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

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George Sherston, AKA Siegfried Sassoon, is a young man of modest means. His family left him a small legacy that allows him to drift through life without working for a living. His Aunt Evelyn susses him up properly:

The Proust connection goes even deeper, since the scene has an almost direct emotional parallel in In Search Of Lost Time, where Marcel is rude to his grandmother in her final days and subsequently haunted by remorse. So much for the anti-modern. Could it be said that part of the reason Sassoon dug into his past, like Proust, was to make a space for the foundations of the future? The air was Elysian with early summer and the early shadows of steep white clouds were chasing over the orchards and meadows; sunlight sparkled on green hedgerows that had been drenched by early morning showers. As I was carried past it all I was lazily aware through my dreaming and unobservant eyes that this was the sort of world I wanted. For it was my own countryside, and I loved it with an intimate feeling, though all its associations were crude and incoherent. I cannot think of it now without a sense of heartache, as if it contained something which I have never quite been able to discover." That book’s sequel was also well received. The New Statesmancritic called Memoirs of an Infantry Officer“a document of intense and sensitive humanity.” In a review for the Times Literary Supplement,after Sassoon’s death, one critic wrote: “His one real masterpiece, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer… is consistently fresh. His self scrutiny is candid, critical, and humourous. … If Sassoon had written as well as this consistently, he would have been a figure of real stature. As it is, English literature has one great work from him almost by accident.” This is an interesting novel, not the simple evocation of a lost past that I was expecting; there is much more nuance and Sassoon was clearly expressing a good deal of ambivalence (sitting on the fence if I am being cynical). The asides make it more interesting as do the evocations of Proust.Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7855542M Openlibrary_edition Most readers encounter Sassoon as the brave soldier-poet with the Military Cross, the mentor of Wilfred Owen, who has shaped our thinking on the First World War perhaps more than anyone else. It was Sassoon who first exposed the horrors of the trenches in his poetry. His depiction of the calamitous Western Front and the gulf between blundering, incompetent generals and innocent young soldiers betrayed is the overriding impression we have of that conflict, despite efforts of revisionist historians in the decades since his death. But that afternoon, as I devoured the first of Sassoon’s three volumes of lightly fictionalized autobiography, I met him as a boy in the person of his alter-ego George Sherston, clip-clopping to a distant meet alongside Dixon the groom, his fingers numb and a melting hoarfrost on the hedgerows. 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.

Anyone who cares to do so is at liberty to make fun of the trepidations which a young man carries about with him and conceals. But there is a risk in such ridicule. As I remember and write, I grin, but not unkindly, at my distant and callow self and the absurdities which constitute his chronicle. To my mind the only thing that matters is the resolve to do something...even though [these thoughts] are only about buying a racing-cap. If truth be known, more than fame or money or prestige, I most crave to not ”be interfered with too much.” I’ve thought about trying to put my personal desire into words for many years, but until I read those words by Sassoon, I’d never really found the proper ones before. urn:oclc:759187491 Republisher_date 20121022004750 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20121019220948 Scanner scribe26.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source All this, for the establishment, made Sassoon’s later outspoken opposition to the war all the more difficult to handle because he couldn’t be branded a coward. Hence the resort to mental illness. It will be interesting to see how Sassoon handles this journey in the second novel.Funny because Sassoon wants it to be, not because he is lapsing, DH Lawrence-style, into absurd nature-fetishism. Green's Cold Comfort Farm analogy is unfair. Sassoon's evocation of the English countryside is so lovely partly because it is gentle (give or take a few too many references to Elysium) – even when he is writing with emotion:

Prior to its publication, Siegfried Sassoon's reputation rested entirely on his poetry, mostly written during and about World War I. Only ten years after the war ended, after some experience of journalism, did he feel ready to branch out into prose. So uncertain was he of the wisdom of this move that he elected to publish Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man anonymously. It is a depiction of his early years presented in the form of an autobiographical novel, with false names being given to the central characters, including Sassoon himself, who appears as "George Sherston". Sassoon was motivated to write the work by a war incident, when a fox was loose in the trenches and one of his friends shot and killed it. However, the book draws heavily on his pre-war life, with riding and hunting being among the favourite pastimes of the author. [2]

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Not that that was any great concern to me as I rode Mr Star along the lanes to my first meet. How big everything seemed to a youth as callow as myself and I kept myself out of harm's way towards the rear, admiring the precocious sporting talents of Denis Milden, a boy no more than a year older than my fourteen years. "To be sure, Master Milden is a handsome rider," said Dixon, as we returned home. "But you are no booby yourself." My heart swelled with pride and I resolved to become the best huntsman of my generation. Possibly more surprising is the fact that Sassoon should write with such loveliness. It takes some getting used to, after those poems. Sassoon, who dwelt so long on grey mud, bleached sand bags and ashen-faced soldiers, on the stench of death, on screams and on the sound of wind "dulled by guns", can also describe sensory perceptions with all the sensual relish of Proust (of whom he was clearly a fan): On the one hand Siegfried Sassoon’s _The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man_ (the first volume in a trilogy)can be seen as a paen to the idyllic way of life of a country gentleman before the war to end all wars destroyed any pretence to concepts of chivalry and gallant action. On the other hand it can be seen as an indictment (knowing or otherwise) of the generally indolent and purposeless lives of the idle rich before an entire generation was nearly decimated. Either way it is a well-written and interesting picture of Edwardian life seen from the point of view of someone definitely in the upstairs portion of the upstairs/downstairs equation.