THE BARB AND THE BRIDLE;

A HANDBOOK OF EQUITATION FOR LADIES, AND MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION IN THE SCIENCE OF RIDING, FROM THE PREPARATORY SUPPLING EXERCISES ON FOOT, TO THE FORM IN WHICH A LADY SHOULD RIDE TO HOUNDS.

Reprinted from "The Queen" Newspaper.

By "VIEILLE MOUSTACHE."

LONDON:
THE "QUEEN" OFFICE, 346, STRAND.

1874.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY HORACE COX, 346, STRAND, W.C.

THE LADY'S HORSE.

INTRODUCTION.

Having received numerous applications from ladies desirous of information, as to the true principles and practice of equitation, I venture to put before the public, in book form, a series of articles which appeared originally in the columns of the Queen newspaper on ladies' riding.

Commencing with the calisthenic practices so necessary to a young lady before beginning her mounted lessons, these papers enter into every detail (less those of the Haut École de Manége) connected with the science of riding as it should be acquired by all who wish to become efficient horsewomen. As the rules laid down are precisely those upon which I have successfully instructed a great number of ladies, as my experience is of many years' standing, and acquired in the best schools in Europe, I trust the following pages may prove useful; for, while it is quite true that neither man nor woman can learn to ride by simply reading a book on the subject, still a carefully-compiled manual of equitation is always a ready means of refreshing the memory upon points of importance in the art, which, however clearly explained by the oral instruction of a first-class master, may yet in time escape the recollection of the pupil.

"Vieille Moustache."

THE BARB AND THE BRIDLE.

CHAPTER I.

Riding, considered as a means of recreation, as a promoter of health, or as the best mode in which to display to the greatest advantage beauty and symmetry of face and form, is perhaps unequalled among the many accomplishments necessary to a lady.

Out of doors croquet may be interesting as a game, and fascinating enough when a lady has an agreeable partner, but as an exercise physically its healthfulness is doubtful.

There is too much standing about, often on damp grass, too little real exertion to keep the circulation up properly, and too many intervals of quiescence, wherein a lady stands perfectly still (in a very graceful attitude no doubt) long enough in the chill evening air to create catarrh or influenza.

Archery, although a far more graceful exercise than croquet, is open to the same objection as regards danger of taking cold.

Skating, though both healthful and elegant, is so seldom available as scarcely to be reckoned among the exercises beneficial to ladies. Moreover, it is attended with considerable danger in many cases.

To be well is to look well. Healthy physical exertion is indispensable to the former state, and in no way can it be so well secured as by riding. Mounted on a well-broken, well-bred horse, and cantering over a breezy down, or trotting on the soft sward, on the way to covert, a lady feels a glow of health and flow of spirits unattainable by any other kind of out or in door recreation.

That the foregoing truths are fully appreciated by the ladies of the Upper Ten Thousand is abundantly proved by the goodly gathering of fair and aristocratic equestrians to be seen in Rotten Row during the London season, and at every fashionable meet of hounds in the kingdom in the winter time.

Nor is riding confined to those only whose names figure in the pages of "Burke" or "Debrett." Within the last twenty years the wives and daughters of professional men and wealthy tradesmen, who were content formerly to take an airing in a carriage, have taken to riding on horseback. And they are quite right. It is not (with management) a bit more expensive, while it is beyond comparison the most agreeable and salubrious mode of inhaling the breeze.

The daughter of the peer, or other great grandee of the country, may be almost said to be a horsewoman to the manner born. Riding comes as naturally to her as it does to her brothers. Both clamber up on their ponies, or are lifted on, almost as soon as they can walk, and consequently "grow" into their riding, and become at fifteen or sixteen years of age as much at home in the saddle as they are on a sofa. In the hunting field they see the best types of riding extant, male and female, and learn to copy their style and mode of handling their horses, while oral instruction of the highest order is always at hand to supplement daily practice. To the great ladies of England, then, all hints on the subject would be superfluous. Most of them justly take great pride in their riding, spare no pains to excel in it, and are thoroughly successful.

In fact, it is the one accomplishment in which they as far surpass the women of all other countries in the world as they outvie them in personal beauty.

A German or French woman possibly may hold her own with an Englishwoman in a ball room or a box at the opera; but put her on horseback, and take her to the covert side, she is "not in it" with her English rivals.

Although the advantages and opportunities I speak of, however, render words of advice upon female equitation unnecessary to ladies of the sangre azul, I trust they may be found useful to others who may not have had such opportunities.

In the upper middle classes nothing is more probable than the marriage of one of the daughters of the house with a man whose future lot may be cast in the colonies, where if a woman cannot ride she will be sorely at a loss. Unlike the ladies of high degree above alluded to, the daughter of a man in good position in the middle class will often not have opportunities of learning to ride until she is fifteen or sixteen, and by this time the youthful frame, supple as it may appear, has acquired (so to speak) "a set," which at first renders riding far from agreeable; because it calls into action whole sets of muscles and ligaments heretofore rarely brought into play, or rather only partially so. Hence the unpleasant stiffness that always follows the first essays of the tyro in riding of the age I speak of, and which painful feeling too often so discourages beginners that they give up the thing in disgust.

Now this unpleasant consequence of the first lessons may be easily obviated by the following means. Bearing in mind that pain or stiffness is the result of want of supplesse, the first desideratum is to acquire this most desirable elasticity. To accomplish this, three months before the pupil is put on horseback she should begin a course of training in suppling and extension motions on foot, precisely similar to those drilled into a cavalry recruit in the army. No amount of dancing will do what is required. Even the professional danseuse, with her constant exercise of the ronde de jambe, never possesses that mobile action of the waist and play of the joints of the upper part of the figure so thoroughly to be acquired by the exercises I speak of, which also have the further greater advantage of giving development and expansion to the chest. I therefore respectfully advise every careful mother, who is desirous of seeing her daughters become accomplished horsewomen, before taking them to the riding master (of whom more hereafter), in the first place to employ a good drill master.

Possibly, the young ladies may have had drill instruction at school; but