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| Nobby, show name Majestic - my first love |
My latest children’s novel (just out on submission!) is neo-Victorian and involves the riding of horses to get places. It’s been a lot of fun drawing on my riding past to write of the reversal of freedoms. My MC, Petulia Picklewhip must ditch her side-saddle and learn to ride astride in order to take part in a perilous, mountain journey. At the same age, 12, I did the opposite and ditched my astride saddle to learn to ride in the curious position of sitting sideways on a horse.
This pic is me in 1976 at our farm in Takapau. I’m not looking too happy. The Victorian riding habit, top hat and veil (adding to my scowl) I’m wearing plus the side saddle was due back at the museum so Mum had just dragged me off my Sunday bed, no doubt reading Black Beauty or similar, to take this spiffing photo. The habit’s waist measured a too slim 17 inches and the whale-boning cinching my ribcage pinched like a witch.
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| My mum said my only word from 12 - 13 was NO. |
The Takapau Centennial had just been celebrated. It was a huge community affair with every club, school, and business preparing for months to give our little farming town in the middle of the windswept Takapau plains a big pat on the back for surviving. For our part, the Central Hawkes Bay Pony Club challenged several of their young riders to learn to ride side-saddle for the town parade. What seemed incredibly ridiculous and old fashioned at the start was actually good fun once you got the hang of it. And whereas in Victorian times, young ladies got to the point of abhorring this restrictive form of riding, for myself, along with my gymkhana Jill buddies it offered a certain freedom to learn a fashion so ridiculous, yet to us, new.
In early Europe, it was deemed unladylike for a woman to straddle a horse. Apparently, “it was initially conceived as a way to protect the hymen of aristocratic girls, and thus their appearance of being virgins.” Hmmmm no doubt on long overland trips to arranged marriages to chinless suitors sitting on pots of gold. But good god almighty did anyone check? I guess one advantage was that it was a way to wear a flouncy skirted long dress on a horse and not get it entirely grubby. A few rad femmes in history rode astride, Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great of Russia, for starters.
My riding buddies and I learned to canter, gallop and jump sparred fences, all the things we did together over the rolling hills of our respective sheep farms of a weekend. The key is keeping your shoulders perfectly square. However, constantly reminding yourself to keep your right shoulder back does not initially feel natural when you’re perched sideways on a hard hoofed animal. Thankfully you hook your top right knee over the saddle horn, and your left leg goes underneath with your foot in the stirrup. You carry a riding crop in your right hand and use that in place of your missing right leg against the horse’s flank, should you need it. The riding skirt I’m wearing was an odd shape, but with your knee in the angled knee-thingy and once sat on your horse it draped nicely.
I bought my first horse at forty-six after a very long break from riding and I can attest that my young riding self was totally gung-ho compared to my middle-aged one. Even perched in that somewhat precarious position, I don’t think fear came into it, back then. If I fell off in the early stages of learning to ride side-saddle, I cannot remember. On the day of the centennial parade, I was paired up with a red-coated, white breeched, shiny black booted gentleman. He was actually an older boy, the fifteen-year-old brother of a friend from pony club, and he was none too pleased to be teamed up with twelve-year-old me. Or maybe he was mad my chestnut pony did not pair well with his big-bottomed bay. Anyhoo, he took on a superior air the whole time, said absolutely zero and skedaddled as soon as we completed a couple of rounds of the town’s main road.
Clearly, he had not watched the 1976 equivalent of Bridgerton. In a frightfully scandalous scene in the latest series, Kate Sharma (the cloaked woman) is seen riding a horse through the woods, in the early morning. Alone. Astride. Only to be chased by the aghast, tortured eldest eligible son, Anthony Bridgerton. We witness a Victorian meet-cute of what turns out to be an almost unrequited (until the final ep) love interest. Fetch my smelling salts. Anthony’s breeches shrink as wild woman Kate gallops away and he cannot catch up. To add insult to injury he must watch her effortlessly jump over a hedge and disappear into the damp English countryside.
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| Most excellent grainy shot of the author and Margot |
Our pony club instructor must have been impressed with our progress as after the centennial we put a team of four riders together for the Waipukurau A & P Show’s much-coveted, team event. We came second! Whether the novelty of four young riders perched on over one-hundred-year-old side-saddles, wearing restrictive habits had something to do with it, I do not know.
Once the gear was returned the freedom of riding astride saddle, or bareback resumed.
Meanwhile, back in book land, does young Petulia reach her final destination … well hopefully one day we’ll find out. In paperback.
Jane x
