The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [24]
Originally, the sport of foxhunting on Long Island had received stiff opposition from the Quakers who had settled the farmland of Suffolk County. Quakers were opposed to foxhunting on principle, on the grounds that it was cruel to foxes. Even Henry Bergh of the ASPCA eventually got involved, drafting letters of protest to the Meadowbrook Hunt. But the Smithtown Hunt had met no such opposition as it pounded across the countryside around the Knox School. Though foxes were plentiful in the area, the landscape was covered with dense scrubby brush where foxes could hide; as a result, the hunt was most often conducted as what’s known as a “drag hunt,” where hounds track a scent rather than a live fox. The advantage of the drag hunt was that the horses could follow the hounds over a course that had been predetermined to be suitable for riding; also, a live fox was not the target.
At that time, the master of foxhounds, the person in charge of the hunt, was a veterinarian named Arthur Frederick. Like many aficionados of the sport, he believed in the good side of the tradition: a respect for open lands, an interest in hounds and horses, and an abiding sense of tradition. Frederick took his duties as master of the Smithtown Hunt seriously. To be invited to ride with the hunt, you had to pass muster as a horseman. Frederick was even known to hide behind bushes as riders came through to observe their skills in the field. Nobody hunted with the Smithtown Hunt who did not meet Frederick’s exacting standards of horsemanship. Foxhunting—where large groups of horses follow hounds across open lands, jumping over fences and natural obstacles—takes particular skill. Unlike the controlled environment of a riding ring, riders and horses meet the unexpected: rough terrain, obstacles, wildlife, and unpredictable behavior from the other horses. A badly behaved horse or unskilled rider can put everyone else in danger. Frederick met Harry de Leyer when he was called to care for an ailing horse. Impressed by Harry’s skill with horses, Frederick invited Harry to ride with the hunt, and said that he could bring the Knox girls along as long as he would make sure they were skilled enough.
But foxhunting takes more than riding skill: the girls needed to master a complicated code of etiquette. A rider’s formal dress, the order in which they rode, and even the forms of address were all governed by complicated unwritten rules. The dress code required attention to the last detail: a melton wool jacket, a flat bowler with a string cord, and a white stock tie pinned with a gold stock pin whose point faced away from the rider’s heart were among the strict requirements for hunt members. The Knox School girls were expected to ride well and, at the same time, respect the manners and traditions of the hunt. As tradition warranted, the students, who were guests rather than full-fledged members of the hunt, rode at the back of the pack, careful to be quiet and not to get in the way of the huntsmen or hounds.
One day, Harry and his girls, bringing up the rear, came across a cluster of riders bunched around a “chicken coop”—a slant-sided obstacle named for its resemblance to a henhouse. Every single horse had refused to jump the obstacle, in a chain reaction in which each horse had been frightened off by the previous horse’s behavior. The large group was gathered off to the side, preparing to make another attempt. As the Knox girls followed Harry and his horse, Harry sailed around the corner and flew over the coop with ease, and each of the Knox girls followed, their horses willingly taking their cue from Harry’s lead. That day, the girls were proud of themselves. They might have been mere teenage guests riding at the back of the pack, but Harry had taught them to be brave and bold, and their hard work