John Pickering and the End of an Era
John Pickering, one of Irish foxhunting’s witty raconteurs and colorful characters, passed away recently in his adopted town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. In his career he hunted the East Down Foxhounds, the Golden Vale Foxhounds, the Oriel Harriers, and was whipper-in and huntsman to the legendary Master of the Bermingham and North Galway Foxhounds, the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith.
I first met him when he was hunting the Oriel Harriers in the 1980s. At a meet north of Dundalk, in County Louth, hounds put a fox away from Bell’s Covert, but he only ran a couple of hundred yards before going to ground in an earth in the middle of a field. To make matters worse his best hound Heckler was down in the earth with only his stern in view. Pickering sat casually back in the saddle and remarked, “I think I will have to take that hound to a shrink.”
“Why”, I asked, to which Pickering replied, “Because he thinks he’s a bloody terrier!”
Peter Patrick, Lord Hemphill, ex-MFH
Peter Patrick, the Fifth Baron Hemphill, passed away on Friday, April 6, 2012 at the Galway Clinic after a short illness. He and his wife Lady Anne Hemphill are well-known to many North American sportsmen and women who have hunted with the Galway Blazers. His father, the Fourth Baron, married his mother Emily Sears in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
Lord Hemphill was an exceptional individual—charming, entertaining, and a great friend to the Galway Blazers where he served as Joint-Master in the heyday of hunting in Ireland. He made his estate, Tulira Castle, regularly available to the hunt. American film director John Huston was a fellow Joint-Master when he lived at St Clerans not far from Athenry. The two men hunted and socialised together with their respective wives, Toni and Lady Anne, the latter serving as Field Master of the Blazers for many years. They all sailed frequently in Galway Bay with many of the prominent visiting Hollywood film stars, often visiting the Aran Islands where a sing-song was always on the agenda at a local hostelry!
The Galway Blazers at Athenry
Joint-Master David McCarthy over one of what sporting artist Snaffles called “The Biggest Walls.” / Noel Mullins photoA meet of the Galway Blazers around the medieval walled town of Athenry, County Galway in the heart of the hunt country is not to be missed. Before traffic congested the town centre, meets were traditionally held at Higgins’ Bar. Masters and huntsmen would be served a stirrup cup by the proprietor Brendan Higgins who, with his sister Mary Josephine (my mother), hunted with the pack.
Horse Tales and Hunt Talk
Where else but in the hunting fields of Ireland could you have found such larger-than-life and totally disparate characters as Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, Elsie Morgan, American John Huston, and Thady Ryan? Sadly, those four have passed on, but others—Michael Dempsey, Willie Leahy, and Aidan O’Connell—wear big shoes as well and are very much with us still! Also included in this delightful book of personality profiles are North America’s Nancy Penn-Smith Hannum and a smattering of French and Australian characters whom you should also meet.
Photo-journalist Noel Mullins is a regular contributor to The Irish Field, and his work has also been published in Horse and Hound, Baily’s, Hunting and Country Illustrated in England, and The Chronicle of the Horse and Foxhunting Life in the U.S.
“I started hunting with the Galway Blazers with Michael Dempsey when I was eight years old in 1952 on the milkman’s pony, Teapot, but only after I helped him on his delivery rounds!” recalls Mullins.
The Green Spring Valley Hounds at Dover and Dark Hollow
Many of the MFHA-registered packs in North America have close associations with Ireland and the UK either through hunt staff, field members, jockeys, or through the many Irish and British field hunters and racehorses that grace their hunting fields. One such well known pack is the Green Spring Valley Hounds in Maryland, USA. They met a few weeks ago at Ned Finney’s farm at Dover and Dark Hollow, which is close to the Maryland Hunt Cup racecourse and Shawan Downs racecourse.
Remembering Lady Molly
Continuing my theme on the intersection of people and places, FHL subscribers might remember the story that Noel Mullins sent us last month about the Galway Blazers’ Puppy Show. The story was accompanied by a Mullins photograph of the Blazers’ long-serving MFH and huntsman Michael Dempsey. I was thrilled to see the photo, for I have my own memories of Michael Dempsey.
Before Dempsey became Master of the Blazers, he whipped-in to the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith and the Bermingham and North Galway hounds. In that capacity both he and she are principal characters in one of the stories—a true ghost story that happened forty years ago—in my book, Foxhunting Adventures. So Mullins and I exchanged memories of our mutual connections.
John Denis, MFH
The intersection of people and places is sometimes wondrously coincidental. Irish photojournalist Noel Mullins and I have recently discovered foxhunting friends we have in common from County Galway some forty years since. More than friends, these were larger-than-life individuals enormously influential in the process that turned each of us into the foxhunting men we became.
Fast forward, and here is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my book, Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story, describing a large painting hanging in the dining room in Bermingham House, County Galway, home of the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, MFH:
“Dominating the end wall above the sideboard and presiding in spirit equal to Molly’s presence, gray-whiskered John Denis surveys all from the saddle. This dramatic nineteenth-century portrait of man, horse, and hound in a graceful swirl of motion and muscle was presented to him by grateful members of the Galway field.”
The Galway Blazers Puppies Enter Glorious Tradition
The Galway Blazers Puppy Show drew a large attendance at the Kennels in Craughwell, County Galway, Ireland.
Michael Dempsey, internationally known Joint-Master and former huntsman of the Galway Blazers for the last 32 seasons, has maintained some Old English bloodlines in his pack. He likes a light hound that can bank the Galway walls and leave the stones in place. Vincent Shields was attending his first puppy show as a newly appointed Blazers Joint-Master, while retaining his current Mastership of both the East Galway Foxhounds and the Roscommon Harriers.
One is ever mindful of the great tradition of hound breeding at the Blazers’ kennels, particularly when thinking of previous huntsmen like Captain Brian Fanshawe, Paddy Pickersgill, and above all American-born Isaac Bell who hunted the pack from 1903 to 1908, and who made such a lasting contribution to what is now known as the modern English foxhound.