Monthly Archive for October, 2010

The Lady’s Horse – Part I

Published by Hope V. on October 29, 2010 in History, Uncategorized and Victorian Horsemanship.
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“It was so cheerful to be trotting and cantering all together that it always put us in high spirits. I had the best of it, for I always carried the mistress; her hand was so little, her voice was sweet, and her hand so light on the rein that I was guided almost without feeling it.” Black Beauty 1877

Ah yes. The lady’s horse. If you were a lady in the Victorian Era, not just any horse would do. Ladies couldn’t just throw their legs up over any ol’ mount that ambled down the trail, if you know what I’m sayin’. They had to protect their delicate sensibilities and the right horse was essential to maintaining a lady’s grace and demeanor.

So Many Horses- Which Is Appropriate for The Lady?

In this and the next few posts, I am going to use two primary resources written in the Victorian era to discuss how the equestrian experts of the day viewed a couple of topics. The first being, as mentioned above, the type of horse suitable for a lady. I will deal with The Lady’s Horse in two posts, so that I can examine both books individually, while at the same time attempting not to lose all readers of this blog by making my post too long.

The first book, Riding: on the flat and across country: A guide to practical horsemanship, was written in 1882 by Matthew Horace Hayes. Hayes devotes a whole chapter (Chapter 6 to be exact) on “Ladies Riding” and he actually surprised me by how confident he seems in the ability of women to ride effectively. This is not to say that he’s a champion of Equal Rights! On Horseback!, but for a 19th century man writing on the horsemanship of women, he’s more complimentary than I expected. In other words, he’s a little more confident in a lady’s ability to ride as well as a man without “special allowances”. He refrains from giving overall rules based solely on the rider being a woman, but instead gives instruction on the different circumstances a rider might encounter based on the talent of the equestrienne.

For example, he writes:

As the object of this book is to teach the theory and practice of riding in a “workmanlike” manner, I shall not touch on the artificial rules and varying fashions of park or school equitation, but shall devote my space to the special points of horsemanship which concern ladies, and which hold good for all time.

(Or “hold good” until women ditch the sidesaddle and start riding astride in the twentieth century, but we won’t hold this lack of premonition against poor  Mr. Hayes.) The first section in his chapter on Lady’s Riding is on The Lady’s Horse , which was very convenient for the purposes of this post. Let’s read shall we?

A Lady’s Horse.—The question of man or woman being able to ride and control a horse, supposing him to be properly bitted and saddled, resolves itself into the more or less perfect possession by the rider of the following requisites : good hands; strong seat; firm nerves ; even temper, and physical strength. If a lady lack somewhat the last-mentioned gift, she amply makes up for the deficiency by a tightness of grip unobtainable in a man’s saddle; while it is but bare justice to say that in touch, courage, and patience she is at least our equal. Mere brute force has little to do with the capability of holding a puller.

See, right off the bat Hayes surprised me with this no-nonsense look at women riders. Pretty progressive for a Victorian dude, I thought. He goes on:

Ladies who have had equal opportunities, with men, of learning, ride quite as well as they. But, as a rule, they don’t get the chance of excelling, nor are they ” set right” by unpalatable home truths being told them without favour or affection, unless, indeed, they have hard-riding, and, may be, jealous brothers.

Very interesting, Hayes!  I’m listening…

A fine horsewoman, therefore, may be satisfied with any horse which is fit for a man, provided he is fairly steady to mount, goes up to his bit, and does not require an unusual amount of ” collecting.” I have the pleasure of knowing several ladies who could ride anything that has ever been foaled, yet it is not desirable, even with one of them, to have a horse ” dance about” when he is being mounted, or one which ” sprawls all over the place ” and requires constant pulling together, when the rider is up.

So. Pretty complimentary I’d say. After this introduction, he goes more into detail about what kind of horse would be desirable for a Victorian lady. Just for fun, I am going to subject Cinder to Victorian scrutiny. Let’s see how she fares.

