Czarina, Claret & Snowball

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354 – May, 2022

By Fred Vogel

Before we were married, my wife, Carol, collected etchings of dogs of various breeds. This was even before a greyhound came into our lives. Ironically, she had several etchings and an aquatint that are all related by “pedigree”. When Patti Clark asked me to write about some of the artwork we have collected, I never dreamt how fascinated I would be doing the research. The pandemic has afforded me the time to do the research.

Every day, in the upstairs hallway I am greeted by four greyhound etchings. One is of Czarina and Maria running down a hare and another is of Claret. In tiny print I discovered that these were originally done by J. Scott from copper engravings and were published May 1, 1801 by Bunny and Gold of London and illustrated in the book, Encyclopedia of Rural Sports by Reverend William P. Daniell (or Daniel) and are in Volume I of a collectible four volume set. I have to assume that since these etchings appeared as a separate page in the Reverand’s book, the volume was dismantled to sell the etchings individually.

I knew little about the origins of greyhound lure coursing, but I found an article in The Lotus Magazine, Volume 4, No. 9, 1913, pages 377-383, in which Czarina, Claret and Snowball are all mentioned. This lead me to an article by the English writer David Hancock, The Goodbye Greyhound, published between 2018 and 2019, that put these three immortal greyhounds in context. Arrianus Flavius wrote in 150AD: “The aim of the true sportsman with hounds is not to take the hare, but to engage her in a racing contest or duel, and he is pleased if she escapes.” Chasing the hare was a fashionable sport for Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth and the roots of modern day coursing is traced back to this period. It is documented in Daniell’s Encyclopedia of Rural Sports, 1870. Here I found that Lord Oxford had started a dynasty of top coursers. His bitch, Czarina, was undefeated in 47 matches and on the day she was to compete in an important match, according to The Reign of the Greyhound by Cynthia A. Branigan, Lord Oxford was late getting to the competition; because of his “eccentricities” he was confined to one room and had to escape to get to the meet. He arrived in time to cheer Czarina on, and after she won, was so excited that he took off at top speed on his mount, fell off, hit his head and died.

Click here to read the complete article
354 – May, 2022

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Posted by AnthonyA on May 27 2022. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.