Hundreds attend funeral for
Bedford From the church it took well over an hour
for everyone to the reach the graveyard. In dark coats,
under a leaden sky, they streamed across the grass and corn
stubble of Old Welbourne to the final resting place of
Erskine Bedford. Farmer, stockbroker, father, lover and
friend, Bedford, 65, was best known to hundreds who attended
his funeral Thursday as the exuberant and incomparable
master of foxhounds of the Piedmont Fox Hounds, the oldest
hunt club in America. He was killed Dec. 6 when his horse
collapsed under him during a chase. At Trinity Episcopal Church in
Upperville, more than 300 had squeezed into the building and
another 200 stood outside for the 45-minute service --
weather-burned faces, patrician faces, white faces and
black, young and old. We heard soaring music, tributes,
reading from the Bible. But it was at the burial afterward that
we came closer to the man. Not a conventional, civilized
cemetery for him, but the lovely, half wild hillside
graveyard at Old Welbourne, Bedford’s 385-acre estate
near Unison. Bordered by pasture and cropland and
guarded foursquare by a handsome stone wall, the cemetery
falls abruptly from a tilled field to the marshy bottom and
a tributary of Beaverdam Creek. They dug the grave in a topmost corner, a
stone’s throw from the broken chimneys that mark the
ruins of Old Welbourne. In the early 1800s this was the
original home of the Dulany family, and Nat Morrison, of
neighboring Welbourne, was there to represent his
family’s wholehearted acceptance into their ancestral
graveyard of Erskine Bedford’s earthly
remains. Halfway down the cemetery slope is the
polished black granite cross marking the grave of Richard
Henry Dulany, who founded the Piedmont Fox Hounds in 1840 as
a family pack. As Commander of the 7th Virginia Cavalry,
Dulany also made some of the Civil War history that Bedford
so much enjoyed. The crowd is gathering outside the
cemetery wall, looking in. Randy Waterman, Piedmont’s
joint master and huntsman, has clustered the hound pack, 60
strong, at the foot of the hill. His three whippers-in
confine them in a happy, milling crowd, tails a-wag, in a
corner formed by the wall and a pasture fence. Nearly two dozen huntsmen gather inside
the lower wall, chatting across to Waterman and studying the
pack. They are in their red coats, the color of their
collars identifying most of the region’s hunts.
Watchman is among the pack, one of the most famous hound
sires in America. Venerable in the dog-years, he is too old
hunt now, but he is here today. Waterman points him out to
the huntsmen; he is the only one with a collar. We wait. The cavalcade of cars still
proceeds up the drive to Bedford’s home, 400 yards
distant, and people keep on coming across the
field. Among them is B.J. Webb, Leesburg’s
vice mayor. As a child she escaped the anxieties of home
life into the shining world of horses, and Erskine Bedford
was one of the stars in the firmament. He taught her and countless others a love
of horses and hunting. He made everything fun, even the
chores of making hay and cleaning stables. She remembers his
civility and "truly caring about others." "There were so many people who truly
loved him," Webb says. But his legacy, she believes, was his
love of the land, his commitment to the countryside. He was
instrumental in helping young people realize how important
it was to save it." Also in the crowd is Jimmy Young, master
of Orange County Hunt in Loudoun and Fauquier. "Erskine just
would not take himself too seriously," but he inspired
others, he says. "He made everyone feel they could do more
than they thought they could." Bedford epitomized all that’s best
about foxhunting, Young says, and "in many ways it is a
microcosm of life." Bound by tradition and the demands of
the sports, "We are a community of neighbors. There’s
tremendous loyalty and trust. "There must also be a zest for the chase,
just as for life. But it must not be unmanageable, it must
be disciplined." The hounds are the embodiment of that
spirit -- so keen that they approach the edge of control but
always respond to the huntsman’s commands. "It’s
almost an oxymoron." The committal is brief. The air, turning
towards dusk, is dead calm, the only sound that of
chickadees singing in the boxwoods near the cemetery gate,
wild geese calling far off, and the gentle whimper of the
hounds. The service is quickly over. At the last,
Waterman speaks, using the traditional salutation to the
master of foxhounds at the end of the hunt, no matter the
time of day. "One final time - good night master." Huntsman
Andrew Barclay of Green Spring Valley Hunt in Maryland, a
champion horn blower, puts a hunting horn to his lips and a
long, staccato blast pierces the air. It is the call "gone
away", which alerts the hounds that the fox has broken
covert and it’s time to take off after him. The hounds freeze, electrified. Waterman
swiftly recrosses the wall and mounts up. The whippers-in
take positions on the flanks of the pack and Waterman leads
them around the lower corner of the cemetery and up the
steep slope. Somehow, whether it is a trick of
atmospherics or because I’m on the far side, the hounds
and horsemen seem to move soundlessly: no word spoken, no
hoof beat, no hound’s voice. As they pass the cemetery gate and
squeeze through a barway, Waterman gives a low whistle. All
at once, as though upon some urgent but unspoken mission -
as though some invisible fox beckons them on - the horses
dash into a gallop, and within two or three breaths, all
have disappeared form sight over the top of the field,
heading west toward the dark hulk of the Blue
Ridge. We gaze after, spellbound. And I don’t think anyone who was
there will quarrel with my sense that they bore away the
spirit of Erskine Bedford with them.
By Deborah Fitts
Times-Mirror Staff Writer
December 16, 1998