LETTER VI - A TIGER-PARTY IN NEPAUL

Summary

March 28, 1863

My dear Simpkins,–For some time past, “my mind has been divided within my shaggy breast,” as to whether I should send you an account of our tiger-party in Nepaul. I was deterred by doubts of my ability to hit off that peculiar vein of dullness which seems the single qualification requisite for a sporting author. Why a pursuit of such absorbing interest should lose all its charms in the recital it is hard to say. Perhaps men are misled by the delights of a hard run or a successful stalk, and imagine that a bare unadorned narrative will best convey the idea of those delights to their readers. But this can hardly be the cause; for accounts of sport, for the most part, are characterised by carefully elaborated jocosity of a singularly insipid flavour. Sometimes the writer aspires to poetry; in which case he invariably talks about his Pegasus, and is mildly mythological, calling all ladies “Dianas,” and speaking of the sun as “Phoebus.” After describing the breakfast at the house of “Amphitryon,” the meet on the lawn, and the scene at coverside, he proceeds somewhat in this strain:–

“Across the fields proud Reynard goes,

Amidst a hundred Tally-hos.

Our Master kept the Cockneys back,

Who pressed and jostled in the track.

Right manfully his tongue he plies,

And to perdition dooms their eyes. […]