Comparison, Short Story Collections

I think a comparison would be appropriate between the following story collections.

Somerville & Ross

Some Experiences of an Irish RM (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1899)
Further Experiences of an Irish RM (Longmans Green & Co., London, 1908)
In Mr Knox's Country (Longmans Green & Co., London, 1915)

David Gray

Gallops (Century Co., New York, 1898)
Gallops II (Century Co., New York, 1903)
Mr. Carteret and Others (Century Co., New York, 1910)

Gordon Grand

Colonel Weatherford and His Friends (1933)
Old man and other Colonel Weatherford stories (1934)
The Silver Horn (1937)
Young Entry
The Southborough Fox

Isn't it interesting that Somerville & Ross were writing at the same time as David Gray?  The stories by Somerville & Ross were originally published in magazines.  This is probably also true of Gray's pieces.  There are strong similarities between the stories but marked differences.
The main character in the Somerville & Ross stories is a man who leaves the military (with the rank of major) in order to marry.  Their social status is somewhat nebulous -- clearly upper class but not wealthy and not aristocracy.  They are English but he is posted to Ireland as a Resident Magistrate (essentially a judge).  While he laments all of his expenses, he manages to keep a family, a large house, a few servants, a couple of horses, and he foxhunts and shoots.  At the time of the stories, Ireland is only one generation removed from the potato famine and extreme poverty is the norm.  Many Irish and Anglo-Irish characters appear and they are almost uniformly destitute.
The David Gray stories are American.  While the cast of characters is larger, they are all of one class.  Since it's America, that's the wealthy class.  They make no bones about it.  Much is said about various characters not needing to work.  In many instances they call to the stables from the house.  All of the women seem to ride sidesaddle and automobiles are not mentioned until the last book.  Every manner of horse-drawn vehicle is mentioned including street cars.  The fictitious town used as a setting is Oakdale.  Everyone who works, or keeps an office, does so in New York.  They seem to only be twenty or thirty miles from the city which is interesting.  The last book sees a few of the American characters spending the hunting season in England.
The contrast is rather startling but the stories are very similar.  There is horse dealing in all its various shades.  There are practical jokes and all kinds of wagers.  There are feats of derring-do (and foolishness) on horseback and in harness.  There are romance, honor, sentiment, and pathos.
The Gordon Grand stories are yet another flavor of the same thing.  It's been awhile since I read these but the books are solidly American.  The cast of characters crosses more classes.  They are more strongly paternalistic, I think.  And they are markedly more modern.  The stories flow differently.  I need to reread these and think about it.  I do not think that many of them (if any) were published in magazines prior to coming out as books.  Grand wrote quite a few other books including a biography of Redmond Stewart, the foxhunter who created a topiary foxhunt in his garden.  Which ought to segue into a discussion of gentlemen scholar foxhunters.

The Fox in the Cupboard, A Summary

I think most people enjoyed reading The Fox in the Cupboard by Jane Shilling although there were complaints.
People didn't like the way it jumped around.  Most people would find the story of a woman falling into a pursuit, like riding and then hunting, and the subsequent learning experience, pretty boring.  If the book had followed a chronological path, lots of people would not have persevered.
People didn't like some of the irrelevant detail.  Yes, well, that's a difficult line to establish.  What is exactly relevant and what isn't?  This author did not give us any insight into her job, her friends, how she spent her free time outside of riding, what she cooks, etc.  Although some people want to read exclusively about horses and hunting, many people need to see something else.  I didn't feel like this was padding but several readers definitely did.
Various things were left hanging.  This is true.  Lots of time was spent on house searches and no conclusion was supplied.  For me, this was momentarily annoying but then I breezed along to the next thing.
We all agreed that the author had perfectly captured certain aspects of the sport:  the challenges of learning to ride as an adult; the struggle to ride (and turn out) "well enough" to foxhunt; the internal struggle of rooting for the hounds or rooting for the foxes.
The author handles the anti-hunting aspects in England at the time very well.  She also provides some history of the hunt club she rides with and discusses its territory issues within a broader context.  These were some excellent discussion points for issues that foxhunting is dealing with everywhere.  That led into a discussion about why it's so difficult to "grow" our sport.
The author is a writer -- a reporter by trade -- so her writing is great.  It was accessible but dealt with some complex issues with a light touch.  I would describe it as a thoughtful book.  One person remarked that it was a thought-provoking book.  It certainly led to a more serious discussion of hunting than we usually have.  By no means was it a how-to book.
Because the author is a writer, she is also a reader.  She does not come at the sport as an athlete trying out a new sport.  This is a bookish person struggling to cope with the required athleticism.  Her reaction to this new sport is predictable:  if you want to learn about something, you read about it.  She doesn't give us a reading list or write overtly about her campaign to read everything but she mentions enough books to see what's happening.  And that's a fun thing for a reading group.  Reading is a very referential experience and the foxhunting canon is pretty well-established.  It's great fun to read a reference to Somerville & Ross and think, "All the folks in the reading group will also be reading this page and think back to The Irish RM and know exactly what Shilling is talking/writing about."  That's cool!