The ordinary lady rider ought to have a horse which is perfectly steady to mount; is light in hand ; goes in a natural collected manner, and is safe and easy to ride.

Ok, well, Cinder aces the first requirement. She’s steady to mount- stands nicely without “dancing about” (poetry!). One point for Cinder. She’s relatively ‘light in hand’- in other words, she doesn’t pull her head down against the reins constantly. Another point for Cinder.
Now for the last point. Hmmm…“safe and easy”….well, most of the time she’s safe and easy. As long as there’s nothing strange brushing against her legs, she’s not in a large open field, and there’s no geese flying overhead. On the other hand, since she’s great with traffic, motorcycles, and large farm equipment, we’ll give her half a point. Half the time she’s safe and easy.
Two and a half out of a possible 3 points for Cinder. She’s well on her way to becoming the perfect Lady’s Horse.

Thanks for the points, folks.

He should not be rough or high in his action, lest he might fatigue her unnecessarily. All ladies, except those who are nervous, like light-hearted showy horses, though, unless they are really good riders, they naturally desire the fire and gaiety to be well under control. The plucky hard-riding sort love to steer horses which other ladies would be ” afraid of their lives ” to mount.

Well, Cinder’s not what I would call ‘light hearted and showy’. It just ain’t her personality; but as she’s not a total grouch, she has a touch of diva, and since she looks divine in purple (which is a decidedly showy color), we’ll give her another half a point.

In the next section, Hayes deals with the qualities necessary for a horse to carry a sidesaddle. I will deal more thoroughly in a future post about the sidesaddle itself, but we’ll read what he has to say in relation to a sidesaddle-carrying equine.

In order to give plenty of room for the saddle, a lady’s horse may be longer in the back than would be desirable in one for a man. He should be quite twentyone pounds, taken from a man’s point of view, above the weight he has to carry, as extra fatigue is entailed on him by the rider having to sit so far back. The side position naturally causes an unequal distribution of weight. Besides this, a lady cannot ease her horse by standing in the stirrups or getting off and on as a man may often do during a long ride. The far back position of the seat, however, enables a lady to ride a horse which is uncertain on his fore legs better than a man can do. A lady’s horse may, with advantage, have a fairly high forehand, so that the saddle may not shift forward, and that he may not jolt his rider too much.

As Cinder is half Clydesdale and therefore quite large, I think she’d do fine carrying the extra weight of a sidesaddle. Another point for her. (That’s four points out of a possible five for those who are keeping track.)

So, you know how I was talking about how surprised I was that Hayes seemed pretty progressive? Well, progressive had its limits in the Victorian Era, and no chapter in any lady’s riding manual, progressive or not, would be complete without style pointers. No matter how Workmanlike! the author intends it to be.

The style of horse should, if possible, be in thorough keeping with the style of rider. A young lady with a slight pretty figure will look best on a horse which is all blood and quality; while a portly and dignified matron will be best suited with one of the weight-carrying hunter stamp.

Make sure your horse doesn’t make you look fat!

Since we’re dealing with Cinder here, and since I am Cinder’s only rider, for this section we will judge her in relation to me. That’s right ladies and germs, I shall put myself up for Victorian Scrutiny. Does Hope’s horse make her look fat? Let’s find out!

First: Am I a ‘young lady’?  By Victorian standards no, that ship has sailed.

Second: Do I have a ‘slight pretty figure’? I don’t think that my figure and the word ‘slight’ have ever been used in conjunction.

Ok then, we have now determined that I am a lady neither young, nor possessing a slight figure; so that means I must fall into the second category of Portly and Dignified Matron.

Good grief, are those the only choices? I don’t really consider myself portly (and those who know me personally would certainly never call me dignified), but I suppose I fall on that side of the Victorian Lady Spectrum, so we’ll roll with it- bringing us to the horse required for such a lady: one of the weight-carrying hunter stamp. Cinder is half draft horse, and draft crosses are often used as hunters, so DING DING DING, we have a winner! Another point for Cinder. This is even funnier to me, because I have a bumper sticker that says “Ride a draft, it makes your butt look smaller”. I guess my car is partying like its 1877 and I didn’t even know it!

The next section of the chapter is especially interesting, because Hayes breaks down the method used to find the proper height ratio between lady and horse; Victorians apparently, were very thorough.

15.1 is a nice height for a horse to carry a lady five feet high. We may add an inch in height for the horse for every four inches by which the lady exceeds five feet.

Let me break that down for the non-horse people reading this. Horses are measured in ‘hands’ and a hand is four inches. So 15.1 means 15 ‘hands’ plus one inch. So, since Victorians add one inch to the horse for every four inches a woman is over 5 ft, and I am 5’4″, it means I should have a horse that’s 15.2 hands high. Cinder is 16.2. At least. So she’s a good 4 inches too tall for this portly matron. No point for you there Cinder, sorry. Horizontally you qualify, vertically not so much.

Next we have a Very Important Tip for Serious Riders. So listen up y’all.

Grey horses are objectionable for ladies, as the hair which comes off their bodies shows very much on the habit. Besides this, they are difficult to be kept clean.

Don’t want a grey horse, ladies! Their hair might come off on your clothes. Cinder is not grey, Cinder gets another point.

Nope, no grey here!

Last but not least, we have the last piece of advice on horse selection for Victorian Lay-deez.

Geldings are always preferable for ladies to either mares or horses. The former are especially objectionable in India, the latter in England.

Geldings are castrated males horses. Uh oh. Cinder’s a mare. Sorry Cinder. Another Victorian FAIL. It’s interesting to note that even in 2010, mares still get a bad rap for being moody and difficult- I know several modern lady riders who ‘can’t stand mares’. I however, love mares- I understand their hormonal plight and love them for their varying emotions.  So, since in this case I am the lady in question, and mares are my preference, I will give Cinder half a point.

Hayes’ last two tips regarding the color and sex of the horse are decidedly un-Workmanlike! and I dislike the Section for Portly Matrons (like me!) but overall, Matthew Horace Hayes is pretty balanced in his evaluation of the horsemanship skills of the Victorian lady rider and I found that pretty cool. Go Team Hayes!

Oh dear, I almost forgot about poor Cinder. Let’s tally her results! Will Cinder take home the much coveted title of Lady’s Horse?! Drum roll please….

Cinder received 6.5 points out of a possible 9.

Not 100%- but since she’s the only horse playing- she wins by default!  Congratulations, Cinder! You are now an honorary Lady’s Horse of the Victorian Era!

[graphic]
Stay tuned for The Lady’s Horse- Part Deux, where I will be looking the other primary source I found and what it has to say about the proper horse for a Victorian lady. Don’t fret gentle readers, it had less to say, so it will be a shorter post.
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Reading About Arsenic and Regency Eccentrics

Published by SJ on October 19, 2010 in History.
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I have been reading some great stuff about the nineteenth century lately. One title was based on my interest in William Kitchiner after I made curry and started prying into his life a bit. The other book I stumbled onto at the library, entirely by chance.

The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain Was Poisoned at Home, Work, & Play, James C. Wharton, Oxford University Press, 2010.

The Arsenic Century

The Arsenic Century, my accidental find, is an exhaustive look at the extremely liberal use of arsenic in the nineteenth century, with a focus on England and Victorian London. The author, James C. Whorton, delves into every aspect of it: how it is produced, how it was detected, the awful “cures” people used, and he does not shy away from graphic descriptions of the sicknesses and deaths it caused. It’s (in large part) a fascinating history book that is sprinkled with science and riveting murder mysteries in the form of poisoning cases.

