Literature

Book Review by Norman Fine

The Lady of the Chase, Alastair Jackson, Merlyn Unwin Books (UK), 2018, Hardcover, 208 pp, illustrated, available direct from publisher, book stores, and popular online sources.

Daphne Moore is Alastair Jackson’s Lady of the Chase. Before reading this new book, I knew of Daphne Moore only as an author. Her book, Foxhounds, published in 1981, is an excellent account of the revolt against the ponderous and massively-built English foxhound of the early twentieth century and the development of the lighter, active, and athletic animal we know today as the Modern English foxhound.

I learned a lot about foxhounds in Moore’s book, but I didn’t get to know Daphne Moore in the least. Now, Alastair Jackson’s biography of this fascinating lady has brought her to life for me—her joys (hunting), her problems (finances), her talents (writing and painting), and her sorrows (the loss of the one, brief love in her life to World War II). For any foxhunter with a passion for the hunting field, foxhounds, foxhunting people, and revered names still on our lips today, Jackson’s book will be a delight.

Martha Doyle illustration by Edwin Megargee

Permit me, Muse, to sing the praises of Martha Doyle, a great lady in her own right and the noblest hunter I have ever seen or known. If I ever did see a better, I would not admit it, for that would be disloyalty to Martha’s memory and I am the High Priest of her cult. Many admire her, a certain few revered her greatness, but I adored her. She had my heart and perhaps, in a grudging, spinsterish, slightly contemptuous way, I had hers. You give your heart, I believe, to only one woman, one countryside, one horse, and one dog.

Blowing Home at Warrenton / Douglas Lees photo

‘Saddleford Crossroads at half-past eleven,’
Only last month, it would seem, we were there,
Rising so early to get there by seven,
Rubbing our hands in the chill morning air.

Time must have flown by, for that was September.
Horses half fit, and the country quite blind,
Details of every run since, we remember,
Sorrows and joys of each day call to mind.

Book Review by Lori Brunnen

Conscious Riding: A Horseman’s Diary, Paul Striberry, Orange Publishing, Southern Pines, NC, 2016, soft cover $15.95, Kindle $9.95Even at the moment he came into the world, Paul Striberry found the ways of people mysterious. He was denied the usual exit route and made his appearance via Caesarean section, the anesthesia associated with which he suspects may have induced his short attention span and low frustration tolerance.

“Alice (mum) goes back to work, and leaves me in the care of Migraine Minerva, a nightmare nanny with a curious aversion to children. She feeds me when I’m not hungry and puts me to bed when I’m wide awake.”

“The horses are my round-the-clock companions. I watch them grazing in the sunshine and galloping through my dreams. They nip my boredom in the bud and fend off Minerva’s vexations. I’m happy with my four-legged friends on the wallpaper.”

Anthony Trollope illustration by Spy in Vanity FairHunting Sketches by Anthony Trollope was published in 1865 and contained eight chapters, including "The Man Who Hunts and Doesn’t Like It," "The Man Who Hunts and Does Like It," and the six chapters that follow. Here is "The Lady Who Rides to Hounds" from this classic by Trollope.

Among those who hunt there are two classes of hunting people who always like it—hunting parsons and hunting ladies. That it should be so is natural enough. In the life and habits of parsons and ladies there is much that is antagonistic to hunting, and they who suppress this antagonism do so because they are Nimrods at heart. But the riding of these horsemen under difficulties, horsemen and horsewomen, leaves a strong impression on the casual observer of hunting; for to such an one it seems that the hardest riding is forthcoming exactly where no hard riding should be expected. On the present occasion I will, if you please, confine myself to the lady who rides to hounds, and will begin with an assertion, which will not be contradicted, that the number of such ladies is very much on the increase.

Book Review by Lori Brunnen

Tally Ho Palm Beach, Paul Striberry, Orange Publishing, Southern Pines, NC, 2017, 228 pages, paperback ($15.95) and Kindle ($9.95)Real Estate agent Alice Pleasance Liddell literally “runs into” the local Palm Beach Hunt at the beginning of this oddly charming romp of a book. This chance encounter plunges Alice headfirst into the social whirl of the affluent, and not so affluent hunt members.

After meeting the Master’s gentle son Clayton she realizes the Hunt is deeply in debt to...well, everyone. All as a result of...wait for it...a Seminole curse. Amid hounds, hunting, and horses, Alice is determined to save both the hunt country and restore Everglades Hall. Oh, and reverse the Indian curse. All while awash in the whirl of hunt balls, races, and polo matches.

Review by Lori Brunnen

The Foxhunter’s Guide to Life & Love by J. Harris Anderson, Blue Cardinal Press, Virginia, 2017, 216 pages, $16.95 (paperback) or $7.99 (e-book). Available from Amazon, tack shops, and booksellers.“Thumper” Billington IV, MFH of John Anderson’s fictional Montfair Hunt in Virginia, is back. This time we find Thumper rebounding from a failed impetuous marriage to a much younger woman, and embarking on a tentative and tender new romance. Thumper traverses the difficult geography of romance with somewhat more difficulty than he does the geography of the hunting field. Sometimes at a gallop, sometimes finding his progress thwarted by an unseen hazard, Thumper uses seven of his “Foxhunter’s Secrets” to navigate beyond the hunt field to a fulfilling relationship. Because, as difficult to accept as it is sometimes, there is life beyond hunting. Really.

Each of the seven secrets are presented by way of the story and summed up with a take-home tip. This “Tally-Ho Tip” is a tongue-in-cheek take-away lesson for those that need things short and sweet. In other words---men.

Foxhunting juniors with Mr. Stewart's Cheshire Foxhounds / Jim Graham photo

The children are home for the holidays now,
A gay little crowd and a sporting one too,
They go where the grown-ups go, careless of how
Their ponies get over, so long as they do.

Arrived at the meet they are wild to begin,
And can’t understand all the waste of good time
Spent drinking brown sherry or horrid sloe-gin,
And deem it a most unforgivable crime.

Lionel Edwards illustrationThe Bowler and the Wide-Awake,
    The Topper and the Straw,
The Homburg and the Helmet
    May be hats without a flaw;
The Bonnet of the Highlanders,
    The Busby of the Greys
Are hats we shall remember
    To the end of all our days;
The Jockey-cap of sunlit silk,
    The Bishop’s Shovel-black
Can honor a cathedral town
    Or grace a racing track.
But the neatest, sweetest headgear
    Be it e’er so crushed or crude
Is the Hat upon the Skyline
    When a forward fox is viewed.

From Scarlet Blue and Green: A Book of Sporting Verse by Duncan Fife, with Illustrations by Cecil Aldin, MacMillan and Company, London, 1932

I am Dan—ten years old, and a little bit blind—
But it doesn’t annoy me, for people, I find,
Seem to vie with each other in being most kind,
                                                  For I’m pensioned.

When the weather is wet and the wind blowing cold,
And the others troop out for their walk when they’re told,
I curl up in my chair by the fire, for I’m old—
                                                  And I’m pensioned.