The Pretty Horse-Breakers

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AUTHOR’S NOTEThe ‘Pretty Horse-breakers’ are a historical fact, although little has been written about them. In the nineteenth century, breaking a horse to the sidesaddle was carried out by professional lady riders and every livery stable employed them. Then in two or three of the more fashionable riding schools in the West End of London it became the practice to invite a select audience to the gallery to watch their performance and wealthy young bloods soon persuaded the more attractive of the horse-breakers to become their mistresses.

There was never any question of professional prostitutes learning to break horses, but there was an alliance between the well-known ‘procureur and the fashionable livery stables. The ‘procureur’ would invest money in the flashy riding habits of the ‘Pretty Horse-breakers’, and the consequent sales of horses ridden by them became a lucrative business. In the absence of ‘film stars’ the ‘Pretty Horse-Breakers’, who met at the Achilles statue, became the rage with the public in Hyde Park.

The severity of the ‘Pretty Horse-Breakers’ is again a historical fact, most sidesaddle riders with only one heel available could only hope to control their horses with the use of a spur. The modern dummy spur was not invented until the early twentieth century.

It was the predilection of the ‘Pretty Horse-Breakers’ to use their sharp and vicious spurs severely on all occasions. G. J. Whyte-Melville in his book Riding Recollections, published in 1878, deplores the lack of mercy shown by ladies in the use of the spur,

“Perhaps because they have but one, they use this stimulant liberally and without compunction. From their seat and shortness of stirrup, these vigorous applications are unsuspected by lookers-on and the unwary wonder why, in the streets of London or the Park, a lady’s horse always appears to go in a lighter and livelier form than that of her male companion.”

“It’s a woman’s hand,” says the admiring pedestrian.

“Not a bit of it,” answers the cynic who knows. “It’s a woman’s heel.”

Chapter One

1860

“Steady, boy, there’s no hurry,” Candida said pulling at the reins, yet knowing even as she spoke that there was the need for haste and she was but putting off what lay ahead.

She kept saying to herself,

‘This is the last time – the last time I shall ride Pegasus, the last time perhaps I shall ever be mounted on a horse like him.’

As the words repeated themselves over and over again in her head, it seemed to her that the horse’s hooves on the road endlessly reiterated,

“The last time!”

“The last time!”

“The last time!”

She looked about her at the countryside she was passing through, the hedges sprouting with the first green buds of spring, the meadows newborn with a lush freshness, the primroses peeping through banks of moss at the roadside and the anemones making a carpet, white and virginal, in the woods.

“The last time! The last time!”

“Oh, Pegasus,” Candida whispered, bending forward to pat the horse’s neck, “how can I bear to let you go? How could it have come to this?”

She felt the tears gather in her eyes and bit her lip to stop them falling. What was the use of crying? It was all so hopeless. There was nothing she could do to save Pegasus or indeed herself.

She must have known that this would happen after her mother had died a year before. ‘A wasting disease’, the doctors had called it for want of a better name. Only Candida had known how hard her mother had fought to keep her husband from knowing what agonies she suffered or to disguise from him her weakness, which grew greater day by day.

Candida thought now that she might have known that her father would never survive without her – her gay, affectionate but weak father, whose whole world collapsed when he no longer had the wife he loved to support him.

He had taken to drinking at The King’s Head night after night and Candida had realised it was not for the convivial company, in which he had no interest, but merely because he dreaded the emptiness of the house and most of all the bedroom where he must sleep without his wife. She tried to help him, but he was like a man suddenly blinded, who could see nothing but his own darkness.

“How can she have left me?” he used to ask furiously when he was drunk.

“Where has she gone to?” he would demand, and often, as Candida helped him up the stairs to bed, he would shout, “Emmeline, Emmeline!”, his voice reverberating round the house, the echo of it seeming to come back to him, “Emmeline, Emmeline!”

She should have known, Candida thought, that when he went out that last night she would never see him again.

It had been cold and damp all day and at dusk it had started to deluge with rain.

“Don’t leave home tonight, Papa,” Candida had begged, as she heard him order old Ned to saddle Juno, his chestnut mare.

“I have an appointment,” he answered, but he avoided her eyes as he spoke and she knew only too well that the appointment was at The King’s Head with a bottle of their raw brandy.

“See, Papa, I have built a fire in the library,” she coaxed. “I believe there is a bottle of your favourite claret downstairs. Let me fetch it from the cellar and you can drink it here by the fireside.”

“Alone?” he asked sharply and she heard the pain in his voice.

“I will sit with you,” she said a little shyly.

For a moment she seemed to break through the misery that enveloped him.

“I believe you would,” he said, “and carry me up to bed afterwards. You are a good child, Candida.”

He bent to kiss her and she had a short-lived hope that she had persuaded him into staying. Then almost roughly he pushed her aside.

“I must keep my appointment,” he said and there was an agony in his tone that she knew only too well.

It was when his utter despair at his loss swept over him that he could not stay in the house. He could not look at familiar objects which reminded him all too poignantly of his wife – her favourite chair with the ridiculous little cushion she had embroidered with beads, the tables on which she had arranged vases of fragrant flowers, the inlaid sewing box which had always stood beside her so that she could busy herself while they talked or when he read aloud the poems he had written and which she tried so hard to appreciate for his sake.

