Notes on Polo & Riding. With Original Art from the Unpublished Manuscripts … Translated & Introduced by Timothy Zee.

[Printed by the Puritan Press. James Cummins Bookseller, distributor], 2020.

Price: $250.00


About the item

Edition of 500 copies. Illustrated throughout. 192 pp. ISBN 978-1-7354310-0-0. 1 vols. 8vo. Full blue cloth, printed dust jacket. As New.

Item #319917

Translation and facsimile text of a previously unpublished book on polo and riding by Capitaine Hervé Lavergne (1902-1944). Tim Zee, a polo player based in Singapore, recounts the background of the manuscript in his introduction. Lavergne’s Notes on Polo, composed in 1938, is divided into five chapters, on the history of the sport, the horse, the player, the game, and the rules. A shorter work on Riding, composed in 1923, follows. There are facsimiles of the source manuscript with
original artwork and illustrations by Captain Lavergne, the principles of polo from the legendary American 10-goaler Tommy Hitchcock, and notes in English and French attributed to Louis, Lord Mountbatten.

Capitaine Lavergne was an écuyer (instructor) in the Cadre noir at the French military riding academy, the École Nationale d'Équitation at Saumur. He also competed in international equestrian events, and in 1938 finished second to the great French horseman André Jousseaume in the dressage event at the London Horse Show. Lavergne was wounded in a cavalry charge shortly after the outbreak of the war in September 1939, and died in a prisoner-of-war camp.