The Bag by Saki

Read about Saki at Wikipedia.
Read The Bag, below.  It's from Reginald in Russia.
You can read most of Saki's work at Project Gutenberg.

The Bag

“The Major is coming in to tea,” said Mrs. Hoopington to her niece.  “He’s just gone round to the stables with his horse.  Be as bright and lively as you can; the poor man’s got a fit of the glooms.”
Major Pallaby was a victim of circumstances, over which he had no control, and of his temper, over which he had very little.  He had taken on the Mastership of the Pexdale Hounds in succession to a highly popular man who had fallen foul of his committee, and the Major found himself confronted with the overt hostility of at least half the hunt, while his lack of tact and amiability had done much to alienate the remainder.  Hence subscriptions were beginning to fall off, foxes grew provokingly scarcer, and wire obtruded itself with increasing frequency.  The Major could plead reasonable excuse for his fit of the glooms.
p. 76In ranging herself as a partisan on the side of Major Pallaby Mrs. Hoopington had been largely influenced by the fact that she had made up her mind to marry him at an early date.  Against his notorious bad temper she set his three thousand a year, and his prospective succession to a baronetcy gave a casting vote in his favour.  The Major’s plans on the subject of matrimony were not at present in such an advanced stage as Mrs. Hoopington’s, but he was beginning to find his way over to Hoopington Hall with a frequency that was already being commented on.
“He had a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday,” said Mrs. Hoopington.  “Why you didn’t bring one or two hunting men down with you, instead of that stupid Russian boy, I can’t think.”
“Vladimir isn’t stupid,” protested her niece; “he’s one of the most amusing boys I ever met.  Just compare him for a moment with some of your heavy hunting men—”
“Anyhow, my dear Norah, he can’t ride.”
“Russians never can; but he shoots.”
“Yes; and what does he shoot?  Yesterday he brought home a woodpecker in his game-bag.”
p. 77“But he’d shot three pheasants and some rabbits as well.”
“That’s no excuse for including a woodpecker in his game-bag.”
“Foreigners go in for mixed bags more than we do.  A Grand Duke pots a vulture just as seriously as we should stalk a bustard.  Anyhow, I’ve explained to Vladimir that certain birds are beneath his dignity as a sportsman.  And as he’s only nineteen, of course, his dignity is a sure thing to appeal to.”
Mrs. Hoopington sniffed.  Most people with whom Vladimir came in contact found his high spirits infectious, but his present hostess was guaranteed immune against infection of that sort.
“I hear him coming in now,” she observed.  “I shall go and get ready for tea.  We’re going to have it here in the hall.  Entertain the Major if he comes in before I’m down, and, above all, be bright.”
Norah was dependent on her aunt’s good graces for many little things that made life worth living, and she was conscious of a feeling of discomfiture because the Russian youth whom she had brought down as a welcome element of change in the country-house p. 78routine was not making a good impression.  That young gentleman, however, was supremely unconscious of any shortcomings, and burst into the hall, tired, and less sprucely groomed than usual, but distinctly radiant.  His game-bag looked comfortably full.
“Guess what I have shot,” he demanded.
“Pheasants, woodpigeons, rabbits,” hazarded Norah.
“No; a large beast; I don’t know what you call it in English.  Brown, with a darkish tail.”  Norah changed colour.
“Does it live in a tree and eat nuts?” she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective “large” might be an exaggeration.
Vladimir laughed.
“Oh no; not a biyelka.”
“Does it swim and eat fish?” asked Norah, with a fervent prayer in her heart that it might turn out to be an otter.
“No,” said Vladimir, busy with the straps of his game-bag; “it lives in the woods, and eats rabbits and chickens.”
Norah sat down suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.
“Merciful Heaven!” she wailed; “he’s shot a fox!”
p. 79Vladimir looked up at her in consternation.  In a torrent of agitated words she tried to explain the horror of the situation.  The boy understood nothing, but was thoroughly alarmed.
“Hide it, hide it!” said Norah frantically, pointing to the still unopened bag.  “My aunt and the Major will be here in a moment.  Throw it on the top of that chest; they won’t see it there.”
Vladimir swung the bag with fair aim; but the strap caught in its flight on the outstanding point of an antler fixed in the wall, and the bag, with its terrible burden, remained suspended just above the alcove where tea would presently be laid.  At that moment Mrs. Hoopington and the Major entered the hall.
