Goodnight, and good hunting

HSH hunting editor Catherine Austen reflects on the loss of a great friend

- Catherine Austen

“DON’T give your son money; as far as you can afford it, give him horses. No one ever came to grief through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses or through backing horses, but never through riding horses. Unless, of course, they break their necks. Which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die.”

Sir Winston Churchill wrote that in his 1930 autobiography, My Early Life. An American hunting friend of my mother’s sent it to her, and thence to me, upon hearing of the death out hunting earlier this month of our former hunt secretary Guy Avis (feature, 14 November). The third sentence sums up Guy’s life. The last two sentences make me catch my breath, because that is how he met his death.

I have written about Guy in this column many times. I was lucky enough to count him as a great friend, and a dispenser of a good deal of sage advice about horses (and life). Much of this could be distilled into his central philosophy: “Stop fussing about and get on with it/take it hunting.”