Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

Book Overview

George Sherston develops from a shy and awkward child, through shiftless adolescence, to an officer just beginning to understand the horrors of trench warfare. The world he grows up in, of village cricket and loyal grooms, had vanished forever by the time Sassoon wrote this book, but he captures it with a lyricism and gentleness that defy nostalgia. A bestseller on publication in 1928, this superb evocation of the Edwardian age has remained in print...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 057106454X
• ISBN13: 9780571064540
• Release Date: January 1960
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 313 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Superb, Please Read

There are 100,000 pretentious academic dissertations @ Siegfried Sassoon. Don't read them. Read "Memoirs," instead. This is a hell of a book. The complexity of Siegfried's writing - aside from its often spell-binding beauty - forced me to read it very carefully, like a jeweler confronted to slowly examine a stone to be cut - a gem he's never seen before. Musings...a 1st Edition (Am.), there'll be no marking up this book; this isn't Roberts' ten-dollar Napoleon & Wellington ( & what idiot previous owner - the Fox was bought in the Ballad - threw the dust jacket away?!)...Odd realization: For once, I was reading a writer's memoir...that had nothing to do with the death of standards at The New Yorker ("Gone," "A Life of Privilege, Mostly," etc.). MFH did not get off to a smooth start - or rather, I with it. A good deal of the first third of the book should have been trimmed. Our apprehensions at the ages of four & seven - who cares? His interminable, meaningless cricket games - what an incomprehensible morass (the terminology is bewildering). And the dotty story @ his aunt's preparation of a hot cup of tea, on a cold primitive train, derailed the narrative as well. The author in real life dropped out of Cambridge - & these first 100 pages - weed-choked with century-old slang - almost motivated me to do the same with his memoir. But perseverance paid off. The ending of the chapter, "A Day With The Potsford" - with its narrative tone down-shifting from a high octave of excitement then being lowered to his aunt's self-sensible concern @ the matted hair of her pet Persian cat - is so impressive, it is breath-taking. And from then on, there are individual sentences as beautiful as anything I've ever read - & splendidly unique, a quality adding an allure I've never seen. MFH "appeared anonymously in October 1928 & delighted the public with its sensitive charm & wit." It still does, & how. "As the [church] service proceeded, I glanced furtively around me at the prudent Sunday-like faces of the congregation. I thought of the world outside, & the comparison made life out there seem...unreal. I felt as if we were all on our way to next week in a ship." "Memory enchants even the dilatory little train journey which carried my expectant simplicity into the freshness of a country seen for the first time." Having first read "The Sassoons," of course, I know that this (mostly) idyllic story of his gradual development into a fox hunting gentleman must come to a brutal end, for he was primarily famous then, & noted today, as a heroic & disillusioned wartime infantry officer. John Keegan broadly claims that at the time, almost no one in Europe saw World War I coming - that the possibility of war, on the immense scale that it did become, had been preemptively dismissed out of hand. This is stated in miniature in MFH, six years before Keegan had been born. "War had become an impossibility" - something that would nev

An excellent perspective of a world reluctant but forced into change

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

From the Hunt to the Front

Perhaps the best way to classify "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is as an autobiographical novel; the details and events described are Sassoon's personal experiences in disguise. This book serves as the first of a trilogy, covering the author's early days up through his initial military service during WWI. Even though it is written as a novel, the truth of the author's life shines through. The narrator of "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is George Sherston, a young orphan left to live with his aunt in the remote English countryside. He is a shy, reticent and awkward boy who learns gradually to flourish under the tutelage of his aunt's stablehand, Tom Dixon. Dixon teaches young George to ride and play cricket, and as he grows he eventually makes a name for himself among the fox hunting circuit and among horse racers. George drops out of Cambridge to pursue a life of leisure (one that he cannot afford) and finds himself entering the military just before war is declared. The narrative is surprisingly fast-paced and evocative to begin with. Sassoon has a manner of drawing readers into the story through the quaint and idyllic reminisences of a spoiled young man. Yet readers may soon become distracted with George Sherston's snobbery, his diffidence towards those who care about him and have his best interests at heart, and his pretentious attitude towards his station in life. There are also times when readers can see the author shining through his characters, in scattered asides he drops the mask he holds before him and tells it as it is. "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" may not be for everyone, but is a definite must-read for any fan of Sassoon's poetry; it is a window into the world of a man who helped to shape the course of literature after WWI.

Languid evocation of Rural U.K. ca. 1900

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

A touching glimpse of rural England

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