Spring XV. The Hunting Life + greening

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: XIV The Racing Life

Midway in my long walk yesterday, I lunched at a wayside inn. On the table lay a copy of a popular magazine. Glancing over this miscellany, I found an article, by a woman, on “Lion Hunting,” and in this article I came upon a passage which seemed worth copying.

“As I woke my husband, the lion -- which was then about forty yards off -- charged straight towards us, and with my .303 I hit him full in the chest, as we afterwards discovered, tearing his windpipe to pieces and breaking his spine. He charged a second time, and the next shot hit him through the shoulder, tearing his heart to ribbons.”

It would interest me to look upon this heroine of gun and pen. She is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk, to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre. Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and gracious, high-bred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of art and letters, they could drop a tear over Lesbia’s sparrow; at the same time, they were connoisseurs in torn windpipes, shattered spines and viscera rent open. It is not likely that many of them would have cared to turn their own hands to butchery, and, for the matter of that, I must suppose that our Lion Huntress of the popular magazine is rather an exceptional dame; but no doubt she and the Roman ladies would get on very well together, finding only a few superficial differences. The fact that her gory reminiscences are welcomed by an editor with the popular taste in view is perhaps more significant than appears either to editor or public. Were this lady to write a novel (the chances are she will) it would have the true note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by her favourite reading; more than probably, her way of thinking and feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will soon, I daresay, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is “no nonsense about her.” Such women should breed a remarkable race.

I left the inn in rather a turbid humour. Moving homeward by a new way, I presently found myself on the side of a little valley, in which lay a farm and an orchard. The Apple trees were in full bloom, and, as I stood gazing, the sun, which had all that day been niggard of its beams, burst forth gloriously. For what I then saw, I have no words; I can but dream of the still loveliness of that blossomed valley. Near me, a bee was humming; not far away, a cuckoo called; from the pasture of the farm below came a bleating of lambs.

Alpha.

One wonders if this Lion Huntress was also a suffragette.  How could she not be. As unsettling as it seems to have been, to have your expectations about women thwarted, I have a hard time finding any sympathy for his “turbid humour.” It doesn’t help that I can’t help thinking of this woman as a precursor of “The Bolter” from Nancy Mitford’s novels set between the World Wars... and after. As always, it is a shock for believers to discover that a fiction they’ve had faith in (Victorian femininity) is a pack of lies.

Beta

Today was the first big “greening” event of the season. Five solid hours of sorting and hauling the trash (mostly food, plates, cups, and clam-shells) of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. Then another two hours of breaking down the three-container collection stations and hauling everything to the big trash debris bins (dumpsters) and to our trucks.

I was a little nervous about my back, but I wore my lifting brace -- as I usually do -- and was probably a little more careful than normal. Everything went well, but now, after taking a shower and drinking multiple glasses of electrolyte water and fruit juices to re-hydrate (I was sweating like a pig much of the day as it was surprisingly sunny and warm), I am feeling good, though tired and stiff. Tomorrow will be a recovery day, but still not bad for an old duffer with a dicey back.

Next: Spring XVI. No friend of the people.