We had our first cold snap last night and it somehow has me thinking of the family of snipe, mysterious and delicious migrants. Got them on the wall, pictures of hunts past, and memories, but sure would like to hunt either. Snipe are in the state at least; Tom Daly shot these in Colorado before …
Tag: Far Away and Long Ago
Quote of the day #1: The way things were
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without …
Historical Huntingtonia
Since Jane died last week the Weiners, Huntingtons and I have been unearthing some seriously old stuff. I am replacing my useless scanner soon so take this as a preview; the pic of the family Huntington in China in the thirties is really of decent quality, for instance. Below: Virginia Haist Huntington at high school …
Old Anglo Indian Books
For bibliophiles mainly. Conversations with Walter Hingley prompted me to bring out my favorite old fishing book: a copy of Thomas’s The Rod in India that I got from fishing writer Datus Proper, with its gold embossed figure of an Indian angler and a mahseer on the cover.* (Click all to enlarge).The mahseer was sometimes …
Link: PLF
We have a good link at the Patrick Leigh Fermor blog, on Geoffrey Household. Follow it to more details on the letter below and more…
One more irresitible quote
This one is a blast from the past, in a note from an old friend back east recalling a party in the Seventies: “I remember bringing Margot & Jim to a party you had in Newton. The next day Margot was saying that it was a lot calmer than she expected. I remembered it as …
A fishy coat of arms
A month or two ago David Zincavage, who is both an old friend and a sort of dog relative (his Uhlan is Ataika’s nephew) emailed me asking if I knew anything about my mother’s family, the McCabes. In fact I did, but mostly family folklore; that though they came to the New World (the Canadian …
Another Letter: Fran Hamerstrom
Or in her Beacon Hill accent and at her insistence, “Frahn”. She was a force of nature, a well- born Bostonian who defied convention and became Aldo Leopold’s only female student, a biologist, a hunter, a writer, and a falconer. She and her beloved husband Frederick lived for as many years as I have been …
PLF 2: Letters from Geoffrey Household
Sadly, I never corresponded with Patrick Leigh Fermor, but I did for many years with the adventurous old “suspense” story writer Geoffrey Household (as so many perceptive critics wrote, he was so much more than that, including a naturalist, a regionalist, and a chronicler of the same old lost Europe that Leigh Fermor also celebrated). …
Himalaya and Tragopans
Dr Hypercube recently mentioned the excellent book Tales of the Himalaya: Adventures of a Naturalist by the late Lawrence Swan of Darjeeling and California. I would have loved to know Swan, who climbed and collected all over the mountains and valleys I long to see, and may have been the last in a long line …