The Cornhill Magazine: Volume 31 (1875)

pp.622, A minor reference to a Devonshire Wrestling in a fictional work. Reference to good breeding.

“Upon my word, madam,” the General protested, “you use the doctor badly. He is blamed if he kills people, and he is blamed if he keeps them alive. What is he to do?”

“Do? He can’t help saving the sickly ones now,” the old lady admitted; “for relatives will have it done, and they know he can do it; but it’s a great misfortune, Sir Percy, that’s what it is, to have all these sickly creatures growing up to intermarry into the good old families that used to be famous for their comeliness and strength. There was a man, yes, I remember him well, that came from Devonshire—he was a man of good family, too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said I to myself, wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this man comes up to our country, there’s one or other of the Trelyons will try his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George—you remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his own son there—’George,’ I said, ‘if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these parts, mind you have nothing to do with him; for wrestling is not fit for gentlemen.’ ‘All right, mother,’ said he; but he laughed, and I knew what the laugh meant. My dear Sir Percy, I tell you the man hadn’t a chance—I heard of it all afterwards. George caught him up, before he could begin any of his tricks, and flung him on to the hedge—and there were a dozen more in our family who could have done it, I’ll be bound.”

“But then, you know, Mrs. Trelyon,” Mr. Roscorla ventured to say, “physical strength is not everything that is needed. If the doctors were….

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