Ancient riding art

Press, 4 March 1989, Page 22

Ancient riding art

Methven will become the focus of New Zealand’s sidesaddle riding world on March 19. CHRISTOPHER MOORE reports:

CHAMPION, Wilton, Whippy Stegall and Mayhew are the names behind some very distinguished family seats. The aristocrats of the sidesaddle riding world have borne generations of elegantly-tailored rumps which have risen and fallen in patrician fashion across fields, over hedges and around show rings for centuries. Champion, Wilton and Whippy Stegall are saddles made to last for generations. Today they have become the prized possessions of a growing number of South Islanders involved in the renaissance of an equine art.

The 65-member New Zealand Sidesaddle Association will hold its annual championships at the Meth ven Show on March 19 when judges will examine entrants and their mounts for poise, beauty and elegance.

The riders will be dressed in habits “of a restrained hue.’’ Their gloved hands (brown, hogskin or washed leather gloves — never black) will Garry a cane or whip no more than a metre long. No buttonholes, no jewellery and no veils.

The horse’s breeding and conformation are considered unimportant in sidesaddle riding. The mount will be judged for its even paces, obedience and suppleness. Above all, judges will see whether the animal provides a safe ride for the equestrienne. “The rider should be straight and supple — the line from the top of the rider’s head to the horse’s spine from behind. The arms should follow the natural line of the body. The rider should be free from tension and stiffness,” according to the Association’s guidelines for judges. For the layperson, the art of sidesaddle riding appears to rest on certain indefinable qualities.

This is no art for the impatient, but a gentle backwards canter into an age when riding was considered one of the ladylike arts and a man’s head could easily be turned by the sight of a ramrod-straight back and a wellturned ankle encased in soft Spanish leather. In ancient China and Persia, women traditionally rode astride. In Classical Greece, women who rode astride were regarded as slightly plebian. In the fourteenth century, a Bohemian princess introduced the sidesaddle into England. In sixteenth century France, Catherine de Medici hooked her right knee around the high pommel of a man’s horse saddle and launched a new fashion.

In the late eighteenth century, one aristocratic British dowager, a blind octogenarian, insisted on riding sidesaddle to the hounds. Navigation was greatly assisted by a servant riding on a second mount.

Whenever her Ladyship approached a fence, a bellowed instruction to “Jump, Dammit M’Lady, Junip” would echo across the fields. The lady’s sidesaddle technique remained impeccably correct. The early nineteenth century English author John Adams pro- , vides the perfect definition of sidesaddle riding. In 1805, he described how a woman rider “hooked her right knee oyer the pommel and the leg kept back with the toe raised.”

The left leg “is nearly, if not

wholly useless, for though the stirrup is placed on the foot, the only use I know it to be use of is to ease the leg a little which for want of practice might ache by dangling and suspension. “I can assure the ladies,” the courteous Mr Adams adds, “that the deprivation of that limb will be no detriment to their riding.” Using this style, women could participate in hunt meetings, tackling small jumps but avoiding anything too energetic. Being thrown remained an occupational hazard governed by thickly-encrusted layers of etiquette. Clad in jackets, breeches, apron skirt, top hat or bowler and veils, our nineteenth century sidesaddle heroine sallied forth in style. “Ladies can fall in all positions and there is absolutely no saying what might happen,” one writer commented enigmatically. Lady riders were cocooned from even worse harm by the “bust bodice” designed to protect the bodily movements of larger ladies from the effects of riding and the coarse gaze of the common tenantry mesmerised by the heroic rise and fall of a horseborne dowager.

Sidesaddles were modified and improved. An English professional huntsman, Thomas 01daker, invented the “leaping ahead,” a downward curving horn fitted to the saddle below the upper crutch which curls over and protects the rider’s left thigh.

By the 1920 s the sidesaddle had reached the pinnacle of design and comfort. The work of master saddlers such as Champion, Wilton and Whippy Stegall is regarded as fine art. The publicity officer for the New Zealand Side Saddle Association, Christine Wright, is one of a younger generation of sidesaddle riders. She began after being given an old saddle. "If they did it in the old days, I couldn’t see why I couldn’t, too. It was enough to spur me on,” Mrs Wright said recently. She now sees sidesaddle riding as “fun, different and a challenge.” The skill and nostalgia surrounding sidesaddle riding obviously fascinate the mind and eye of an increasing number of individuals. The word “Ladies” was dropped from the association’s title in an attempt to encourage men to become in- , volved in a riding technique. which had remained' an almost totally exclusive female reserve for 600 years. “It is not envisaged that many men will want to take up the sport, but for those who are disabled or amputees, there is nothing to stop them taking up this style of riding,” an association spokesperson member said recently. When the Canterbury branch’s first rally was held three years ago, there were no qualified New Zealand instructors. Members had to use textbooks to unravel details and subtleties of the art. In 1987, a visiting British judge and instructor, Valerie KearColwell, visited New Zealand and held instruction courses. A Southland woman, Sheryl Jones, later became New Zealand’s first qualified sidesaddle instructor.