“I HAVE been to so many incredibly dreadful parties and you have to sit next to such boring people. But at the hunt ball no one says ‘How many children have you got?’ and ‘Where do they go to school?’” says side-saddle hunting doyenne Martha, Lady Sitwell, who breathes a sigh of relief at the thought of these hunt calendar jamborees. “You’re all much beyond that; there’s a camaraderie. And, OK, there might be an auction but it’s not there for people to show off: it’s to raise money for the hunt. At some of the charity balls in London that are [full of] hedge funders, there’s a lot of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. But the hunt ball is so egalitarian: the terrierman and the old-money Master party together, and I love that.”
Lady Sitwell has nearly 30 years’ worth of hunt balls under her belt, each time bedecked in long vintage. However, ask her to divulge any of the debauchery and she’s admirably discreet. Ranks are closed but by the time magazine in the 1980s about the fabulous time she and her husband Leo had had at the Cotswold hunt ball, complete with racy photos of the Queen of Bonkbusters kissing Leo’s best friend, her dress falling off, she was swiftly asked to resign from her post as chairman of the mid-Gloucestershire branch of the RSPCA.
