The Great Hound Match of 1905

Pretty much everyone enjoyed The Great Hound Match of 1905 by Martha Wolfe.  I thought the research was great.  The author set the stage well by describing what was going on in the world at the time.  This would have been a good first book for that reason.  It's easy to look back now and place these books in relation to one another.  And foxhunting literature represents a small enough canon that it is very self-referential.
My criticisms of the book are pretty minor.  It felt slightly stretched.  The main characters were a little one-dimensional.
I don't love books in which the point of view shifts.  Parts of this book were very much reporter-style and parts were very novel-style.  I found the shifts back and forth disruptive but virtually no one else agreed.  And there were fifteen of us at this meeting.  It was certainly worth reading.  It describes an important event and an interesting time in the history of foxhunting in America.  And I think everyone enjoyed reading something modern.

A Long Way to Go, Discussion

1. What did the author get right?

a. I think we will all agree that you could not improve on the descriptions of horses and hunting.

b. I think the characters are pretty realistic.  The author describes a character and that characters actions and speech seem generally consistent with the description.  And each character stays consistent throughout, pretty much.  You don’t have characters suddenly do things that seem out of character.

What did the author get wrong?

a. I think we will all agree that the ending is weak, at best.  What’s wrong with it?  How could it be improved?

b. Some of the characters are pretty one-dimensional.  Hubert fits a definite stereotype tracing back in British literature to Tom Jones (although I associate it with England more than Ireland).  Hester and Lady Kavanaugh (Anthony’s mother) could certainly be fleshed out further.

3. Richmond (the actor).  I remembered Richmond being much more important than he really is.  We hardly ever see him or hear him.  We hear about him going places with Anthony’s mother or aunt but he really isn’t “on stage” much at all.  Interesting?

4. How old are these people?

Hubert is the oldest.

Gillian’s son, Andrew is 16.  For the sake of easy math, let’s make that 15.  The book is written in 1950.  He would have been born in 1935.

Gillian would have been born roughly between 1910 and 1915.  She’d have been very young during the Great War and the influenza epidemic.  She would have seen something of the craziness of the 1920s.  When the stock market crashed (1929), she would not have been running her own household but she’d have been old enough to be affected by the crash and to understand something about it.  Her son was born in the midst of the Depression and in the period running up to the Second World War.

We have to assume that Anthony is roughly the same age as Gillian.  So, in 1950, these folks are between 40 and 45.  And Hubert is older but his wife is pregnant with her first child.  It makes no sense at all!

Lady Kavanaugh (Anthony’s mother) is at least 20 years older than Anthony; probably more.  That’s alright.  And Aunt Emmy could be quite a lot younger although she comes across (to me) as roughly the same generation as Lady Kavanaugh.

All of the men in the book would have served in the military during the war or been involved in war-time efforts at home.

5. From HB
Hubert is the eldest. From what I can gather, he is not titled, but he was his father's heir. His father was Sir Charles Kavanagh - so either a Knight (non-hereditary title) or Baronet (hereditary). Doesn't Hester complain about not having a title? That means her husband Hubert did not inherit a title, so Sir Charles was created a Knight by the King for his service to the country and his wife (mother of Hubert and Anthony and Roger) became Lady Kavanagh for her lifetime. Hubert and Hester then do not have titles of their own since the Knighthood is not hereditary.
I strongly suspect that Aunt Emmy is Sir Charles's sister - not Lady Kavanagh's. It would make sense that she stayed on in the Big House after her parents' death as the responsibility of her brother -- since she never married.