Thoughts from a Life: On Hunting

By Charles Moore

Roger Scruton loved hunting (not in the American sense, usually meaning shooting, but in the English sense of hounds chasing a live quarry – in his case, the fox). He wrote that his life had divided into three parts – the first ‘wretched’, the second ‘ill-at-ease’, but ‘in the third, hunting’. 

As a result of this love, which began in middle age, he laid out large sums of money for which he had to work very hard (often writing after a day’s hunting, a time when most riders fall asleep in the soup at dinner). His courage exceeded his horsemanship, so he sustained many injuries, including broken collar-bones and ribs. On one alarming occasion in the snow when he was over 70, he and his horse slid off a bridge into a river. His horse rolled on him, breaking Roger’s femur.

What made such a famously intelligent man pursue with such passion a sport often associated in English culture with rural stupidity? 

Part of it was the escape from too much brain-work. Roger once said to me that to ride a horse was to be ‘in communion with a non-opinion-bearing animal’. As an animal well-freighted with opinions himself, he found this refreshing. The surprises and excitements of the hunting field deepened that communion. 

But it went much deeper than that. Hunting was at the heart of Roger Scruton’s philosophy. It was part of his quest for many things he cared about – for living tradition, for beauty, for community and for England. And it gave him great pleasure that something which originated in England also thrived in the United States, where he often hunted.

Unlike many men fond of assertion, Roger was also acutely observant. He could see that hunting people were taking part in something nobler and more religious than they usually knew. Here he is on hunting dress, which evolved as men ceased to hunt to live and began to hunt for choice:

Hunting then becomes a ceremony, an act of communion, a part of courtliness and kingship...Like dancing, it is done for no other purpose, yet done in company: and, like dancing, it is filled with celebration. That is why costume is so much a part of it…Through ceremonial dress people show their respect for rules…The ceremonial uniform is a supreme example of man’s ability to represent himself as descended from a higher sphere.

And just when someone might think this a bit high-falutin when applied to the muddy reality of the hunting field, Roger’s sense of humour would come to the rescue. He describes his own beginnings on his little cob Dumbo, dressed in the ‘rat-catcher’ tweed coat favoured by unsmart farmers, rather than the scarlet or black of the grandees: ‘A professor on a fourteen-hand pony should do his best to be inconspicuous’. 

It was on Dumbo that he had first encountered a hunt in action. The pony was so excited as the mounted field unexpectedly joined them in a country lane that he bolted with the inappropriately dressed Roger. The professor shot ahead of the field-master, thus helplessly breaking all the rules. He describes it perfectly in On Hunting. It was a key moment in the life of his mind and the history of his heart. Like Wordsworth, he was ‘Surprised by joy’.

Charles Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham, is an English journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph.