A First-Year Huntsman, Her Hounds, Her Sport
After the close of last season, professional whipper-in Erin McKenney was tapped to take over the horn at the Millbrook Hunt (NY). What’s it like to be a first-year huntsman following in the boot prints of a retiring, respected, experienced huntsman and long-time hound breeder like Donald Philhower? Butterflies, sure, but what goes through the mind of a huntsman responsible for giving sport every hunting day? Erin gives us a taste.
Lindsay Baldwin photo
November 5, 2020, 9-1/2 couple
It was a warm, bluebird sort of day with a dry wind which didn’t bode too well for scenting conditions. I took a smaller pack since it is a tight fixture.
I went with idea of taking older, slower hounds, with some younger ones for an educational day. I’m not convinced when young hounds are flying on a coyote that they’re learning a ton, except to keep up. The seasoned hounds may not be so quick under this day’s conditions, and the younger ones should have a chance to really get their noses down and learn.
The Country Life of an Artist
“The Country Life of an Artist: How Christmas Cards Tell My Story,” Anita Baarns, Dog Branch Publishing LLC, 2020, 205 pages, 281 works of art, spot gloss varnished, hardcover in Full Sierra cloth, 11-1/4 x 8-3/4, $67.80 (tax included).
Christmas cards help tell the story of an artist’s life.
Review by Norman Fine
Talented animal artist Anita Baarns has produced an intriguing and intimate book about her art and how art relates to her very self. Richly made and oversized in a landscape format to better display the artwork, her book is filled with examples rendered in pencil, charcoal, ink, pastel, watercolor, oil, and…yes…even crayon. In it she shows and tells a story of discovering, appreciating, experimenting, and continually developing her own talents and techniques as an artist.
The Vixen’s Meet: A Fund Raiser for Our Times
Orange County Hounds Field Master John Coles, MFH, leads a field of 60 visiting foxhunting ladies on the Vixen’s Meet . / Joanne Maisano photo
When the COVID pandemic and executive orders from the Governor of Virginia forced cancellation of Orange County Hounds’ primary annual fund raising event—the barn party held at Board President Jaqueline Mars’ legendary home—OCH Board leaders Jane Bishop and Emily Hannum put their heads together and scheduled instead a Vixen’s Meet. Given the strong showing October 15, 2020 at Stonehedge in The Plains, Virginia, the ladies like it.
Ladies from a dozen hunts turned out in support of Orange County: Belle Meade Hunt (GA), Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), Cloudline Hounds (TX), and De La Brooke Foxhounds (MD). From Virginia were ladies of the Blue Ridge Hunt, Casanova Hunt, Loudoun Fairfax Hunt, Middleburg Hunt, Piedmont Fox Hounds, Rappahannock Hunt, and Snickersville Hounds.
Liam Clancy: Foxhunter, Artist
“Elegance.” Maureen Conroy Britell out with the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA). Acrylic paint on textured acrylic paper.
Irish artist Liam Clancy made a fast tour of the Virginia and Maryland hunting countries during the first week of March 2020—just before the world stopped in its tracks as the result of COVID. He got in some hunting, both mounted and on foot, and he gathered material for his work—painting commissions.
Liam works mostly in acrylic paint, which he likes for its versatility. “I can dash off something that looks like a watercolor, or build up a painting in layers as you would with oils,” he explains.
The Dunraven Arms
Louis Murphy carves Dunraven’s famous roast beef at tableside. / Catherine Power photo
There can be few hotels that are so intrinsically linked to their owners or the world of the horse as the Dunraven Arms in Adare, Ireland. An institution, it has been a welcoming home to generations of North American foxhunters, and indeed, families across the sporting world. Once you enter that famed revolving door you are struck by the quiet elegance, and you won’t have taken too many steps before you will meet one of the Murphys, Louis or Brian and more latterly Brian’s son Hugh. Brian and Louis were born and brought up in Athenry, County Galway where their father PF (Paddy) was a veterinary surgeon and a keen hunting and racing man. He bred and produced many useful horses such as Orient War and Fred Octerri who went on to win the Sweeps Hurdle.