To this day, I think that is the association most people have with arsenic: murder by poison. In many instances it was deliberately administered to the unsuspecting with the intent of causing death, but in others, people were poisoning themselves by working with it to make artificial flowers, wallpapers, and dyes. I’d heard of “arsenic green” but was unaware that arsenical compounds were used to make a vast array of colors.

People living in this time were also poisoned by their consumer products. If making the wallpaper was making the manufacturers sick, naturally it was making the people whose homes it hung in sick as well. Candles, cloth, paper, and more contained arsenic. Arsenic was sold alongside other products in pharmacies and dry-goods stores, and was sometimes mistakenly dispensed as something innocuous like baking powder. Mislabeled arsenic at home lead to deadly meals.

One of the saddest stories Wharton tells is about adulteration of candy, which was a known problem during this period before strict food ingredient, labeling, and quality laws. Wharton tells us of a candy maker who sent his assistant off to buy a large sack of plaster of Paris so he could make a large batch of peppermint candies with a great deal of filler to extend his profits. When it was time to make the candies, someone in the shop went to fetch the filler from the back room and instead grabbed a container of arsenic (which was labeled, but only on the bottom). When the candy was distributed for sale, dozens were killed, and many more were sickened.

Another aspect of arsenic use I found shocking was that people elected to deliberately take arsenic themselves on a regular basis, and that there were commercial preparations containing arsenic that were sold and intended for use much like vitamins today, or as facial washes to eliminate skin problems. Writers and the press called these people “arsenic-eaters.” They were convinced arsenic in controlled quantities made people more energetic, plumper, and more vital, and there was a lot of anecdotal evidence from people and animals like horses working more efficiently and putting on weight (of course underweight at this time often signified poverty or sickness) in response to small doses.

Wharton includes tale after tale of death due to stupidity, carelessness, or honest mistakes from being surrounded by arsenic. The body count gets so high in some chapters, it’s almost laughable, in a morbid way. Considering how much Wharton fits into this very dense and fact-filled book, it’s a lively read.

So what does Beeton’s say about arsenic?

There is faintness, depression, and sickness, with an intense burning pain in the region of the stomach, which gets worse and worse, and is increased by pressure. There is also vomiting of dark brown matter, sometimes mixed with blood; and mostly great thirst, with a feeling of tightness round, and of burning in, the throat. Purging also takes place, the matters brought away being mixed with blood. The pulse is small and irregular, and the skin sometimes cold and clammy, and at others hot. The breathing is painful. Convulsions and spasms often occur.

I will admit to you that I am completely blanking on the name of the doctor who wrote most of the chapter in the BOHM on medicine and treatments, aptly titled “The Doctor.” There is a section devoted to arsenic, and they recommend treatment with “Emetics, Lime–Water, Soap-and-Water, Sugar and Water, Oily Drinks.” So, something that would make the patient vomit, or dilute the poison. Wharton lists several “cures” Beeton’s does not mention that could be just as deadly as arsenic, such as calomel or opiates.

Dr. William Kitchiner, Regency Eccentric, Author of the Cook’s Oracle, Tom Bridge and Colin Cooper English, Southover Press, 1992.

I have also been reading about one of my new favorite people, William Kitchiner, MD, who famously wrote The Cook’s Oracle. Tom Bridge and Colin Cooper English do Kitchiner justice in a terse volume called Dr. William Kitchiner, Regency Eccentric, Author of the Cook’s Oracle. At the outset, the authors admit that not a whole heaping ton is known about Dr. Kitchiner’s life, which makes for my favorite kind of biography, one that does not start seven generations back on a beet farm.

Kitchiner, denied the ability to practice medicine in London since he was certified in Glasgow, was most famous during his lifetime for his Committee of Taste, a small group of men who rotated based on their availability. The Committee were the taste testers for the recipes that would come to fill out The Cook’s Oracle [1817].

The routine was invariably as follows: invitations were sent, a response was expected within a day, guests arrived at 5 p.m. sharp and the door was promptly slammed shut and locked at 5:02. Dinner was served at exactly half-past nine, and when the clock struck eleven, guests were handed their hats, the end, GET OUT.

