The Meadow Brook Hunt Was More About People Than Hounds
Book Review by Martha A. Woodham
Foxhunting with Meadow Brook, Judith Tabler, The Derrydale Press, 2016, 312 pages, available from Amazon.“Foxhunting with Meadow Brook on Long Island, New York, was always about more than the fox, the hounds, or the horses. Meadow Brook was about its people—some powerful, some idle, many wealthy—and their shared joy in galloping across beautiful country, only minutes outside New York City.”
This quote from the dust jacket blurb on Judith Tabler’s Foxhunting with Meadow Brook sums up her book well—except for one thing. Foxhunting with Meadow Brook Hunt Club in the early days was also about the jumping—the bigger the jumps, the better. Many members—high-powered businessmen from New York—were highly competitive, and every meet was a contest that, sadly, did not always end well. Over the decades Meadow Brook lost at least four members to dangerous riding.
Hunt Point-to-Points Are a Cherished Tradition
Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Tradition: the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation.
Up close and personal at the 2014 Piedmont Point-to-Point / Douglas Lees photo
Few events embody more fully the combination of nostalgia and tradition as does a day of point-to-point racing sponsored by the local foxhunting club. These races are a living link back to the days when fast horses flew over open country while the local folks cheered them on.
The running of the first hunt point-to-point is believed to have been hosted by the Warrenton Hunt (VA) on March 24, 1934. This was a time when Lowell Thomas narrated Movietone newsreels, which often featured updates on horse racing to the delight of a national audience. On that March day in ’34, an unassuming yearling colt, who would soon capture the imagination of the entire country, was frolicking in his pasture in Lexington, Kentucky. His name was Seabiscuit.
Meeting Martha, Part IV: A Very Grand Finale
Intrigued by a photo of a British foxhunter with smoldering eyes and apparent ice in her veins, and sensing a story, Leslie Wylie reached out to its subject, the Lady Martha Sitwell, in the hope she could arrange for an interview. The next thing she knew she had accepted Martha’s surprise invitation to come hunting with her in England (see “Meeting Martha, Part I: How I Got Invited to Foxhunt with British Royalty”; “Part II: Darling, You’re Mad!”; and “Part III, I Got Ledburied (and Liked It).” What follows is Part IV, the final episode of Wylie’s epic weekend.
Martha Sitwell and Winston at Saturday’s VWH/Cotswold joint meet. / All photos by Leslie Wylie
Do you still have skin on the inside of your thighs?
Firstly, thanks for your well-wishes regarding my busted-up face and bum elbow. Good news: I had my arm checked out by the physio and nothing is broken — just a bone bruise, it turns out.
Foxhunting In the Streets of Mayfair, And Other International Issues
Book Review by Martha A. Woodham
Fox, Anthony Gardner, Ardleevan Press, 2016, 313 pages. Available through Amazon.Set in a dystopian future, Fox by Anthony Gardner is a bizarrely imaginative look at the topical but unrelated themes of high tech government intrusion, politicians running amok, pandemic disease, and I don’t know what else. Oh, yes, foxhunting, too, but I think it all means England had better lift the ban on foxhunting before things really get out of hand.
Gardner, an Irish author and journalist based in London, takes the reader on a cheeky romp through the English countryside as good guys and bad guys chase each other in search of…well, a lot of things.
A deadly disease, fox flu, is ravaging Europe and must be prevented from reaching Great Britain. Foxhunters like Frank Smith have been enlisted to kill all foxes, including those who have made English cities home. Frank, MFH and huntsman of the new Hyde Park Hunt, spends his early morning hours galloping after hounds down dark London streets in a new urban version of foxhunting.
Meeting Martha, Part III: I Got Ledburied (and Liked It)
Intrigued by a photo of a British foxhunter with smoldering eyes and apparent ice in her veins, and sensing a story, Leslie Wylie reached out to its subject, the Lady Martha Sitwell, in the hope she could arrange for an interview. The next thing she knew she had accepted Martha’s surprise invitation to come hunting with her in England (see “Part I: How I Got Invited to Foxhunt with British Royalty” and “Part II: Darling, You’re Mad!“). What follows is Part III of Wylie’s epic weekend.
