Literature

Book Review by Steven D. Price

Racing Time: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Liberation, Patrick Smithwick, Dementi Milestone Publishing, Manakin-Sabot, VA, 2019, cloth, illustrations by Sam Robinson, 481 pagesIn 2006 Patrick Smithwick published Racing My Father, a memoir of his legendary steeplechaser forebear, A.P. "Paddy" Smithwick. Six years later came Flying Change, the account of the author's youth as a race rider under his father's tutelage before leaving the track for a writing and teaching career until the sport's siren song drew him back.

Now comes Racing Time. Subtitled A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Liberation, it is at once a celebration of the author's appreciation of family and friends, both human and equine, and an elegiac recollection of three men with whom Smithwick's life was as closely entwined as the braids on a hunting whip lash: the late former-jockeys-turned trainers Tom Voss and Dickie Small (names familiar to all race enthusiasts) and groom Speedy Kiniel.

Janet Ladner photo

Photographer Janet Ladner was out following the Mid-Devon Foxhounds when she came across these wild ponies taking shelter from the snow. I have hunted on Dartmoor, in England’s West Country, and found it to be a fascinating landscape of bleakness and beauty, with visible reminders of cultures that serially take one back in time all the way to prehistory. While hunting, one comes across ditches left by tin mining activity that began in pre-Roman times and continued to the twentieth century, evidence of farm tillage going back to the Bronze age in the parallel rows running across the slopes, and standing stones erected in prehistoric times. During quiet moments when hounds check, one can allow the imagination to soar.

For me, Dartmoor also conjures memories of cold winter boyhood days at home, reading the spooky mystery, Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the third of his Sherlock Holmes novels to be published, and this Dartmoor mystery filled my young head with delicious terror.

By coincidence, Janet Ladner’s photos of the ponies on Dartmoor arrived just as writer/editor Steve Price sent me this foxhunting poem, written by Arthur Conan Doyle. A confluence of Dartmoor and Doyle. Who knew he wrote such poetry?

When Bay Cockburn was huntsman of the Loudoun West Hunt (VA), he would allow the author to bring the bitches home to whelp in a quiet place during the point-to-point season when he was busy racing. “It was so much fun,” says Wendell.

Beneath the cone of heat lamp light,
      in the time it takes to break
a sack, wipe clear a face, and head-down shake
      all wet away, I urge this not-yet-
breathing-thing: Come in,

Illustration by Lionel EdwardsIn our last issue we published a short biography of Scottish poet Will Ogilvie written by Erica Libhart, the Mars Technical Services Librarian at the National Sporting Library & Museum. Erica accompanied her article with three of Ogilvie’s poems. Richard Power, also a regular contributor from Ireland to Foxhunting Life, commented that of all Ogilvie’s poems, "The Veteran" is his 'favourite.' It happens to be one of my all time 'favorite' hunting poems as well.

Illustration by Lionel Edwards A few lines from this stirring poem were used by the author in his tribute to Lady Melissa Brooke. The work is a favorite of many foxhunters, so why not have it all?

Will Ogilvie in 1901. Kerry & Co. of Sydney, from the collection of The State Library of Queensland / Wikimedia Commons. Many sportsmen have been inspired by country life to put brush to canvas. So too have many whose talents have a more literary cast. The canon of fiction, prose, verse, and song generated by the lovers of country sports and the lifestyle in which they are set fill many shelves at the National Sporting Library & Museum. The poems and songs of William H. Ogilvie are among them.

William (or more commonly, Will) Ogilvie was born into a large family based in the Scottish border town of Kelso during the summer of 1869. He was educated at Kelso High School before attending Fettes College in Edinburgh where he was a good athlete, participating in rugby and running, and an excellent student, winning a prize for Latin verse.

No fear, suspended
in slow time.
Afterward,

recite your name,
say you’re fine.
Believe it.

Climb back on to prove it.
Ride along, wondering
how you got to Goose Creek –

My Half Farm, in Wentzville, Missouri, was a part of the main fixture of the Bridlespur Hunt Club (IL) from 1957 to 2006, before urbanization forced the club to relocate further west. My Half Farm is still home to hunt horses, the My Half Farm Beagles, and is a regular fixture for the Three Creek Bassets.

The Old Coop on My Half Farm

The Old Coop she stands bended, a dip across her bow
Where time has weathered wood, barely even two-six now.
Many years have passed and she beckons as if to say,
Do you remember when the hunters came my way?

The Old Coop sits heavy, where imposing she once stood.
Many a hunter snapped his knees, back when times were good.
Up and over they did go, landing downhill, facing north.
Over I've flown many times on beasts now left this Earth.

How pleasant the yellow butter
melting on white kernels, the meniscus
of red wine that coats the insides of our goblets

where we sit with sturdy friends as old as we are
after shucking the garden's last Silver Queen
and setting husks and stalks aside for the horses