Tracy Cover’s Brandywine Is Virginia Field Hunter Champion
Tracey Cover receives Championship trophy from (l-r) Catherine Berger and Linda Armbrust, MFH. / Betsy Parker photo
Tracey Cover from the Middleburg Hunt swept the boards at the 2013 Virginia Field Hunter Championship on Sunday, October 20 with her elegant bay, Brandywine. Judged Best Turned Out early in the day, she went on to win the 2013 Virginia Field Hunter Championship against a highly competent field of riders on some brilliant field hunters. The event had been postponed one week due to a three-day rainfall that dumped seven inches of rain on Virginia’s hunting country.
This year’s championships were hosted by the Blue Ridge Hunt at Woodley in recognition of Barbara Batterton’s win on Linda Armbrust’s Nicki in 2012. Woodley, the home of Brooke and Michelle Middleton, is the well-known venue for the Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point Races and the Blue Ridge Fall Races. Spectators are able to view nearly the entire racecourse panorama from a gently rising hillside along the eastern edge of the course.
The Clipper that Stands in the Stall at the Top
Illustration by Lionel EdwardsNot long ago we polled our readers and were pleased to find that the great majority of you enjoyed reading the classic foxhunting poems. Here’s one such classic that to me best expresses the pride, gratitude, and love the foxhunter feels for that one special horse—the most generous, the most reliable, the most gentlemanly of all we’ve had—that takes us over the day’s obstacles and brings us safely home.
Go strip him, lad! Now, sir, I think you’ll declare
Such a picture you’ve never set eyes on before,
He was bought in at Tatt’s for three hundred I swear,
And he’s worth all the money to look at, and more;
For the pick of the basket, the show of the shop,
Is the Clipper that stands in the stall at the top.
In the records of racing I read their career,
There was none of the sort that could gallop and stay,
At Newmarket his sire was the best of the year,
And the Yorkshiremen boast of his dam to this day;
But never a likelier foal did she drop
Than this Clipper that stands in the stall at the top.
Foxhunter/Patriot to Be Honored in Bronze
Jonas Cattell from “Memoirs of the Gloucester Foxhunting Club” by William Milnor, Jr., Philadelphia, 1830Jonas Cattell, foxhunter and revolutionary hero, will be honored with a seven-foot bronze statue to be erected in Haddonfield, New Jersey. We foxhunters know about Cattell’s exploits in the hunting field thanks to Alexander Mackay-Smith’s classic book, The American Foxhound: 1747–1967, but I never knew about Cattell’s heroism during the American Revolution. He turned the misfortune of his arrest by Hessian mercenaries into advantage for the Colonial cause.
Cattell whipped-in for the Gloucester Foxhunting Club, the first organized foxhunting club in North America. It was founded in 1766 by a group of Philadelphia gentlemen and named for Gloucester County, New Jersey, directly across the Delaware River. According to Mackay-Smith, quoting Clifton Lisle describing their sport, “When Cupid, the huntsman who succeeded Old Natty, was in the saddle with Jonas Cattell whipping-in to him, amazing runs were made.”
“In 1798, for example, one is recorded that went to Salem, a distance of forty miles by the map from find to kill. Another ended on the ice of the Delaware, a Jersey fox crossing it with fifteen couple of hounds not a hundred yards from his brush—to be rolled over just short of the Jersey shore. Robert Wharton, president of the club at that time, was the first man up, next to Jonas Cattell, the whipper-in, who had crossed the river on foot.”
Field Hunter Championship of North America Is Scheduled
The 2013 Field Hunter Championship of North America will be held in Virginia from Monday, September 30 to Sunday, October 6. Competitors will hunt four days, with fixtures at Keswick Hunt, Casanova Hunt, Snickersville Hounds, and Piedmont Fox Hounds. The Finals will be held on Sunday, October 6 at Glenwood Park. The final day at […]
Legendary Show Jumper Snowman Took the Kids Foxhunting
Snowman and Harry de Leyer. Painting by Joan Porter Jannaman, courtesy of the International Museum of the Horse, Kentucky Horse Park
Harry de Leyer’s first look at Snowman was between the slats of the truck bound for the killers. Harry had had trouble with his old station wagon, and he arrived late to the horse auction in the Pennsylvania Amish farming country. It was over, and there was only one trailer left in the parking lot. It was always the last trailer to load.
