93-03-12:  Library Acquires Rare Archive of 19th-century Sports Journalist


     The University of Virginia Library has acquired a large
collection of unpublished letters and personal papers of one of
the first great sports journalists.

     Forget Red Smith or Grantland Rice. Charles James Apperley,
a 19th-century Englishman who wrote vivid, detailed accounts
under the byline "Nimrod," was churning out sports articles 100
years before they were and was the most popular sporting
correspondent of his day. The sports he liked to cover? Fox
hunting and horse racing.

     The Apperley papers, acquired by U.Va.'s Marion duPont Scott
collection of sporting books, are an important addition to the
collection and will be useful to sports historians, social and
literary historians and many others with an interest in English
life of the era, said Clinton Sisson, curator of the collection.

     The Scott collection, bequeathed to the University with an
accompanying endowment in 1985, contains more than 4,000 volumes
relating to the long history of horse racing, horse breeding, the
hunt and most other rural and estate sports popular over the
years in England and America.

     Apperley, whose "Nimrod" articles and books on fox hunting
during the golden age of British hunting in the 1820s and '30s
were eagerly read throughout England and in the U.S., was known
as vain and pompous as well as brilliant, and his letters and
private papers bear this out, said Mr. Sisson. And in true
journalistic tradition, they show him constantly complaining to
his publisher that he should be better paid.

     Like the Marion duPont Scott collection itself, the
11-volume archive, containing some 1,200 of Apperley's letters,
papers and manuscripts, provides a wealth of detail about the
roles hunting and horses have played in society. It was purchased
from a New York rare book and manuscript dealer with funds from
the Scott endowment.

     Apperley (1778-1843) was known for his lively,
anecdote-filled accounts, written mainly for The Sporting
Magazine, the greatest sports journal of its day. Most of the
letters in the collection deal with his often stormy relations
with that magazine and its publisher. Although Apperley was
loaned and paid increasing amounts of money and moved in the best
social circles as he covered countless hunts and other events,
he lived extravagantly and somehow always managed to be hard up.

     Typical letters range from Apperley's own personal
horse-dealing interests, to complaints about the quality of other
writers' work, to suggestions for raising the price of the
magazine ("to enable you to keep Nimrod going"), to details of
his hunting tours, complete with expense reports, to bits of
gossip ("Tom Smith and his new pack of fox-hounds, and his new
wife"). In addition to repeatedly praising himself, his letters
are sprinkled with names of royalty, nobility and sporting
personalities. He makes suggestions for articles on cock
fighting, fencing, pheasant breeding and other popular pursuits
of the day.

     All of this would have much delighted the late Marion duPont
Scott of Montpelier in Orange County, said Mr. Sisson. The
collection that was bequeathed to the University by this
well-known horse-breeder and philanthropist reflected her
lifelong interest in a wide range of sporting and related
subjects, including racing, breeding, horsemanship, carriages,
farm buildings, dogs and even game fowl. The collection's books
and periodicals include both antiquarian and modern works on
numerous specialized areas, from falconry and veterinary medicine
to horse-shoeing and life on the old coach roads of England and
America.

     Typical of the collection's strengths are examples of
original 19th-century and early 20th-century manufacturers'
catalogues of carriages, tack, stable fixtures and related
supplies. "With this type of information, you could authentically
recreate or restore a 19th-century stable or carriage -- and even
know how the original trimming was produced," said Mr. Sisson.
"As we add to the collection," he noted, "our goal is to carry
forward and perpetuate Mrs. Scott's broad interests in equestrian
and related sports and to serve regional interests as well."




     "Yooi, OVER he goes!" holloas the Squire, as he perceives
Joker and Jewell plunging into the stream, and Red-rose shaking
herself on the opposite bank.

     Seven men, out of thirteen, take it in their stride; three
stop short, their horses refusing the first time, but come well
over the second; and three find themselves in the middle of it.
The gallant Frank Forester is among the latter; and having been
requested that morning to wear a friend's new red coat, to take
off the gloss and glare of the shop, he accomplishes the task to
perfection in the bluish-black mud of the Whissendine, only then
subsiding after a three days' flood.

     "Who is that under his horse in the brook?" inquires that
good sportsman and fine rider, Mr. Green, of Rolleston, whose
noted old mare has just skimmed over the water like a swallow on
a summer's evening. "It's Middleton Biddulph," says one. "Pardon
me," cries Mr. Middleton Biddulph; "Middleton Biddulph is here,
and here he means to be!" "Only Dick Christian," answers Lord
Forester, "and it is nothing new to him." "But he'll be drowned,"
exclaims Lord Kinnaird. "I shouldn't wonder," observes Mr.
William Coke. But the pace is too good to inquire.

     "NIMROD" Hunting Reminiscences