Riding for Ladies: With Hints on the Stable

by Mrs. Power O'Donoghue

To be able to fall well is an art in itself—but it is one at which, unfortunately, very few ladies excel; therefore, not to fall at all will in their case be much better than to do so in even the most artistic fashion.

At the same time to dispense with falls must in a measure mean to dispense with riding also—that is, with riding straight to hounds; and as this latter enjoyment is, to a keen sportswoman, the very greatest pleasure that earth can possibly afford, I cannot wish to see any of my readers deprived of it, and have therefore determined to devote this chapter to the subject of various kinds of falls—the circumstances under which they generally happen, the way to avoid meeting them, and the best method of escaping being injured by them when they chance to occur.

To escape falls will to many ladies be the most interesting portion of my subject; therefore, we will consider it first.

To begin, then: you should decline riding any save the most perfect horses. A rusher, refuser, runaway, or anything else associated with the vices which have already been treated of, should be at once put beyond the pale of your favour; nothing short of positive perfection should ever tempt you to mount. Secondly, you must never on any account be in a hurry, nor allow others to hustle you. Though hounds may be in full cry within a field of you, and only a single small fence dividing, you must take your time, deliberately, and without flurry. Thirdly, you must never under any circumstances make for the fastest route, nor jump a big place to get on terms with the pack; on the contrary, you must let the hard-riding fraternity go by on all occasions, and then, warned by their mishaps, calmly pick your own places, and get through gaps and gates as best you can. Fourthly, you must watch the very first signs of tiring that are visible in your horse, and on perceiving them give in at once, and either ride or rail him quietly home. Fifthly, you must be decidedly wealthy, to allow of your purchasing marvels that can never by any chance contrive to put a foot astray. Sixthly, you must be a first-class judge of horseflesh, to enable you to find out such unheard-of acquisitions: and seventhly, you must possess a calmness of temperament very rarely to be met with among horsewomen—coupled with a wisdom to which that of Solomon, or Minerva, was a mere bagatelle.

I fancy, having got thus far, that I hear some lady asking rather disconsolately why I thus jest about serious matters, and whether it is really not possible, except on the conditions I have named, for an equestrian to ride to hounds without receiving falls,—and I at once answer that, according to my ideas of straight riding, it certainly is not. Whenever I hear a lady boast that she can ride two, three, or four days a week without ever getting a tumble, I at once surmise that she must be a very mild goer indeed; that she never rides hard except on exceptional days, when a country with which she is perfectly familiar happens to be traversed, and that the click of her horse’s hoofs is heard far oftener upon the roads than is the thunder of them on the broad fields, where bullfinch and yawning chasm offer difficulties with which the “cautious ones” do not care to meddle.

There is no denying the fact that if you mean to harden your heart and go straight, not stopping to take mental measurements of any obstacle that you may chance to encounter, falls will assuredly be your portion, and probably a good many of them, too; for you must remember that no matter how perfect may be your skill in the saddle, or how admirable the training of your steed, such things cannot afford you complete immunity from danger, so long as the hunting-field is flooded (which it unfortunately is) with ignorant horsemen, mounted on all kinds of animals—rough-riders, who care little about jostling and cannoning, provided that they themselves succeed in getting foremost places—and children, chiefly young boys, whose parents indulge them with mounts (no matter of what sort, provided they have four legs to carry them) during the long Christmas vacation, and who, with the fearlessness of ignorance, dash hither and thither, without any regard whatever for their own safety, much less for that of others.

One of the very worst falls I ever got in my life was caused by a schoolboy on a pony. The little chap burst wildly through a hedge close to Notley Abbey, where I happened to be waiting quietly, in hopes that the fox might break that way—and, cannoning right against me, caught my horse on the quarters, and turned him a complete somersault, burying me beneath his weight. Fortunately there were not many out, for it was a Chilton day, and the weather was very boisterous; had things been otherwise I could not have escaped being ridden over, for the game broke at the precise instant of my fall, and the field, such as it was, came streaming right over the fatal fence. On another occasion, when down at the bottom of a deep drain, a horsebreaker on a colossal mount tumbled crash on top of me, and neither of us looked handsome when dragged out—nor for a good many days after.

It is, therefore, manifest that however valuable skill and good horseflesh may undoubtedly be, we are largely dependent upon others for our safety, or its reverse, when we go to hunt, and as Carlyle’s theory of “mostly fools” is never in any place so clearly set forth as in the hunting-field, it will be well not to go thither with an over-confident feeling respecting our own powers, but rather to adopt the pithy prayer of the old Hobb’s Hill huntsman, “From all bad riders and wild horses, good Lord deliver us!”

I would have you bear in mind that it will be a grand help to you upon all occasions to keep cool, to avoid flurry and fuss, and above all things to steer clear of “funk,” which is as bad as panic, or a trifle worse. It is the least flurried riders who always come off the best, in two senses of the word,—therefore, while falls are not by any means to be made light of, they should be taken as coolly as possible, nor should demonstration of any sort ever be made over them. I saw a lady get two falls one day with Sir Bache Cunard’s pack at Holt Wood, and although her face was a sorry sight when turning homewards after the last one, she made infinitely less fuss about it than did an irrepressible damsel who had merely scraped her cheek against a thorn-bush.

You should never jump off at once when a horse bungles, but keep steady in the middle of your saddle and give him plenty of rein. Time enough for a man to show his quickness when his knee touches the ground, and for a lady in a similar predicament the best course will be to sit still, deal him out unlimited rope, grip his mane firmly—leaving his mouth alone—and ten to one he will recover himself. Of course I am speaking now of the plan to be pursued in case of a slow fall: one that is preceded by a scramble—in fact, a “bungle” as I have chosen to call it. When an animal comes down a weighty cropper, there is seldom much time for reflection, or choice of action either; the great point then is to come off as best you can.