Manure Set

JUST HUNTING -- Harry T. Peters-- Scribner ($7.50).

Though organized fox-hunting is 50 years old in the U. S., the sport is still on the defensive. Nonhunting, non-Anglophile sportsmen are apt to see something silly in the expensive preoccupations of the "manure set," while plain citizens are apathetic if not hostile. The hunting set itself, impregnably self-sufficient as it tries to appear, is uncomfortably aware that they order these things better in England. This popular U. S. attitude toward fox-hunting is reflected in the jolly apologias emitted from time to time by U. S. foxy grandpas. Latest view-halloo was sounded by Harry Twyford Peters, Master of the Meadow Brook Hounds. Written primarily of and for the manure set, Just Hunting is not to be mentioned in the same breath with Siegfried Sassoon's masterly Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, but even to readers who have never seen the world from the vantage of horseback it presents an easily comprehended view.

Author Peters writes at a loose canter, half businessman style, half hobbledygee, on the differences between English and U. S. hunting, kennel management, riding, cubbing, manners et al., helps fill his book by generous quotations, hunting songs, a nostalgic chapter on hunting with the Quorn, the Pytchley, other famed English hunts. With modest justice he calls his book "the random findings of an American business man who would that he could have been born a sportsman." Another sample of his seat on Pegasus: "Let us not forget that it makes a very great difference where you sit as to how the picture looks."

One worrying fact about U. S. foxhunting is its brief, comparatively traditionless history. Author Peters faces the fact, avers time will tell it differently, reminds his supporters that George Washington, though he may not have dressed the part, was an ardent pursuer of foxes. Chief differences between U. S. and English hunting are of climate and country: "Our days are not so long, our distances, curious as it may seem, not so great, and our going, except for the damage of frozen ground, not so severe on horses." But to hedge-jumping British riders U. S. post-&-rail fences seem high and hard. Author Peters calls the Prince of Wales Va much maligned gentleman," implies he iFa first-rate rider. Western bronco-busters he pooh-poohs, says they are "champions . . . but not of good riding."

M.F.H. Peters hopes the day will come when fox-hunting will be the U. S. national sport, thinks "we can now feel at last that as a nation we hold second place." But he deplores the excessively competitive spirit of U. S. hunting, pleads for a more friendly, live-&-let-live spirit. Curiously enough, however, he does not favor substituting an aniseed bag for the live fox.

The Author has ridden to hounds for 35 years. Well-to-do, like most M.F.H.'s, he still goes to his old-fashioned Manhattan office to "work for his living" as a coal dealer. An all-round horseman, he har had many a nasty spill, broke his hip playing polo 14 years ago and has walked with a halting gait ever since. Says he: "I'm better on four legs than two." Of Scottish ancestry, he is prouder of being a Yankee who was born in Israel Putnam's house in Greenwich, Conn. A Ph.D., LL.D., he is prouder of his legs, which he considers a finer pair for riding than Edward of Wales's. He has hunted a great deal in England and once stayed a fortnight with the Prince.

Besides hunting foxes in the field and on paper (he thinks his Jorrocksy library one of the world's best), Author Peters rides another hobby--early U. S. lithographs. His two volumes on Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the American People, started a fierce fad. The first volume, which appeared just after the crash of 1929, sold at $40, boomed to a high of $450 before it found its present level of about $100. Volume II, priced at $75, reached a peak of $150. Having dished up Currier & Ives, Collector Peters turned his attention to other forgotten salads, put out two more books on 19th Century lithographs (America on Stone, 1931, $75; California on Stone, 1935, $60). Nothing much artistically, these collections and catalogs shed interesting sidelights on U. S. manners and customs, have given Americana-snoopers much entertainment.

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