Martin Letts, MFH / photo courtesy of Daphne Wood, MFH
John Martin Letts died February 28, 2022, at the age of eighty-eight, still fulfilling his position as a Master of the College Valley/North Northumberland Foxhounds (UK). Appointed Master in 1964, he held the position for fifty-eight seasons.
His hounds hunt the hill country of the English/Scottish Border. A highly regarded hound breeder, the bloodlines of his Fell/Modern English crosses are to be found in many hunt kennels today in Britain, Ireland, and America. He was formerly huntsman of the pack, which he skillfully bred and assembled. Martin Letts was well-known in North America and frequently judged the major hound shows here.
In his professional life, Martin Letts was the long-serving managing director of the family firm of the same name, the publisher of appointment diaries and journals in Dalkeith. With his brother Anthony, the pair constitutes the sixth generation of the family to run the firm of five-hundred employees worldwide. Letts was established in 1796.
Intelligent, knowledgeable, and usually wearing an expression that rendered him somewhat unapproachable, Martin Letts possessed a disarming wit, often masking his huge heart and deep knowledge and love of nature, the countryside, hunting, and humanity. More recently, when he followed hounds on foot, he was seldom parted from his totemic garb of flat cap, checked shirt and tie, heavy tweed jacket, and emblematic shepherd’s crook.
Martin Letts was born in 1934 and brought up in Kent, the elder of two brothers and four sisters. He followed his father at Marlborough College where, as he recalled in his memoir, Memories of My Life at the College Valley, he was soon following the Tedworth foxhounds and their kindly professional huntsman George Goodwin on his bicycle. He records hunting with his English professor, Mr Gough, in the ancient Savernake Forest when a low branch claimed the teacher’s top hat and ginger wig. The hunt Master’s daughter galloped to the front and exclaimed, “Daddy, Daddy, Mr Gough has been scalped!” The hapless fellow was forever after known by the students as ‘Wiggy.’ Letts was instrumental, with fellow pupils Nick Wykes and James Bouskell, in establishing the Marlborough College beagles, now flourishing as the Palmer/Marlborough.
After two years of National Service in Malaya, Letts joined the family publishing firm and, for six seasons, hunted the Bolebroke beagles in Kent and also the Eastern Counties otterhounds. From 1958, Letts records: “The highlight of the sporting year was our fortnight’s visit to the hills of Northumberland in which one had to balance hound craft and alcoholic pressures.” It was on a Northumberland trip in the early 1960s that Letts was introduced to the noted Master of the College Valley, and breeder of the hill hound, Sir Alfred Goodson (Master from 1924−79). Letts was to become Sir Alfred’s worthy Joint-Master, huntsman, and successor, hunting the hounds from 1964 until 2004.
“Luck has an undeniable part to play in hunting,” recalled Letts in his memoirs, and the best bit of luck he had was to meet and marry Sir Alfred’s step-granddaughter Eildon who joined him in the Mastership in 1987.
The newlyweds lived at Kilham, outside Wooler, where they presided with much informal hospitality and friendship. Alastair Jackson, later director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, then hunting the West Percy, and William Nunneley, who went on to hunt several packs including the Morpeth, were frequent recipients of their kindness.
“I don’t mind a man coming to Sunday lunch, but I draw the line that he is still at the dining room table on Monday morning,” Letts was once heard to observe. Years later, William Nunneley recalls Letts coming to him for dinner in Yorkshire with the ashes of a great friend, Geoffrey Cragghill, Master of the Dummer beagles, in his car. Letts had been charged with scattering them in Northumberland. As port was being served, Letts brought the urn to the dining table, saying, “Geoffrey never missed a glass of port, and he is not going to miss one now.”
But what of Letts the huntsman, Master, and hound breeder? “In my opinion he was one of the very best with an eye for a quality hound,” says Captain Ian Farquhar, former Duke of Beaufort’s Joint-Master and huntsman. At the Blencathra, long-serving huntsman Barry Todhunter would often exchange breeding programmes with Letts. “He understood the Fell hound, and the bloodlines he used knitted well together for their ability to hunt on their own.” Martin Scott, the noted hound breeder, recalls College Valley Wager (1991) hunting with the great Ben Hardaway, III, MFH of the Midland pack in America in 1999. “It was an epic hunt of three hours and twenty minutes in 72-degree heat. Hounds eventually arrived at a high wire fence. Wager cleared it in one whilst the remainder of the pack went underneath.”
Ian McKie joined Letts in the College Valley/North Northumberland Mastership as huntsman (the two hunts had amalgamated in 1982) in 2003, for thirteen seasons. “I owe Martin a huge amount. He will be remembered as a hound breeder amongst the very best alongside Sir Alfred Goodson, Sir Peter Farquhar, Ikey Bell, and Sir Newton Rycroft. He was also an extraordinary judge of character and excellent wit.”
Letts’s sound judgment of character is born out by Colin Brown, long-serving Payroll Manager at Letts’s Diaries. “Mr Martin, as we knew him, believed strongly in the value of family. Many of the employees were related. In his heyday, there were four hundred working in the factory at Dalkeith. He was a character but also very much respected.”
Dickie Jeffreys, now seventy-six, whipped-in to Martin Letts for more than forty years. Jeffreys recalls, “He might shout at us during the day, but this was only because of his desire to have his hounds hunt at their very best. And they did. They loved him and trusted him. We had so many five-mile points it became a given. In the evening to me, and anyone else who may have felt his ire during the day, he was charm itself.”
In 1972, Ben Hardaway and Martin Wood III, MFH of the Live Oak Hounds in Florida, took a day off from grouse shooting in Yorkshire to visit Letts and the College Valley kennels. “There began a profound friendship and hound breeding programme that has lasted to this day,” says Marty Wood. “Our kennels are brim-full of College Valley blood.” Marty’s wife Daphne, also a Joint-Master of the Live Oak, explains why: “We have got woods and swamp and wide-open spaces. You have to trust the hounds to hunt on their own.”
In 2007, Letts accepted an invitation by the Woods to judge the Southern Hound Show in Florida. “He arrived in a light aircraft at a local airport, fully dressed in tweeds with his shepherd’s crook in his hand. It was the first and possibly the last time a shepherd’s crook has been allowed to accompany a passenger,” says Marty Wood.
In a recent tribute to Martin Letts, Marty and Daphne Wood write, “Martin was, still is, and always will be a mentor to us and the Live Oak Hounds [and to] many others. His impact and influence will live on, as well it should. To be considered a good friend by such a man was an honor, and we will remember him fondly, gratefully, and often.”
Such was Martin Letts’s love of hounds that for many years he kept a photograph of College Valley Raglan (1966) in his wallet pocket. Eventually torn and tattered, his wife substituted the photograph of Raglan with one of herself. “I thought it diplomatic not to re-arrange her gift,” said Letts. Martin Letts is survived by his wife Eildon and daughter Diana.
Posted March 17, 2022