Baden-Powell, "Encampment, Kadir Cup" (water-colour, India, 1937)

Encampment, Kadir Cup, India, 1937
From a water-color painting by Robert Baden-Powell

From: Heather Baden-Powell, Baden-Powell: A Family Album, 1986

In 1937, B-P returned to India for the last time. Eileen Wade, his secretary, writes:

He was able to be present at the last mounted parade of the 13th/18th Hussars, shortly to be mechanised.

Yet another revival of old memories (he had won the Kadir Cup in 1883) came in this letter from B-P to Eileen Wade:

Dear Mrs W.,
Meerut. 21 March 37.

We have just had another red letter day in our lives! We four have been out in camp to see the Kadir Cup run, for three days. Yesterday was the final, over 100 of us on 30 elephants from 9 a.m. to sunset out on a vast yellow grass plain—the whole day under blazing hot sun wobbling along on elephants with the excitement of watching the competitors racing after pig and, in one case, hunting and killing a panther... Awfully sorry to leave India and all its happy memories.

The Kadir Cup is the highest honor in the sport of pig-sticking or hog-hunting, the hunt for wild pig while on horseback armed with only a lance. This challenge had particular significance to the cavalry regiments in India, as it presented a major competition demanding great skill and horsemanship as well as great risk. In his Lessons from the Varsity of Life, Baden-Powell relates his winning of the Kadir Cup in 1883:

On the two previous occasions on which I had entered I had managed to get placed in the final heat, and one of them brought me one of the bombshells of my life, in the shape of the Kadir Cup. I had won all the preliminary heats with the two horses I had entered, namely Hagarene and Patience; thus both had to run in the final heat against a shirt competitor.

I rode Hagarene, my favorite, and Ding MacDougall, a brother officer in the 13th rode Patience for me. Hagarene quickly outstripped her rivals and was leading by many lengths when the pig dived through a thick hedge-like line of bush.


	Hagerene, a real friend. She enjoyed life and did her jumping for the love of the thing.

As Hagarene jumped it I realised that there was no landing on the other side but a fall into the river. Here we soused under almost on top of the pig, who turned and crawled out again where he had entered, and while I was getting out on one side and Hagarene on the other, the pig met MacDougall coming up on Patience and was promptly speared.

Thus I won the Cup at the hands of MacDougall.

		Lieutenant Colonel Charles Robert Douglas Gray, O.B.E. of Skinner's Horse (1st Duke of York's Own Cavalry), relates the story of "Granite," his "great Australian horse," and how they came to win the Kadir Cup in March, 1934. There are several wonderful photographs and sketches from the competition. His biography includes a fine photo of the Kadir Cup itself which Baden-Powell had won in 1883.
		Paintings by Baden-Powell. B-P was an accomplished artist and most of his published works are illustrated with his own drawings and in some case, color plates from his paintings. His notebooks, diaries, journals and letters are reported to be filled with pen and ink drawings, and both pencil and water-color sketches. Here is a small collection of illustrations of his water-color paintings from illustrations in a variety of sources.

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