Out Of Hounds

CHAPTER 16

February 21, 2020 Friday

“It was one of the best-attended events ever,” Claudia Pfeiffer, the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr., Head Curator at the National Sporting Library & Museum, said to Sister as they walked through the museum. “We had hoped it would be a success but it exceeded our dreams.”

Sister noticed a small Dorothy Chhuy painting, work she liked very much and was glad the National Sporting Library did, too.

Ms. Pfeiffer was referring to the “Sidesaddle” exhibition, which ran from September 8, 2018 to March 24, 2019.

“Wonderful. The two women riding sidesaddle from Colonial Williamsburg certainly were a smash hit. I had never truly seen habits from the early eighteenth century, the beautiful dark blue and the other red with facings like military uniforms. The woman in blue wore a tricorn hat. You know, women look dazzling in a tricorn hat with one’s skirt flowing over the left leg.

“I’m sorry you missed Dr. Ulrike Weiss’s lecture. She flew from Scotland to present it and she helped us with the research for the exhibition. She’s at the University of St. Andrews and she studied here during her John H. Daniels Fellowship in 2016. We’re quite proud.”

“You have every reason to be. What surprised me is that people, and I mean people in universities, don’t realize that one of the best ways to approach a culture or a century is through sports and fashion. Well, in sidesaddle you have both and I thought your bracketing the exhibit with the years 1690–1935 opened a door.”

“You’re kind.” Ms. Pfeiffer smiled. “We love what we do. There isn’t a day that I come to work that something new, insightful, possibly exhausting isn’t happening.”

“You are good to see me. I know you all are preparing your ‘On Fly in the Salt’ exhibit. We have so many highly skilled and interesting sports here, so much water, fly-fishing isn’t for the lazy although it looks calm. Well, it is calm, but you know what I mean. My father would cast in the backyard just to keep his hand in, as he would say.”

“You saw that great movie with Brad Pitt, A River Runs Through It?”

“Did. What a way into a brotherly and paternal relationship, alcohol and real racism. Some people, well, some truly talented people like Norman Maclean can pull that off. I’m babbling on here.”

“Not at all. We’re always glad to see you.” Claudia sat on a bench in the museum; Sister sat beside her. “You called me about the Munnings. The theft of the first painting, which as you know we have exhibited here thanks to Crawford’s generosity…we do have the best people around us…but well, it was a shock, and then another and now another and a murder.”

“Which is why I wanted to drive up here. Was there anyone who kept returning to the sidesaddle exhibit? Anyone who began to attract your attention?”

“We’ve all talked about this. When we hosted the roundtable on sidesaddle horsemanship, you may recall the speakers were Devon Zebrovious, Amy Jo Magee, and Sarah O’Halloran, which was great fun since they compete sidesaddle against one another. I thought the audience would be only women but there were a few men, but not anyone who seemed at all suspicious, questioning. I don’t know, I mean I don’t know what we would have been looking for at the time.”

“Given the attractiveness of the three ladies, I don’t wonder that a few men showed up. I’d like to see them try sidesaddle.”

“Interesting you should say that because I think our ‘Sidesaddle’ exhibition, more than anything we have ever done, highlighted the position of women without being politicized, if you know what I mean?”

“I do. I remember Laura Kramer, Penny Denegre, and Amy Webb, now Walker, competing what, twenty-five years ago? The men certainly hung on the rail but I doubt they thought about the demands to be feminine, where it started, how a lady could only ride in the hunt field if so attired. No one really talked about those things.”

“You know Penny is out there competing and beating people now, riding astride.”

“I do. Some people just have it, you know? Look at Ellie Wood Baxter, still rides at ninety-nine. She’s mostly blind, still going. Flawless on a horse, as are the ladies we are discussing. Kay Blassic, Betty Oare. Effortless, and then you think about sidesaddle. They say Phyllis Longworth, and Lady Astor, her sister, were unbelievable on a horse, sidesaddle.”

“Or the Empress of Austria, Sissy,” Ms. Pfeiffer added. “Again, think of the politics and the pressure.”

“Do you have any thoughts about who’s behind all these crimes? I’ve been thinking all this is connected to the value of Munnings’s work.” Sister folded her hands in her lap, the space was conducive to quiet and thought.

“In 2016 Sotheby’s auctioned Winter Sunshine: Huntsman by a Covert, which was painted in 1913. Not an especially large work, it went for two hundred seventy-five thousand dollars. The sidesaddle paintings that have been stolen…well, all three of them, the bidding would begin above that. And if sold on the black market, it wouldn’t be any less.”

“Is it possible some obsessed person of wealth would pay more?” Sister queried.

“I suppose if you have billions, what’s a million or two? We’ve talked about this here, who of today’s billionaires would have the acumen to know Munnings? It’s a bit like interior decorating. Few of the new billionaires would know who Nancy Lancaster was, Nancy Astor’s niece.”

“Colefax and Fowler.” Sister named the great interior decorating company that rose to great prominence after World War I and is still going today. The impetus for this success was Nancy Lancaster.

“It’s an instantly recognizable look but I am willing to bet not one of these wealthy people would know who Stéphane Boudin was, the legendary decorator of Maison Jansen.”

“They have wealth but no breeding. I know that’s not a nice thing to say but in the old days those with great resources had a trained aesthetic sense. Your vice chairman, Jacqueline Mars, apart from being generous, has an exquisite sense of the arts. Well, your entire board of directors is exceptional.”