As a writer of books and music, an inventor of a stove and a sauce (Zest) meant to fight scurvy in the Royal Navy, and an educated man of taste, Kitchiner was acquainted with renowned people and invited them to his tastings. Famous writers, actors, and poets were often in attendance, and Kitchiner even hosted George IV when he was still the Prince Regent, who was attracted by the plain, practical dinners and interesting company.

Many modern historians agree that Beeton certainly would have had a copy of The Cook’s Oracle, probably even before she began compiling the BOHM. Sarah Freeman, in Isabella and Sam [1978], calls Kitchiner “prissy, demanding, dictatorial,” which is well-evidenced by his dinner party dictates, but also that The Cook’s Oracle was “the oldest book she definitely made use of–though perhaps the most modern in spirit.” Freeman writes:

Isabella was preceded by Kitchiner in very many essential respects: he was the first cookery writer ever to give accurate weights and measures; he included detailed marketing tables listing the seasonal prices of foodstuffs…and he emphasized economy rather than elegance, taking as his motto: ‘ORDER AND ECONOMY ARE THE BASIS OF COMFORT AND INDEPENDENCE.” [Emphasis Freeman's.]

I will personally vouch for Kitchiner here. When I get to what looks like one of his recipes, notable for their clear measurements and unambiguous instructions, I know that I have encountered something that will actually work.

Kitchiner had one bastard son from a long-term relationship he had after his brief marriage, which resulted in a separation, but not dissolution. His legitimate wife is not mentioned in his will, but his companion, Elizabeth Friend, was provided for. Sadly, speaking of poisons, it it suspected Dr. Kitchiner was poisoned by amanita mushrooms under very suspicious circumstances shortly after changing his will to make his son a majority recipient of his estate.

Another enjoyable read, and the last chapter provides an interesting selection of his recipes from his most famous book.

FINALLY:

A million thank yous to the Under Gardener, who told me a months ago to watch The Supersizers Go Victorian. A recent comment from MadamQ nudged me toward it again, and I was ready this time! In case you do not know the Supersizers, they are two British comedians/TV presenters who immerse themselves in the culture of a time period for a week. I thought this was a scream, but in the past year I have found increasingly bizarre things relating to the nineteenth century funny, so take me as you will.

The Supersizers enjoy a Christmas feast that would make Dickens envious, a calf’s head, many jellies, fried ears, very sad, thin soup for the poor a la Soyer, and more.

I like what cohost Sue Perkins said about the Victorians–I think she nailed it: “The fascination with rare and beautiful creatures, combined with the desire to kill them and eat them.”

Here is the first part:

The rest is on the YouTubes. I am still cooking, don’t worry. I’ll be back soon with glistening piles of who knows what.

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Mid-Fall Munching

Published by SJ on October 14, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
mid-fall-munching

Well, hello October. I’ve been busy cooking, reading, and mushroom hunting. Lately I am enjoying breaking food into “categories” by type or ingredient and having a spree with them all at once, much like my Pickling Extravaganza. I’ve got an Almond Day coming up, including “cheesecakes” that in no way resembles the modern New York style.

I. Toad in the Hole and a Digression

Sometimes I think I find aspects of Victorian food so appealing because I grew up with Southern U.S. cuisine. I am completely talking out of my hat here, because I am an observer rather than an expert, but I see correlations between Southern food and Victorian food in the desire to use every part of an animal, like pickled pigs feet or watermelon rinds (U.S.); the existence of more than one type of dumpling or fried bread product, like hushpuppies or soup dumplings (U.S.) and forcemeat, savory puddings, and fritters (Victorian); and the liberal use of economical gravies, which is basically fat, flour, and some kind of flavorful broth or liquid.