“The Major is going to draw our covers to-morrow,” announced the lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction.  “Smithers is confident that we’ll be able to show him some sport; he swears he’s seen a fox in the nut copse three times this week.”
“I’m sure I hope so; I hope so,” said the Major moodily.  “I must break this sequence of blank days.  One hears so often that a fox has settled down as a tenant for life in certain p. 80covers, and then when you go to turn him out there isn’t a trace of him.  I’m certain a fox was shot or trapped in Lady Widden’s woods the very day before we drew them.”
“Major, if any one tried that game on in my woods they’d get short shrift,” said Mrs. Hoopington.
Norah found her way mechanically to the tea-table and made her fingers frantically busy in rearranging the parsley round the sandwich dish.  On one side of her loomed the morose countenance of the Major, on the other she was conscious of the scared, miserable eyes of Vladimir.  And above it all hung that.  She dared not raise her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the whiteness of the cloth.  Her aunt’s manner signalled to her the repeated message to “be bright”; for the present she was fully occupied in keeping her teeth from chattering.
“What did you shoot to-day?” asked Mrs. Hoopington suddenly of the unusually silent Vladimir.
“Nothing—nothing worth speaking of,” said the boy.
Norah’s heart, which had stood still for a p. 81space, made up for lost time with a most disturbing bound.
“I wish you’d find something that was worth speaking about,” said the hostess; “every one seems to have lost their tongues.”
“When did Smithers last see that fox?” said the Major.
“Yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark brush,” confided Mrs. Hoopington.
“Aha, we’ll have a good gallop after that brush to-morrow,” said the Major, with a transient gleam of good humour.  And then gloomy silence settled again round the tea-table, a silence broken only by despondent munchings and the occasional feverish rattle of a teaspoon in its saucer.  A diversion was at last afforded by Mrs. Hoopington’s fox-terrier, which had jumped on to a vacant chair, the better to survey the delicacies of the table, and was now sniffing in an upward direction at something apparently more interesting than cold tea-cake.
“What is exciting him?” asked his mistress, as the dog suddenly broke into short angry barks, with a running accompaniment of tremulous whines.
“Why,” she continued, “it’s your game-bag, Vladimir!  What have you got in it?”
p. 82“By Gad,” said the Major, who was now standing up; “there’s a pretty warm scent!”
And then a simultaneous idea flashed on himself and Mrs. Hoopington.  Their faces flushed to distinct but harmonious tones of purple, and with one accusing voice they screamed, “You’ve shot the fox!”
Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir’s misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her.  The Major’s fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day’s shopping tries on a succession of garments.  He reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignent for tears, he condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless and abnormal punishments.  In fact, he conveyed the impression that if a destroying angel had been lent to him for a week it would have had very little time for private study.  In the lulls of his outcry could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier.  Vladimir, who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous p. 83English adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his vocabulary.  His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results.  Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned cyclone, had caught sight of and joyfully pounced on the telephone apparatus, and lost no time in ringing up the hunt secretary and announcing his resignation of the Mastership.  A servant had by this time brought his horse round to the door, and in a few seconds Mrs. Hoopington’s shrill monotone had the field to itself.  But after the Major’s display her best efforts at vocal violence missed their full effect; it was as though one had come straight out from a Wagner opera into a rather tame thunderstorm.  Realising, perhaps, that her tirades were something of an anticlimax, Mrs. Hoopington broke suddenly into some rather necessary tears and marched out of the room, leaving behind her a silence almost as terrible as the turmoil which had preceded it.
“What shall I do with—that?” asked Vladimir at last.
“Bury it,” said Norah.
“Just plain burial?” said Vladimir, rather p. 84relieved.  He had almost expected that some of the local clergy would have insisted on being present, or that a salute might have to be fired over the grave.
And thus it came to pass that in the dusk of a November evening the Russian boy, murmuring a few of the prayers of his Church for luck, gave hasty but decent burial to a large polecat under the lilac trees at Hoopington.