Falling Off
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 –
Cleveland Bay Reunion 2019
Twelve of the seventeen Cleveland Bay purebreds and crosses pose at the annual Cleveland Bay reunion before Farnley house in White Post, Virginia. / Karen Kandra photo
Cleveland Bay owners, breeders, and fanciers were privileged to travel back in time to recreate the heyday of this handsome, versatile, yet endangered breed of equine on November 16, 2019. The reunion combined with a meeting of the Blue Ridge Hunt is so appropriate at Farnley Farm in White Post, Virginia.
In the 1930s and 1940s the late Alexander Mackay-Smith bred both pure Cleveland Bay horses and partbreds at Farnley for use as field hunters. He remains the only North American breeder to have exported a stallion back to the UK from whence the breed originated. His stallion, Farnley Exchange, still appears in the pedigrees of most Cleveland Bays living in the world today.
Mackay-Smith’s daughter, Hetty Mackay-Smith Abeles, and her family welcomed the Blue Ridge Hunt subscribers, guests, and seventeen purebred and partbred Cleveland Bays to Farnley for the annual event. Mackay-Smith was a Master of Blue Ridge in the mid-twentieth century. Mrs Abeles and her family continue to breed their well-known Farnley Ponies there, based on bloodlines started and proven as early as the 1930s.
AAEA Art Show Returns to Its Roots
Linda Volrath from White Post, Virginjia, with one of her oils, a handsomely mounted huntsman, Jordan Hicks, and his Piedmont foxhounds / Middleburg Photo
The American Academy of Equine Art, after an absence of thirty years, has returned to its original home, Middleburg, Virginia, with a delightful exhibit of equine art. The works chosen for the AAEA 39th Annual Open Juried Exhibition will be available for viewing until October 26, 2019 from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Saturday, at the newly occupied headquarters of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, 301 East Washington Street (U.S. Route 50), Middleburg, Virginia 20117.
The MFHA headquarters is “a beautiful facility inside and out, fully restored and expanded,” writes AAEA President Booth Malone. “The Academy plans to give them a show they can be proud of.”
The Field Master’s Dance
The late Erskine Bedford led the field brilliantly for the Piedmont Fox Hounds for many years.
A good Field Master is a blessing for any huntsman. The converse is equally true.
Have you ever wondered why your Field Master follows closely upon the huntsman and hounds at times, yet at other times keeps you further back than you, as a keen field member, would like? A good Field Master is always dancing between what he or she knows you want and what he/she knows the huntsman needs.
Good Field Masters ride well, of course, and are confident in their ability to jump whatever comes their way. They also need to be well mounted. I have seen many a good-riding Field Master made to look pretty poor because they were on horses that were simply not cut out to lead across country.
A. Henry Higginson: More than just a Familiar Name
Alexander Henry Higginson, MFHAn Old Sportsman’s Memories, the autobiography written by A. Henry Higginson and J. Stanley Reeve tells the story of a proper Bostonian, Harvard class of 1898, who turned his back on a life of commerce, finance, and philanthropy—the route traditionally followed by New England men such as he. Smitten by the sport of foxhunting to the exclusion of all else, and with the support of his indulgent father, A. Henry Higginson followed his dream: a life of foxhunting.
His father, Major Henry Lee Higginson, more than fulfilled the family’s responsibilities to his community by his own philanthropy. The elder Higginson had dreamt of being a musician in his younger years, but Puritan Boston expected other things from her sons, and so he became a businessman as was expected. In time, he founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra, however, and was its earliest administrator.
He organized the corporation that built Symphony Hall, the first auditorium designed in accordance with scientifically derived acoustical principles. It is, as a result, widely regarded as one of the top concert halls in the world. Interestingly, with all the architectural flourishes of the period that architects McKim, Mead & White could bring to their creation in the year 1900, the structure displays only one composer’s name upon a large shield mounted on a frieze centered above the stage—Beethoven. There are other smaller shields upon the frieze framing the stage, but they are still blank! Boston is a careful and thoughtful old city.