See the girl on the chestnut toward the left who is pointing her horse straight at a 10-foot tall stand of sticks? That’s me. / Viki Ross photo (http:/www.vikirossphotography.co.uk)
Breakfast of Champions
“So, let me get this straight: This is your first time foxhunting in the UK and you’re going out with the Ledbury?”
Around the fourth or fifth time someone asks me this, accompanied by a snort of laughter, I begin to feel a pinch of concern. I grew up hunting and have jumped plenty of proper-sized fences in my life but… it’s been a while. The Ledbury is widely regarded as one of the formidable hunts in the world. Was I in over my head?
On the morning of the hunt Martha comes floating down the spiral staircase into Manor Farm’s kitchen looking like she’s just stepped out of an antique foxhunt painting. Smartly outfitted in a canary vest and those vintage balloon-thigh breeches that no woman has been able to pull off since Jackie O, she exclaims “Good morning, darling!” then leans in conspiratorially.
Twelve Legs…Count ’Em…Twelve!
Nancy Stevens-Brown, out with the Red Rock Hounds (NV), captured this heart-warming image of three foxhound puppies exuberantly frolicking midst an explosion of snow and flailing legs.
Meeting Martha, Part II: ‘Darling, You’re Mad!’
Intrigued by a photo of a British foxhunter with smoldering eyes and apparent ice in her veins, and sensing a story, Leslie Wylie reached out to its subject, the Lady Martha Sitwell, in hopes that she could arrange for an interview. The next thing she knew she had accepted Martha’s surprise invitation to come hunting with her in England (see Part I, “How I Got Invited to Foxhunt with British Royalty”). What follows is Part II of Wylie’s epic weekend.
Photo by Viki Ross (www.vikirossphotography.co.uk)
A Grand Entrance
When the American guest-of-honor arrives to a dinner party over an hour late accompanied by a complete stranger from whom she has hitchhiked a ride, most people of a certain social stature wouldn’t be amused—and understandably so. But the Lady Martha Sitwell does not fall into the category of “most people.”
To rewind: The hosts of the next day’s meeting of the Ledbury Foxhounds (UK), the Leekes, had generously invited Martha and me to stay the night at their Manor Farm in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, so we’d be on-site for hunting the next morning. I was coming in from London and, because I am logistically challenged, I caught the wrong train and dug the hole even deeper by getting off at the wrong station.
The Witch With Warts
Illustration by Rosemary Coates
Back in the late 1950s, Sarah and I—both just nineteen—came to America. We had left Britain, where post-war ration books were still in use. Sarah was to train horses and riders for Jamie Kreuz at Bryn Mawr Farms outside Philadelphia. I was to work for the Insurance Company of North America in Philadelphia and help Sarah on weekends.
Jamie picked us up at the airport, but by the time we reached the farm we were in the midst of a snowstorm and a power outage. Our first night was spent in total darkness. It was perhaps merciful that we could not see the mess.
The Littered Fields of Ledbury: A Helmet-Cam View
The Ledbury hunting country is legendary—and legendarily terrifying. We accompany Leslie Wylie’s story with this helmet-cam video of British eventer Alice Pearson midst a large field of riders, passing horseless riders in field after field, until she takes a hard tumble herself. Posted February 21, 2016
Meeting Martha, Part I: How I Got Invited to Foxhunt With British Royalty
“Who was this woman…who could manage such a cool, yet hot-blooded stare?” / Photo by EquusPix PhotographyIt all started a couple months ago when a friend posited the classic ice-breaker question, “If you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?”
Bypassing all sensible responses—the President, the Pope, Peyton Manning—I skipped straight to a personage whom I knew virtually nothing about: The Lady Martha Sitwell.
Ever since we ran this photograph of Martha in a 2013 Horse Nation story about sidesaddle foxhunting (“The Craic Heard Round the World“), I’ve been transfixed. Who was this woman who, despite being mud-splattered, mascara-smeared, and soaked to the bone by icy Irish rain, could manage such a simultaneously cool yet hot-blooded stare?