CHAPTER IX.
LEARNING TO RIDE.
HOW TO SIT—TO WALK—TO CANTER—AND TO TROT.
Being now provided with a fully-caparisoned mount, it is time that you should begin in good earnest to learn to ride; therefore to this pleasant task we will apply ourselves, reserving the interesting subjects of shoeing, feeding, stabling, &c., for future consideration.
To mount well must first be studied, and practised: the latter assiduously, no matter how great the drudgery may be. It is certainly disheartening to a learner to feel that one of the most trying portions of her equine education is after all the only one that involves a very serious drawback, namely, that of requiring assistance that cannot well be done without; yet, so it is—and the difficulty is one which must be considered and met. A lady may saddle and bridle her own horse, may give him the finishing touches herself, and canter away, independently, when once she is on his back—but to get there she must, as a rule, seek for assistance from some source or another, and animated sources (by which I mean men) are generally painfully inefficient. It certainly is what is expressively termed “hard lines” on a practised equestrian to be made an exhibition of at door or covert-side by some inexpert individual, who either sends her clean over the saddle by the superfluous energy of his action, or leaves her to hang fire midway while he stoops to pick up his hat, which he manages to lose through stupidly poking his head forward at the moment at which she is making her spring. I know exactly what it is, and the mortification that it entails. Many of us are, unfortunately, familiar with the feeling that we have done precisely the right thing ourselves, but that some officious and horribly incompetent assistant—or would-be such—has frustrated our efforts, and left us a laughing-stock in the centre of a crowd. It is just like going up to a piano in full possession of all the difficulties that may mark the song selected to be sung, and being compelled to undergo the torments inflicted by a bad accompanist, who handicaps the singer by his own utter unfitness for his task. Half the people present are not able to discern whether it is the voice or the piano that is at fault; they only know that the performance is a failure, and speak of it afterwards as such. So it is with mounting for a ride. Say that there are a hundred persons present at a lawn meet, and you emerge from the house to mount your horse, with the result that you are kept struggling for an awful moment or two betwixt the ground and the saddle by some blushing booby who has offered to put you up, and who will neither do so properly nor suffer you to jump quite down. At least two-thirds of the onlookers will be ready to say the fault is yours. My advice, therefore, is, never leave yourself open to an unpleasantness of this description; select your assistant cavalier, just as you have a right to accept or reject a partner for a dance—and if nobody in whom you have confidence happens to be present, have recourse to the groom’s assistance, if you are quite certain that he knows how to render it, and, if not, lead your horse to a low wall, should such a thing be near enough, or take him, at all events, out of sight of the crowd, and utilise any sort of stepping-stone to reach his back, rather than incur the ridicule or unjust remarks of the more fortunate among your sex.
It is, of course, in some cases, quite possible for a lady to let down her stirrup and mount by it, unassisted—drawing it up again to the required length when seated on her saddle. To little girls riding ponies I have already recommended this plan; but for grown equestrians it is far more frequently impracticable than otherwise. A lady rider may be of diminutive stature, and may yet be called upon to mount a very tall horse; or her stirrup may not be an easily movable one (say, for instance, that she is accepting a ride upon a borrowed mount, with trappings entirely unlike her own), or her habit-bodice, despite all warnings, may not be loose enough about the waist to enable her to make the long stretch up to the pommel which unassisted mounting always requires. Therefore, writers who say that a lady can at all times be entirely independent of extraneous assistance prove to a certainty that they have not studied the subject.
The orthodox method of mounting is as follows: Take the reins and whip in your right hand and lay the fingers of it firmly upon the top of the up-pommel—grasping it, in fact; then, with your left hand, gather your skirt away from your left foot, and place this latter in the hand of your assistant, bending your knee as you do so. When you feel that his palm is firmly supporting the sole of your foot, take your left hand from your habit-skirt and place it on his left shoulder—he being in a slightly stooping position at the time. Then give him the signal: any pre-arranged word will do—“Ready!” “Go ahead!” “Now!” or, in short, anything you may choose to fix. As you say the word, straighten your knee, and make a slight spring upward, your cavalier at the same instant raising himself to an erect position, without letting his hand drop in the very smallest degree. By this arrangement you will reach your saddle with comfort and expertness. It will, as already mentioned, require some patient practice, for, like many other accomplishments, it looks wonderfully simple and easy—until you come to try it. In the event of having to mount by a wall, a big stone, a horse-bucket, or other article—any one of which you may be glad at some time or another to make use of on emergency—steady yourself well upon your stepping-stone, whatever it may be, gather the reins in your left hand, laying it firmly upon the up-pommel or on the horse’s mane, place your foot in the stirrup, taking care that it is well freed from the habit-skirt, then seize the cantle firmly with your right hand, and jump into the saddle. If your skirt is properly cut, you will have no difficulty in arranging it comfortably over your right knee when the latter has been placed in position, and you should then lift yourself slightly, and smooth the seat of the skirt from right to left with your left hand, first transferring the reins and whip to your right, in order to enable you to do so.
You should be extremely careful, if wearing a spur, to keep your left heel well away from the horse’s side when mounting: otherwise, the consequences may be very disastrous. I once saw a lady thrown heavily upon her face by a sudden start of her horse, through her spur having struck him in the flank just as she reached the saddle, before she had time to secure the support of the pommels.
Be cautious, also, not to touch your horse, when mounting, with your whip. If you do so he will assuredly start, and may give you an ugly fall. It is for this reason that I advocate the custom of ladies when mounting retaining the whip in their right hand and placing it, together with the reins, on the up-pommel of the saddle, in place of, as many do, handing it to their assistant cavalier. A man, when he gets a lady’s whip to hold, naturally tucks it away under his arm, where a nervous horse keeps looking askance at it, and is often rendered fidgetty by seeing it, even when it does not actually touch him—although it very often does. I append two sketches, one showing the correct position of the hand with whip and reins upon the pommel when just about to mount, the other demonstrating the precise attitude in which a lady ought to seat herself upon the saddle.
If properly placed, and sitting erect and even, your seat ought to be as secure as that of a man, or even more so, although you may have to depend (which no doubt you will) upon the girths for safety, and also to submit to the disadvantage of not having a leg on each side of your horse to guide him or urge him to his paces. A clever rider will, however, make her whip-handle serve her in great measure for this.
