Literature

Book Review by Dulany Noble

True to the Line, A Hunting Life, Adrian Dangar, Quiller, UK, 2017, Hardbound, $31.50, available at Horse Country Saddlery

I looked forward to reading this book by Adrian Dangar because I love stories about foxhunting, and, to be clear, this book is about foxhunting and about hunting all sorts of quarries, not just foxes. It is not about fox chasing. If you are reading this, I am sure you know that foxhunting in England was not strictly for the sport. It was to kill foxes that harm the livestock of the landowners and farmers in the country and to control the prolific fox population.

Book Review by Caroline Treviranus Leake

Still Horse Crazy After All These Years, James Wofford, Trafalgar Square Books, North Pomfret, Vermont, 2021, $27.95

James Wofford was born in 1944 in Kansas. His father was stationed at Fort Riley, longtime home to the U.S. Cavalry. Early on, at the age of three, Jim received ‘riding lessons’ from his older sister and brothers, including jumping little fences on his 12-hand Shetland pony, Merrylegs. He would grab the horn of his Western saddle and ‘hang on.’ His siblings led the pony over the fences after which they allowed Jim to jump on his own.

As a result of that early and sophisticated training regimen (or despite it), during Jim’s competitive career, he earned team silver medals in two Olympic Games, an individual and a team bronze at two World Championships, and team gold at the Pan American Games. He also won five US National Championships (each on a different horse) and two Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Events on two different horses.

Illustration by Jane Gaston from "Lost Hound," Robert Ashcom, The Derrydale Press and Millwood House, 1999, 161 pages

If you’ve ever walked the interstate
You know the dream of summer thunder with
No rain and heat in solemn surge like fate
Gone out of sync―where eighteen-wheelers brew
Their shouted, tire-born songs with diesel breath;
And fast food wrappers feed the session’s mood.

Learning to Handle Hounds in the Field

Frank Freeman: 21 years as huntsman to the Pytchley  /   Painting by George Wright (British)

What follows is an excerpt from The History of Foxhunting by Patrick Chalmers. Therein, the following text is quoted from Lord Chaplin’s introduction to Lord Henry Bentinck’s Foxhounds and Their Handling in the Field.

I was rather late one morning in arriving at a gorse covert in the Belvoir Country...into which the hounds had just been put to draw. I...saw at once it wasn’t the huntsman who was in the covert with the hounds, and I was told it was the first whip, Freeman, who had never hunted them before, the huntsman being disabled by a fall the previous day. So I went into the covert to see if I could help him.

Here’s a traditional old hunting poem of unknown origin, probably often sung in the pub. I run across it every so often in the literature, and I don’t know why I never published it before in Foxhunting Life. I always enjoy it, especially the cocky, swagger of this tough old hound, as he describes himself to you.

Book Review by Dulany Noble, MFH

Paving Paradise, A Paradise Gap Novel by J. Harris Anderson, Blue Cardinal Press 2020, Paperbound, $17.95

What a fun read. And a fun ride! Paving Paradise is the third book in a series by J. Harris Anderson that takes place in the idyllic hunt country of Crutchfield County, Virginia. You do not have to read the first two books to enjoy this one, but it might take you a few chapters to keep all the characters straight.

On the plus side, having read this one, you will be on familiar terms with the characters―a bonus―when you decide to read the first two books, as I must now do.

Wendell Hawken / Matthew Klein photo

Introducing a new poem by the contemporary Poet Laureate of foxhunting.

When I rode,
I rode on a loose rein,
kept a good horse

Book Review by FHL

Ashmere Books, 2020, Steven D. Price, cover illustration by Ronnie Mutch, illustrated, color, softcover, 215 pages, $19.95. Click to purchase.

Writer, rider, raconteur Steven D. Price and I were making the long walk from an overflowing General Parking area to the Grand Prix jumper ring at the Upperville Colt and Pony Show.

We trudged slowly under a glaring mid-day sun on this June day. Steve was winding up a story—one from his trove of equestrian assignments during his days in the New York publishing business. Over those years he had the opportunity to meet, traveled with, and even ride with numerous world-famous equestrian personalities. This story was hilarious. He finished just as we set up our folding chairs on the hillside, and I blurted a suggestion that, as it turned out, he had heard before.

A Conversation with the Author, Grosvenor Merle-Smith

The Hunting Horn: What to Know and How to Know It, Grosvenor Merle-Smith, introduction by Tony Leahy, former president, MFHA, Dementi Milestone Publishing, 2021, hardcover, landscape, color, 8.5 x 11 inches, 288 pages, ISBN 978-1-7360885-5-5, $75.00. Order from the website, or contact via email.

Grosvenor Merle-Smith’s new book is a labor of love. Between its covers, you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know―even things you never knew you wanted to know―about hunting horns.

Your editor knows of no resource that compares to this meticulously researched, artistically designed, and lavishly produced book. The book’s title and cover design were heavily influenced, with the author’s tongue in his cheek, by an old pamphlet written by L.C. Cameron for Köhler and Sons, The Hunting Horn: What to Blow and How to Blow It. That pamphlet was the subject of a recent Foxhunting Life article. For any foxhunting library, these two publications―Merle-Smith’s and Cameron’s―constitute the sum and substance of just about all that's known concerning the hunting horn, its history, materials, manufacture, sources, and music used in hunting the fox with hounds.

Robin Bledsoe, bookseller, at right with customers...two members of the mounted police force...in the backyard of her bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Robin
As I close my bookshop and open a new chapter in my bookselling career, Norm has asked me to say a few words about my almost half century of selling horse books.

Ever since I received Somebody’s Pony for Christmas 1952, I’ve cherished and collected horse books. After earning an M.A. in art history and starting a publishing career, I began selling out-of-print books in my two fields of interest, horses and art. I named the business Blue Rider Books after a group of German artists who often painted horses. I found some books in nearby book barns, ran some classified ads, mailed out a list, and so it all began—100-plus catalogues, dozens of trade fairs and horse shows, and tens of thousands of books ago.