The Brogue by Saki

Read about Saki at Wikipedia.
Read The Brogue (about horses but not about hunting), below.  It's from Beasts and Super-Beasts.  You can read most of Saki's work at Project Gutenberg.

The Brogue

The hunting season had come to an end, and the Mullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue.  There had been a kind of tradition in the family for the past three or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that the Brogue would find a purchaser before the hunting was over; but seasons came and went without anything happening to justify such ill-founded optimism.  The animal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of its career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on, in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid of.  The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood had been known to suggest that the first letter of its name was superfluous.  The Brogue had been variously described in sale catalogues as a light-weight hunter, a lady’s hack, and, more simply, but still with a touch of imagination, as a useful brown gelding, standing 15.1.  Toby Mullet had ridden him for four seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost any sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is an animal that knows the country.  The Brogue knew the country intimately, having personally created most of the gaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges for many miles round.  His manners and characteristics were not ideal in the hunting field, but he was probably rather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack on country roads.  According to the Mullet family, he was not really road-shy, but there were one or two objects of dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby called the swerving sickness.  Motors and cycles he treated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows, piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives, turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of the zigzag course of forked lightning.  If a pheasant rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Brogue would spring into the air at the same moment, but this may have been due to a desire to be companionable.  The Mullet family contradicted the widely prevalent report that the horse was a confirmed crib-biter.

It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet, relict of the late Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Toby and a bunch of daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrail on the outskirts of the village with a breathless catalogue of local happenings.

“You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?” she vociferated; “awfully rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall, middle-aged and rather quiet.  He’s taken the Red House on a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterations and improvements.  Well, Toby’s sold him the Brogue!”

Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the astonishing news; then he broke out into unstinted congratulation.  If he had belonged to a more emotional race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet.

“How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at last!  Now you can buy a decent animal.  I’ve always said that Toby was clever.  Ever so many congratulations.”

“Don’t congratulate me.  It’s the most unfortunate thing that could have happened!” said Mrs. Mullet dramatically.

Clovis stared at her in amazement.

“Mr. Penricarde,” said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper, though it rather resembled a hoarse, excited squeak, “Mr. Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie.  Slight at first, but now unmistakable.  I was a fool not to have seen it sooner.  Yesterday, at the Rectory garden party, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, and she told him carnations, and to-day a whole stack of carnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and lovely dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of chocolates that he must have got on purpose from London.  And he’s asked her to go round the links with him to-morrow.  And now, just at this critical moment, Toby has sold him that animal.  It’s a calamity!”

“But you’ve been trying to get the horse off your hands for years,” said Clovis.

“I’ve got a houseful of daughters,” said Mrs. Mullet, “and I’ve been trying—well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn’t be amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you know.”

“I don’t know,” said Clovis, “I’ve never counted, but I expect you’re right as to the number; mothers generally know these things.”

“And now,” continued Mrs. Mullet, in her tragic whisper, “when there’s a rich husband-in-prospect imminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him that miserable animal.  It will probably kill him if he tries to ride it; anyway it will kill any affection he might have felt towards any member of our family.  What is to be done?  We can’t very well ask to have the horse back; you see, we praised it up like anything when we thought there was a chance of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit him.”

