"Hands" of course have everything to do with the niceties of riding, and "hands" cannot be taught. But, after all, thinking has a great deal to do with good riding, and if people would but remember that horses are not machines, that they do feel and their poor mouths are sensitive, it would go far towards improving their horsemanship and hands. I am sure that half the falls we get are due to our own faulty riding, though we all know how we say if our horse falls with us he is a stupid brute for doing it, yet if the same mishap should occur while a groom is on his back, it is then he who gets that title for letting him down. We read sometimes about people "lifting" their horses, but I do not know what that means. One must trust them to a great extent, and any interference at the critical moment is most likely to land them head over heels.
I remember hearing a well-known coper say to a friend of mine who could ride a runaway horse without being even pulled, "Ah, but then you've got the fingers." I once tried to explain to my sister that she must "carry her own hands," and she laughed at me for telling her to try and make them be like souflés. "Anything will pull if you pull at it," I have often been told, but it is not easy to be like a souflé when you are going forty thousand miles a minute, skew-ways on at a double wire fence with a river in between.
How women long ago could possibly ride across country without a third pommel is a mystery to me. Yet we are told they went well. I cannot credit their having been able to ride anything but patent safety horses, for one needs all the strength the third pommel gives to steer an awkward horse along, though of course one's knee should hang below it in the ordinary way of riding. I believe the great tip in women's riding is to ride off the right leg. So much strength is to be got out of pressing the leg against the saddle flap, and it is noticeable what a much prettier seat those have who rise in trotting off the right thigh than others who laboriously rise out of the stirrup.
LANCER, IRISH HORSE.
(Property of Mrs. Burn.)
Another thing that often strikes me is how few women carry their stirrup foot in the right place. The proper position for the left foot is to hang in a straight line from the knee, with the foot easy in the stirrup, not pressed against it, but home in it I think, though I see many who only touch it with their toes. It is pitiful to ride behind a woman and see the sole of her foot sticking up at the back, yet some find they get their grip in this way, so they tell me, the grip which should come from the pressure I mentioned before, of the right leg against the saddle flap.
A well-known woman to hounds was once pointed out to me as a wonder on a horse. So she was, very good; but if she had ridden with a spur she would have been killed long before, for she rode with her toe out and her heel pressed against her horse's ribs. Why many women have not broken their necks before now I do not know. Those who ride with a loose rein, for instance. I once saw a gallant girl galloping hard across a heavy plough, with her reins hung over one finger. It may have been smart, it certainly was brave, but the sad thing was it showed her ignorance so patently that one pitied her from the heart, and her horse still more, for had he not been one of the cleverest in England he must have tumbled her head over heels.
Women out hunting should take their chance with the rest, and never trade on the chivalry of the opposite sex, for this is what makes them unpopular in the hunting field.