It was these poems, Candida had learnt, which had turned her mother’s family against the marriage. When she was a child she had often wondered why she had so few relations while other girls of her age had grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She must have been very young when she first sensed there was something strange about the isolation they lived in.

They were poor, but she accepted that without question. Sometimes unexpected money would arrive from the publishers and then there would be special celebrations – food, which seemed to Candida like ambrosia, wine, a luxury seldom enjoyed – and her mother would go to the piano and play songs, which her father would sing. The whole house seemed as golden as the money that had been earned by her father’s writings.

“Gladys’s grandfather has given her a pony for Christmas,” she remembered saying once to her mother. “Why haven’t I a grandfather?”

Her mother had looked apprehensively over her shoulder.

“Hush, darling, don’t speak of it now,” she begged, “you will upset your father.”

“Why?” Candida enquired.

For many years she always received the same evasive answer. Finally from some chance remark she learnt that her parents had eloped.

“Oh, Mama, how exciting! How could you do anything so brave, so daring?” Candida exclaimed. “Tell me about it, please tell me about it.”

Her mother shook her head.

“I cannot, darling. I promised your father that I would never speak to anyone of my life before I knew him.”

“You must tell me, Mama,” Candida had insisted. “When the other children whom I meet in the village talk about their relations, I feel so foolish and indeed so strange having none of my own.”

“You have Papa and me,” her mother had said. “Isn’t that enough, darling?”

“Of course it is,” Candida replied, impulsively throwing her arms round her mother’s neck. “I love you, I could not have a more wonderful mother and father if I searched the whole wide world for them. I love you both so very much, but – ”

She paused, and her mother, with a little smile, finished the sentence.

“ – you are curious.”

“Yes, of course,” Candida answered. “Can you not understand?”

She had been twelve years old at the time and she could remember now how often she had felt embarrassed, sensing that other people thought that there was something strange in the fact that her mother never spoke of her parents or where she had lived before they came to Little Berkhamstead.

Little Berkhamstead was a tiny village in Hertfordshire of less than a hundred inhabitants, with a few cottages nestling round a grey Norman-built Church. Candida’s parents lived in a small Elizabethan manor.

It had low oak beam ceilings, small rooms and a garden which was her mother’s delight and which, unlike other ladies in the neighbourhood, she tended herself – growing not only a profusion of flowers, but many herbs with which she made remedies for those who were sick and could not afford a physician.

She was deeply loved in the village and when she was buried in the little churchyard there were no large or expensive wreaths, but the grave was covered with blossoms, most of them only in small bunches, but each given with love and gratitude.

“Please tell me, Mama,” twelve-year-old Candida had pleaded and finally her mother had risen and walked to the lattice-paned window to look out on the flower-filled garden.

“I am so happy,” she said softly, almost as though she spoke to herself. “I hoped the past would be forgotten.”

Candida had not spoken and after a moment her mother had gone on,

“Still, I suppose you have a right to know. But you must promise me that you will never speak of what I tell you to your father. Any mention of it upsets him and you know I would never do anything to cause him distress.”

“No indeed, Mama, and I promise you faithfully that if you confide in me I will never relate your secrets.”

“It all seems a very long time ago,” her mother began. “I was young and I had many of the things that you, my darling, will never be able to have and, of course, the gowns to wear which to any woman are the most important part of a social scene.”

“Oh Mama, I would have loved to see you,” Candida exclaimed. “You must have looked beautiful. Did you wear a crinoline?”

“No, but our gowns were very full,” her mother replied, “because we wore innumerable petticoats. They were perhaps more becoming and certainly more comfortable than being encumbered with an enormous hoop which The Ladies Journal tells me in 1860 is still the vogue.”

She spoke a little wistfully and just for a moment Candida sensed that she missed the fashionable silks and satins, the jewels, the furs and all the elegance which must have made her look even lovelier than she was in her plain home-made dresses.

“It was all very gay,” she went on, “and I suppose I should be foolish if I did not confess that I was a success. I had many suitors, Candida, and my parents favoured a gentleman – who shall be nameless – but who, I can tell you, was of noble birth and truly distinguished.”

“Was he handsome?” Candida asked.

“Very handsome,” her mother replied, “and I was deeply envied because I had attracted his attention. But then I met your father – ”

There was a long pause and Candida felt as though her mother had somehow forgotten her.

“Pray continue, Mama, this cannot be the end of the story.”

It was almost with a start that her mother seemed to come back to reality.

“No indeed,” she answered, “it was only the beginning.”

“Did you fall in love with him, Mama?” Candida asked.

“Deeply and irrevocably,” her mother declared. “I cannot explain why – he was certainly good-looking, but he had not the presence or distinction of my other suitor, but, what was more detrimental in my parents’ eyes, he had no money.”

“No money at all?” Candida enquired.

“A mere pittance,” her mother replied, “a small legacy from an uncle. But we thought it was enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough to live on, enough for us to be married, because we needed each other so desperately.”