“Couldn’t you steal it out of his stable and send it to grass at some farm miles away?” suggested Clovis; “write ‘Votes for Women’ on the stable door, and the thing would pass for a Suffragette outrage.  No one who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get it back again.”

“Every newspaper in the country would ring with the affair,” said Mrs. Mullet; “can’t you imagine the headline, ‘Valuable Hunter Stolen by Suffragettes’?  The police would scour the countryside till they found the animal.”

“Well, Jessie must try and get it back from Penricarde on the plea that it’s an old favourite.  She can say it was only sold because the stable had to be pulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease, and that now it has been arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of years longer.”

“It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back when you’ve just sold him,” said Mrs. Mullet, “but something must be done, and done at once.  The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quiet as a lamb.  After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if they were demented, don’t they?”

“The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for sedateness,” agreed Clovis.

Jessie came back from the golf links next day in a state of mingled elation and concern.

“It’s all right about the proposal,” she announced; “he came out with it at the sixth hole.  I said I must have time to think it over.  I accepted him at the seventh.”

“My dear,” said her mother, “I think a little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been advisable, as you’ve known him so short a time.  You might have waited till the ninth hole.”

“The seventh is a very long hole,” said Jessie; “besides, the tension was putting us both off our game.  By the time we’d got to the ninth hole we’d settled lots of things.  The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica, with perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, and a week in London to wind up with.  Two of his nieces are to be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot there will be seven, which is rather a lucky number.  You are to wear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lace jabbed into it.  By the way, he’s coming over this evening to ask your consent to the whole affair.  So far all’s well, but about the Brogue it’s a different matter.  I told him the legend about the stable, and how keen we were about buying the horse back, but he seems equally keen on keeping it.  He said he must have horse exercise now that he’s living in the country, and he’s going to start riding to-morrow.  He’s ridden a few times in the Row, on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians and people undergoing rest cures, and that’s about all his experience in the saddle—oh, and he rode a pony once in Norfolk, when he was fifteen and the pony twenty-four; and to-morrow he’s going to ride the Brogue!  I shall be a widow before I’m married, and I do so want to see what Corsica’s like; it looks so silly on the map.”

Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments of the situation put before him.

“Nobody can ride that animal with any safety,” said Mrs. Mullet, “except Toby, and he knows by long experience what it is going to shy at, and manages to swerve at the same time.”

“I did hint to Mr. Penricarde—to Vincent, I should say—that the Brogue didn’t like white gates,” said Jessie.

“White gates!” exclaimed Mrs. Mullet; “did you mention what effect a pig has on him?  He’ll have to go past Lockyer’s farm to get to the high road, and there’s sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane.”

“He’s taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately,” said Toby.

“It’s obvious that Penricarde mustn’t be allowed to go out on that animal,” said Clovis, “at least not till Jessie has married him, and tired of him.  I tell you what: ask him to a picnic to-morrow, starting at an early hour; he’s not the sort to go out for a ride before breakfast.  The day after I’ll get the rector to drive him over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage hospital they’re building there.  The Brogue will be standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer to exercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go conveniently lame.  If you hurry on the wedding a bit the lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely over.”

Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and she kissed Clovis.

It was nobody’s fault that the rain came down in torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantastic impossibility.  It was also nobody’s fault, but sheer ill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in the afternoon to tempt Mr. Penricarde to make his first essay with the Brogue.  They did not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer’s farm; the rectory gate was painted a dull unobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this particular point of the road.  Subsequently, there being apparently no further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard, where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to the orchard found the coop almost intact, but very little left of the turkey.

Mr. Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, and suffering from a bruised knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and country roads, and allowed Jessie to nurse him back into complete recovery and golf-fitness within something less than a week.

In the list of wedding presents which the local newspaper published a fortnight or so later appeared the following item:

“Brown saddle-horse, ‘The Brogue,’ bridegroom’s gift to bride.”

“Which shows,” said Toby Mullet, “that he knew nothing.”

“Or else,” said Clovis, “that he has a very pleasing wit.”