Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man: The Memoirs of George Sherston: 1 (George Sherston Trilogy)

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Memoirs Of a Fox-Hunting Man is the first of three fictionalized memoirs written by Sassoon detailing his life prior to, during, and following the First World War. George Sherston is an orphan who is adopted and raised by his spinster aunt. His childhood, while somewhat lonely and blighted by his own shyness, is spent in luxurious surroundings in the South of England, and he is somewhat spoiled by his aunt Evelyn, to whom he means everything in the world. Tom Dixon, his aunt’s groom, forges a close friendship with the boy. He convinces Evelyn to allow George to ride a horse, hoping to transform him into a respectable gentleman. This volume takes Sherston into the war years, through training and into France. Sherston (and Sassoon’s) entry into the war was delayed by a riding accident. The novel ends at the beginning of Sherston’s time in the trenches, when the horror of it all was becoming clear. At one point Sassoon refers to the war as a “crime against humanity”, quite a modern turn of phrase. The term had only been coined about 20 years earlier and was confined to diplomatic paperwork. This may even be its first use in literature. What gives this novel power is you know this to be autobiographical; this book is talking about a period that is going to be shattered and completely replaced with something new. So, we are immersed in rural Kent, with servants and horses and steam trains and a bucolic life of gentle pursuits. Of an England that is hankering for a return to the glory of Victoria, but also a period of stability economically. But European royalty are not experiencing a time of stability & of course, it ultimately explodes into what we know as World War 1. After the war, Sassoon became involved in Labour Party politics, lectured on pacifism, and continued to write. His most successful works of this period were his trilogy of autobiographical novels, The Memoirs of George Sherston.In these, he gave a thinly-fictionalized account, with little changed except names, of his wartime experiences, contrasting them with his nostalgic memories of country life before the war and recounting the growth of his pacifist feelings. Some have maintained that Sassoon’s best work is his prose, particularly the first two Sherston novels. Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Manwas described by a critic for the Springfield Republicanas “a novel of wholly fresh and delightful content,” and Robert Littrell of Bookmancalled it “a singular and a strangely beautiful book.”

The Memoirs of George Sherston (contains Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress), Doubleday, Doran, 1937 (published in England as The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, Faber, 1937 ). I liked this memoir. It’s likely not for everyone and I would find it difficult to filter out to whom I could recommend it, but if anyone gives it a go, I’d be interested in any thoughts. Mine maybe slightly biased by the benefit of reading previous works about and by the author. This is a long-term project for me. I do intend to read the follow-up semi-autobiographical memoirs at some stage. It has taken me a few days before i could review this book. There is nothing earth shattering about the narrative - a young man who wishes he is much richer than his actually is, so he can live a life of leisure. I felt the same at his age & it was harder having a few friends who were independently wealthy & watching from the side lines. The impact of the deaths of those he loved (he gave them pseudonyms), killed in WWI, was expertly recounted. Absent was his famous turnaround and stance against WWI, but perhaps that comes in the next instalment given this is the first in a trilogy. Of course, when war breaks out, George Sherston does his duty, as do most young men of English descent. He volunteers. Given his level of education and pedigree, he begins life in the military as a second lieutenant. He lands a cushy job directing matters of transportation that keeps him out of the trenches. Messages start coming in of friends who have been killed, but these are abstract thoughts, like hearing about a natural disaster that happened two thousand miles away.Anyway, it's that lost world of rural Britain that is evoked in this affecting memoir – fictionalised memoir, I should say, because Sassoon also wrote some ‘straight’ non-fiction versions of his childhood, which most critics seem to think were less interesting than this putative novel. It is full of very beautiful Hardyesque descriptions of the English countryside:

Can you recall the novel that took you away from the nursery bookshelves and into the realms of Grown-Up Books – a gateway book, if you like? I happened upon mine after months of resisting efforts both at home and at school to get me to read something more challenging. Until then, as a pony-mad child without a pony, I’d sought refuge in my tattered copies of thrilling stories like Show-Jumping Secret and We Hunted Hounds by the Pullein-Thompson sisters. Then one day, entirely of my own volition, when I was perhaps 12 or 13, I reached for the blue, cloth-bound copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. TE Lawrence once remarked that “if I were trying to export the ideal Englishman to an international exhibition, I think I’d like to choose Siegfried Sassoon for chief exhibit”. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, published in 1928 and attractively reissued by Faber, is that ideal Englishman’s regretful (sometimes slightly cloyingly nostalgic) lament for an ideal, vanished England. The book ends with Sassoon heading off to the war that would inspire his famous poems.Many of these descriptions are shot through with a generalised melancholy (‘It is with a sigh that I remember simple moments such as those, when I understood so little of the deepening sadness of life…’), whose source looms up through the text although it is rarely mentioned. Instead we just have an uneasy sense that everything we read about has somehow been lost, and this gave the detailed explanations of fox hunting an interest that they wouldn't otherwise have had for me.