Of course, most cultures have some version of the sandwich or dumpling, a starch or bread, and sauces to go with it, but I feel there is a closer connection between Southern cuisine and the Victorians than a lot of other food types. Part of that, obviously, is the fact that the British and Irish brought their food to the U.S. with them during colonization and immigration, and it became part of the mix along with American Indian, African, and French foods. It’s kind of a remix of what was happening in nineteenth-century England, but with MUCH LESS nutmeg and mace.

Somehow, this brings me to toad in the hole, a classic British dish. I told a few friends I was making toad in the hole, and I was asked more than once, “Oh, the thing with egg cooked in toast?” Apparently there is enough confusion about this among Americans that Wikipedia’s Egg in the Basket page offers clarification between the two dishes first thing.

One digression I will skip is how the recipe earned its name. There’s several theories about this one–it was named after a pitching-disc game, the meat/offal chunks look like hibernating toads (many people don’t know the dish did not originate as sausages and spend a lot of time shouting “The sausages don’t look like toads at all!” on message boards. Duh.), and some internet wags say the dish was charmingly called “turd in the hole.”

Beeton’s, like other recipes of the time, calls for bits of meat to be added rather than the modern dish of Yorkshire pudding poured into a hot dish around sausages, and is billed as “Cold-Meat Cookery,” which is Beeton-speak for “How to Use Up Leftovers from That Ridiculous 12-Course Dinner Party You Threw to Impress Your Bougie Friends.”

Of course I went with Beeton, but I used fresh lamb bits rather than the cold mutton she calls for. At her suggestion, I decided to substitute mushrooms and oysters for the kidneys. I browned the lamb without cooking it through and cooked the mushrooms down so they would not release their liquid into the pudding while it was trying to rise. I shucked the oysters and drained the liquor (which I am saving in the freezer for the next time I make fish stock), and decided to put the oysters into the batter raw.

Toad in the Hole

We liked the results a lot, and agreed it made a really tasty meal, especially with the addition of onion gravy, which was recommended by British friend. In the scheme of things, not so hard to make, either. This is yet another dish that I will add to my normal repertoire once this year is over.

Served with pickles, of course.

II. A Most Bizarre Luncheon

As I’ve mentioned, for the most part I am making batches of food, like “pickle day” or am making one component per meal, and then plainer, more modern food to go with. I cannot completely tread upon the patience and tastebuds of my erstwhile guinea pigs. A couple of weekends ago, however, I decided to make a whole meal on a Saturday afternoon.

There was lots of boiling. First I boiled Spanish onions for an hour, followed by baking them in foil for almost another hour. You then peel, score, and smother them in gravy. I burned myself taking them out of the oven–boiling water dripped out of the foil on onto my foot, which now has a little brown mark on it, I think in part from the dark color the onion water turned from the skins.

Boiled Spanish Onions

In the meantime, I pounded a tenderloin and made it into a roulade filled with garlic bits and grease. As Beeton recommended, I basted it frequently while it cooked, with more delicious grease I had laying around. Then I boiled celery, to be covered in a cream sauce. It takes longer than I would have thought, even though it has all the cellulose and…what have you. I try not to think about celery. It’s goat food, I tell you.

Waiting for Luncheon

Two Kinds of Applesauce

Probably my favorite part, though, was the two kinds of applesauce I made. Applesauce is delicious with pork and poultry, isn’t it? It’s easy to make a quick one with a little water and sugar, but Beeton has one I really liked–the gravy and spice makes it a great mix of sweet, spicy, and savory, which as I have mentioned, is my crack.

Brown Apple Sauce [364.]

Ingredients.

2 good-sized apples
1/3 cup brown gravy
cayenne to taste

Mode. — Put the gravy in a stewpan, and add the apples, after having pared, cored, and quartered them. Let them simmer gently till tender; beat them to a pulp, and season with cayenne.

III. Crab with Jane

Finally, here is something I liked a LOT. I am a crab person anyway, so this was an easy win. I knew I was going to be home alone with one my scullery maids, Jane, so I invited her to come upstairs and dine with me. I picked up a couple of iced crabs (I was not in the mood to go all Circle of Life and cook them in front of little Jane, who was eyeballing them dubiously as it was), cleaned them, and pulled all the meat out, saving the shell.

Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays!

Jane enjoyed clicking their little claws and stealing nips of leftover meat as they fell on the counter. I taught her about exoskeletons as we worked. Educating the lower serving classes at every reasonable opportunity is one of the duties of the mistress of the house, after all. If Jane can get her tendency to blaspheme at every opportunity under control, she may someday make a fine lady’s maid.

Once I had extracted all the meat, I blended it with nutmeg, cayenne, melted butter, and salt and pepper. The reserved shell gets stuffed with the meat, and you cover the exposed meat with seasoned breadcrumbs, and it gets warmed and toasted in the oven.

Stuffed and ready to cook

About crab “fur”–you can see on the underside of the shell there are “hairs” that I decided to leave in place, though I cleaned all the “crab butter” and other liquid or grit out. Do people remove these or leave these on? I suppose it’s somewhat moot most of the time, since most crab I see is served in the shell or in a dish ready to eat, like in pasta.

Scullery Maid Jane enjoys a simple meal of hot crab, apple slices, and bread. She will catch Hell when the other servants discover what they have missed.

Beeton suggests that one crab can be shared among three people, making it just another side dish that you can take morsels from during the fish course. I decided to focus on the crab, since it is a rare treat for us. Jane could not finish hers, so I turned it into crab salad for sandwiches the next day (Beeton would approve of this economy).

The crab disappeared very quickly.

I think this would be a wonderful Christmas dish.

Hot Crab [245.]

Ingredients.

1 crab
1/8th teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoonfuls of vinegar

Mode.—After having boiled the crab, pick the meat out from the shells, and mix with it the nutmeg, vinegar, seasoning, and melted butter. Put the whole in the large shell, cover the visible crab meat with bread crumbs, and cook at 375 for 20 minutes.

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Allow myself to introduce…myself.

Published by Hope V. on October 2, 2010 in Customs and Manners, History, Uncategorized and Victorian Horsemanship.
allow-myself-to-introduce-myself

Greetings gentle readers of the Queen’s Scullery!

I have signed on for the remainder of the year to discuss the ins and outs of riding and horsemanship in the Victorian Era. I am really excited to do more research on this topic- I have a degree in History and loved All Things Equine since I was small (like many little girls, I just never grew out of it), but have never tried to combine the two interests. I will attempt to do so here.

Since the methods of horsemanship, equipment, and apparel for men has changed comparatively little since the nineteenth century, I will be concentrating on women of the era. The differences between then and now are legion and I will have a lot of fun researching them. For example, consider for a moment the image below:

Typical apparel for Hope and Cinder

Now compare it to the caricature below depicting Elizabeth the Empress of Austria published in Vanity Fair in 1884:

Different, no?

Also, you’ll notice in my picture there’s no groom present to ‘help the lady gracefully into the saddle’- the absence of such would have been a big no no for good Victorian ladies. Not that I was riding that day, which is why I’m not wearing a helmet (another difference between then and now- Victorians did not require brain protection), but even if I was, alas, I would not have had a male hand to guide me onto my noble steed.

So as you can see, there is a lot to delve into!

Serving as the springboard for my research will be Black Beauty, the novel written 1877 by Anna Sewell. The book is largely thought of now as a book for children, but Sewell a actually wrote it to bring awareness to the conditions endured by riding and working horses in England at the time. It’s useful for my purposes, because Sewell is very thorough in her descriptions of a wide variety of horsemanship and animal husbandry practices of the era. The ideas I find interesting in this work of Victorian Era fiction will provide the basis to then find the historical documentation in non-fiction riding manuals of the same era.

Cover of the first edition published in 1877

When I can feasibly do so, I will be using my trusty assistant Cinder to try things out or as a model for explanation.

Thrilled I'm Sure.

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