. The original chapters are particularly interesting because of the light they throw upon English hunting customs in the time of the Plantagenets. The book has never hitherto been published. Nineteen ancient manuscript copies are known; of the three best extant two are on the shelves of the Bloomsbury treasure house, the other in the Bodleian Library. Like others of the famous old authors on venery, both the Count of Foix and the Duke of York show an astonishing familiarity with the habits, nature, and chase of their quarry. Both men, like others of their kind among their contemporaries, made of the chase not only an absorbing sport but almost the sole occupation of their leisure hours. They passed their days in the forest and were masters of woodcraft. Game abounded, and not only the chase but the killing of the quarry was a matter of intense excitement and an exacting test of personal prowess, for the boar, or the bear, or hart at bay was slain at close quarters with the spear or long knife.

"The Master of Game" is not only of interest to the sportsman, but also to the naturalist, because of its quaint accounts of the "nature" of the various animals; to the philologist because of the old English hunting terms and the excellent translations of the chapters taken from the French; and to the lover of art because of the beautiful illustrations, with all their detail of costume, of hunting accoutrements, and of ceremonies of "la grande venerie" – which are here reproduced in facsimile from one of the best extant French manuscripts of the early fifteenth century. The translator has left out the chapters on trapping and snaring of wild beasts which were contained in the original, the hunting with running hounds being the typical and most esteemed form of the sport. Gaston Phœbus's La Chasse was written just over a century before the discovery of America; "The Master of Game" some fifteen or twenty years later. The former has been reprinted many times. Mr. Baillie-Grohman in reproducing (for the first time) the latter in such beautiful form has rendered a real service to all lovers of sport, of nature, and of books – and no one can get the highest enjoyment out of sport unless he can live over again in the library the keen pleasure he experienced in the wilderness.

In modern life big-game hunting has assumed many widely varied forms. There are still remote regions of the earth in which the traveller must depend upon his prowess as a hunter for his subsistence, and here and there the foremost settlers of new country still war against the game as it has been warred against by their like since time primeval. But over most of the earth such conditions have passed away for ever. Even in Africa game preserving on a gigantic scale has begun. Such game preserving may be of two kinds. In one the individual landed proprietor, or a group of such individuals, erect and maintain a private game preserve, the game being their property just as much as domestic animals. Such preserves often fill a useful purpose, and if managed intelligently and with a sense of public spirit and due regard for the interests and feelings of others, may do much good, even in the most democratic community. But wherever the population is sufficiently advanced in intelligence and character, a far preferable and more democratic way of preserving the game is by a system of public preserves, of protected nurseries and breeding-grounds, while the laws define the conditions under which all alike may shoot the game and the restrictions under which all alike must enjoy the privilege. It is in this way that the wild creatures of the forest and the mountain can best and most permanently be preserved. Even in the United States the enactment and observance of such laws has brought about a marked increase in the game of certain localities, as, for instance, New England, during the past thirty years; while in the Yellowstone Park the elk, deer, antelope, and mountain sheep, and, strangest of all, the bear, are not merely preserved in all their wild freedom, but, by living unmolested, have grown to show a confidence in man and a tameness in his presence such as elsewhere can be found only in regions where he has been hitherto unknown.

The chase is the best of all national pastimes, and this none the less because, like every other pastime, it is a mere source of weakness if carried on in an unhealthy manner, or to an excessive degree, or under over-artificial conditions. Every vigorous game, from football to polo, if allowed to become more than a game, and if serious work is sacrificed to its enjoyment, is of course noxious. From the days when Trajan in his letters to Pliny spoke with such hearty contempt of the Greek over-devotion to athletics, every keen thinker has realised that vigorous sports are only good in their proper place. But in their proper place they are very good indeed. The conditions of modern life are highly artificial, and too often tend to a softening of fibre, physical and moral. It is a good thing for a man to be forced to show self-reliance, resourcefulness in emergency, willingness to endure fatigue and hunger, and at need to face risk. Hunting is praiseworthy very much in proportion as it tends to develop these qualities. Mr. Baillie-Grohman, to whom most English-speaking lovers of sport owe their chief knowledge of the feats in bygone time of the great hunters of continental Europe, has himself followed in its most manly forms this, the manliest of sports. He has hunted the bear, the wapiti, and the mountain ram in the wildest regions of the Rockies, and, also by fair stalking, the chamois and the red deer in the Alps. Whoever habitually follows mountain game in such fashion must necessarily develop qualities which it is a good thing for any nation to see brought out in its sons. Such sport is as far removed as possible from that in which the main object is to make huge bags at small cost of effort, and with the maximum of ease, no good quality save marksmanship being required. Laying stress upon the mere quantity of game killed, and the publication of the record of slaughter, are sure signs of unhealthy decadence in sportsmanship. As far as possible the true hunter, the true lover of big game and of life in the wilderness, must be ever ready to show his own power to shift for himself. The greater his dependence upon others for his sport the less he deserves to take high rank in the brotherhood of rifle, horse, and hound. There was a very attractive side to the hunting of the great mediæval lords, carried on with an elaborate equipment and stately ceremonial, especially as there was an element of danger in coming to close quarters with the quarry at bay; but after all, no form of hunting has ever surpassed in attractiveness the life of the wilderness wanderer of our own time – the man who with simple equipment, and trusting to his own qualities of head, heart, and hand, has penetrated to the uttermost regions of the earth, and single-handed slain alike the wariest and the grimmest of the creatures of the waste.