Monthly Archives: May 2012
Having a Wonderful Time, Chapter 1
It seems silly now, but once I thought the novel was the ultimate goal for a writer, and that I should write one. It would take a long time, but if I kept after it day by day, I would eventually have a novel. But I would have to enjoy what I was doing. So […]
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
February 27, 2005 Where to begin with Hunter Thompson? At the beginning, I guess: Dan McNelly, a fraternity brother, handing me a copy of Hell’s Angels in 1967 and saying, “You’ve got to read this.” (Dan also gave me a copy of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña; […]
Biker Brewers
In the pre-dawn hours, even the birds are asleep in England’s hop country, and the sun has yet to gild the clouds gliding over from the west country. On the shoulder of a narrow lane, a light breeze rustles the hedgerow and, across the way, the first hint of dawn reveals the profile of an […]
Cheever Cowdin and The Son of Dracula
I was researching J. Cheever Cowdin, a polo player of note, when Google directed me to a Spanish-language site dedicated to horror films and this photo of Louise Allbritton as a southern heiress waiting for a warm glass of milk in The Son of Dracula (1943). Needless to say, I was fascinated by this turn […]
Marjorie LeBoutillier
I have a special affection for extraordinary people who have been largely, and unfairly, forgotten, and one of my recent favorites is Marjorie LeBoutillier, a polo player of great ability. She first surfaces in Aiken, South Carolina, in Harry Worcester Smith’s Life and Sport in Aiken and Those Who Made It (1935), in which he […]
Henry Babcock, Yale and Polo
Henry Denison Babcock Jr. had the world by the tail. His grandfather, Samuel D. Babcock, was a wealthy businessman with a home on Fifth Avenue, a “country seat” at Riverdale-on-Hudson, and memberships in the Metropolitan, Union and Manhattan clubs, the New York Yacht Club, and the Country Club of Westchester County. Henry’s father, Henry Babcock […]
Griswold Lorillard and Polo’s Westchester Cup
Nathaniel Griswold Lorillard became famous for something he didn’t do, and has been almost completely forgotten in connection with something he actually did do. To begin, he was born in clover. His father was Pierre Lorillard IV, head of a tobacco company that had been thriving since 1760 (and thrives to this day). The lad […]
Mary, Babs and Gertrude
Mary Duncan Sanford and Babs Tyrrell-Martin grace this photo, most probably taken during the 12th competition for the Westchester Cup, in 1939 at Meadow Brook, Long Island, where the best polo players of the U.S. and the U.K. were competing for a trophy first put up for grabs in 1886. On the left, Mary Sanford. […]
O.M. Wallop, Yale and Polo
The other day, I stumbled across another Yale polo story, this one with a player named Wallop. How could anyone resist picking up that thread of history? The story began in 1883 when Oliver Henry Wallop graduated from Oxford and went to Wyoming. This may strike you as an odd move, but he was the […]
Clarence Mott Woolley, Yale and Polo
Clarence Mott Woolley Jr. led, for a time, a charmed existence. Clarence Mott Woolley Sr. made central heating possible in America by providing cast iron radiators for millions of homes; for this, he was well compensated, so young Clarence’s educational options were not limited. He attended Phillips Andover and then Yale. Because his father had […]
Faithful Readers 