Midst the fearful and fidgeting horses crowded together on the bare floor for their last journey, one plain-looking gray stood apart for his calmness and self possession. Harry had driven to the auction in the hope of finding an inexpensive school horse for his riding students at the Knox School on Long Island, so he asked the trucker if he could see the gray. The gelding was missing a shoe, had bloody knees, and rubs on his chest from a heavy harness, but he was well-made and had a kind eye. The trucker had paid the “killer’s price” of sixty dollars. Harry was indecisive, but something in the horse’s composed demeanor spoke to him. Harry paid the man eighty dollars—the most he had planned to bid for any horse—and took him home.
Legendary Show Jumper Snowman Took the Kids Foxhunting
Harry deLeyer and Snowman
Harry deLeyer, born in the Netherlands in 1928, died last summer at the age of ninety-three.
After the Nazis rolled over the Low Countries and much of the European Continent in the spring of 1940, Harry’s family farm became a way-station for the Dutch resistance during World War II. Fallen Allied airmen attempting to return to their bases in England and Jews attempting to escape capture by the Nazis were sheltered in a cellar secretly dug out next to the barn and covered by a manure pile. After Allied bombing raids, twelve-year-old Harry would ride out at night, helping to search for surviving Allied airmen. One pilot died of his injuries at the deLeyer farm. Harry’ father buried him and mailed the dog tags to his family in North Carolina. Five years after the war ended, the pilot’s parents sponsored the deLeyer Family to emigrate to North Carolina. A few years later, the deLeyer family moved to Long Island, and Harry became a riding instructor at an all-girls school. And he needed one more school horse.
D. Harcourt Lees, Jr., ex-MFH
In nearly a half century of foxhunting, I have never seen a more handsome, elegant, and classically turned-out man astride a horse in the hunting field than Harcourt Lees. Nor did I ever meet a kinder or more pleasant gentleman in the hunting field. For me, he epitomized the grace and courtliness of a bygone age. It was an honor to know him, and I shall never forget him. What follows is the obituary of this sportsman/businessman/civic leader as released. -Ed.
With the passing of Douglas Harcourt Lees Jr. on July 21, Warrenton and Fauquier County, Virginia lost not only a respected businessman and sportsman but also a living link to a simpler time of grace and civility. Mr. Lees, 91, suffered a stroke on July 9 and was hospitalized briefly before returning to “Blackrock,” the Lees’ family home on Springs Road.
Sir Alfred Munnings In Open Air
We have all admired the paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings and his portrayal of the horse in motion—flowing, graceful, muscles rippling, indescribably beautiful. Not to mention his figures of elegant ladies riding sidesaddle and his scarlet-coated huntsmen. Lovely paintings, but being unfamiliar with the artist as a man, I saw them in only two dimensions.
Then the National Sporting Library and Museum (NSLM) in Middleburg, Virginia mounted this once-in-a-lifetime exhibit of almost seventy Munnings paintings with revealing descriptions of each work, and the man came to life for me. And learning about the man brought the paintings to life.
One of the elegant ladies riding sidesaddle is Munnings’ first wife, a troubled soul who attempted suicide on her wedding night. This part of Munnings’ story is told in Jonathan Smith’s fascinating book, Summer in February, just released as a motion picture. Other paintings of lady and horse are of his second wife. Looking at the paintings of these two women with my new-found knowledge, the differences in mood and tension were there to see.
Foxhunter Stimulates Children to Read
Karin Winegar brought her horse and her book for a show-and-tell and book reading.
Foxhunting Life is always mining for a good story. And so, upon the conclusion of each hunting season we ask (on our FaceBook page), “What do you do in the off-season?” We got a dandy answer (and a story!) from author/journalist/foxhunter Karin Winegar of St. Paul, Minnesota. She’s introducing inner-city youngsters to horses and reading.
Karin, whose reports from Ireland and New Zealand you have seen on FHL, recently held a reading at Folwell School in Minneapolis for her first children’s book, Tina of Grand Avenue (Horsefeed Press). Tina was born too small and had an imperfect leg, but she had an “I can do it!” attitude that made her fearless, so Karin donated her to the St. Paul Mounted Patrol. Tina went through special training, encountering everything from sirens to gunfire. Karin’s book tells the true story of Tina’s adventures and her career with Officer Mark.
Betty Davis, ex-MFH, Dead at Ninety
Mrs. Putnam (Betty) Davis, ex-MFH of the Rombout Hunt and the Stone Valley Hunt (NY) for over thirty years, passed away peacefully on Sunday, June 2, 2013. She was ninety years old. A passionate foxhunter, she also served on the MFHA Board of Directors for her district. Betty was raised in New York City, spending […]