“Sister, most museums do have glorious boards, as does the New York Public Library, but few members are even in their forties. My fear is when they go, who will be there to take up the reins?”

“Ms. Pfeiffer, regardless of the institution, that’s a concern. I feel it’s as though someone put the film of history backward on the projector.”

“Ah, interesting way to put it. By the way, please call me Claudia. Okay, back to the Munnings. Only Munnings.”

“Is it possibly a family relation? Someone who feels cut out of his work?”

“There’s never been any criticism from that quarter, and Violet, his wife, was above reproach. A good marriage, I think. No outside children. No one seething at being left out of wills, at least where art is concerned. His first wife, Florence Carter-Wood, committed suicide in 1914 after two years of marriage. No issue there either.”

“Let me try another tack. Before women had the vote in England, remember the woman, Emily Wilding Davison, who threw herself in front of the king’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby? She was killed. There have always been fanatics and often their sacrifices provoke others to make smaller ones. Women got the vote in England in 1928. It’s only been a hundred years here. Is it possible this is some sort of feminist motivation? Sidesaddle as an emblem of distorting the female body for male pleasure? I know I’m grasping at straws, but to have three thefts of major art in less than two weeks and then Delores Buckingham’s murder, I’m trying to think of all manner of things. Sidesaddle may not be the key except for rarity. Munnings painted fewer of them than his other paintings, as fewer and fewer women rode sidesaddle as he aged and, well, it is making a comeback, but how many hunts have active ladies who ride sidesaddle?”

“Not many. A lady might do so for one of the High Holy Days but it’s not like old times. I still think the key is the value.”

“It makes the most sense,” Sister agreed. “You must know who owns Munnings’s paintings, the works in private hands.”

“We do as does Turner Reuter at Red Fox Fine Art. Some are in our country on the East Coast, as you would expect. There is a massive Munnings in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Interestingly enough, a few great corporations own Stubbs’s work but not Munnings’s. And there is The Munnings Art Museum in England, of course.”

“Those extra decades must add a patina.” Sister smiled. “Has anyone expressed concern?”

“Curiosity more than concern, because the people we know who own the great hunting paintings, or racing paintings from even the early eighteenth century, feel secure. As this has been focused on sidesaddle, no one has pressed the panic button.”

“And I assume none of the sidesaddle ladies including the ladies of Colonial Williamsburg have been discomfited, stalked, stuff like that?”

“Not that I know.” Ms. Pfeiffer asked Sister, “Have you ever ridden sidesaddle?”

“Yes. When I was young I tried. I liked it but thought I could do better astride. I’ve taken up so much of your time. Let me let you get back to work. You’ve been very generous.”

“It’s always a pleasure to see you. When you come up for the fly-fishing exhibit, call me. I’ll take you through it. You must come, you know. Your father would want you to.” She smiled broadly.

“Yes, he would.”

Ms. Pfeiffer walked Sister to her car, which she’d actually washed, given that she was driving to Middleburg. Even though there was mud in Middleburg, she wanted to drive in a clean car, or as clean as it could be in this weather.

Sister opened the door and Ms. Pfeiffer said, “There is a Side-Saddle Chase Foundation. You could call them.”

“Thank you for reminding me. You all worked with them for the horsemanship roundtable, right?”

“Did. It’s the only thing I can think of and I’m sure you spoke to Nancy Bedford at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting?”

“I did. Everyone is in agreement that the value of the stolen works is enormous. Other than that, well, we are all outfoxed, forgive the expression.”

Driving the two and a half hours home, Sister turned over in her head all they had discussed. The only thought she had was she should reread Sir Alfred Munnings’s three volumes of autobiography. He mentioned the sidesaddle paintings. Perhaps there is a running thread. It occurred to her as she reached Culpeper, the mountains visible before her on the right, that Delores Buckingham rode sidesaddle at Piedmont Hunt in the late forties. Her maiden name was LeCoq, she married Buckingham, moved to Lexington. Sister met Delores first when the woman was in her sixties, no longer riding sidesaddle but riding astride. She pulled over, dialed Jane Winegardner.

“O.J., I was just up at the National Sporting Library and Museum to talk about the ‘Sidesaddle’ exhibit they had last year and am driving home; I’m pulled over on 29. Anyway, Delores rode sidesaddle in the late 1940s and 1950s.”

“That came out in the Lexington newspaper. I never saw her ride sidesaddle.” She paused. “No leads. Catherine Clay-Neal, a member at Woodford Hunt before we merged with Long Run, rode and still sometimes does ride sidesaddle. I asked her. She is as confused as the rest of us and she runs the Headley-Whitney Museum. It is possible Delores was killed for another reason.”

“It is.”

O.J. replied, “It’s my understanding that most murders are solved pretty quickly if they are to be solved. You know, the killer is standing there or has blood in his car. So, let me say this,” she said, using one of her expressions. “No one knows anything. The first theft was in your territory. It might not be such a good idea to be obvious in your questions. There must be a great deal of money at stake. Who is to say that this person isn’t someone you know or at least in Virginia? Think of Virginia’s coastline. Pretty easy to sneak something out of the country using the Atlantic. No planes. Just a thought.”

“Right. My curiosity has got the better of me.”

“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat,” O.J. mentioned.