28. A Short History of Riding Side Saddle

KIM: Hey, everybody! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew, here with my writing partner Amy Helmes…

AMY: Code name: “Valkyrie.” That’s what I’m going to start calling myself.

KIM: I love it... It’s in homage to our “lost lady” from last week’s episode, Charmian Kittredge London.

AMY: Yes. And if you haven’t checked out that episode yet and our interview with biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle, we’d encourage you to give it a listen. Charmian Kittredge was quite the trailblazer, and one of the things we didn’t have time to include in the episode last week was the fact that she was among the first of a wave of women who rejected the idea of riding side-saddle on horses.

KIM: Dunkle actually filled us in on how this completely unnatural practice of women riding side-saddle came out. Let’s play that soundbyte:

[plays clip]

IRIS: Yeah, it was the norm for women to ride side saddle, and Charmian (who really wanted to gallop past young children shouting she was a Valkyrie) she didn’t think it was safe to ride side saddle. So first she solved the problem, and of course, women couldn’t buy pants at the time, so she bought a skirt and she cut it in half and kind of sewed her own culottes so she could ride astride. And then she looked up the history of riding side saddle to find out that it was really just a trend that had started in an English court because the king’s wife, the queen, was disabled and had to ride sitting on the side. All the ladies of the court were like, “Oh, I want to be like the queen!” They started doing what she did and then it just stuck.

[end clip]

AMY: Okay, so just think about the extra level of balance and core strength that you’d have to have to ride side-saddle. I mean, I didn’t know that that was the actual reason it came into practice. 

KIM: Yeah, I just thought it was a modesty thing, or maybe it was because women wore voluminous skirts and dresses, so it was the only way they could sit atop a horse.

AMY: So Charmian Kittredge wrote an article for Out West magazine called “Cross Saddle Riding for Women” in which she tried to make the case for doing away with side-saddle riding. And in that piece, she writes that the queen in question (that was mentioned in that clip), Anne of Bohemia, she suffered from a hip disease which was why she needed to ride this way. So I tried to find out more about this and I couldn’t find any other corroborating information about that. The only thing that I could find on the topic was that Anne of Bohemia rode side-saddle on her way to her wedding in order to “keep her virginity intact,” --  you know, protecting the royal hymen, as it were, which seems pretty crazy, but, you know, at that time in the 14th century, I can  kind of buy that as an explanation as well. That people would somehow think that riding a horse could be a problem.

KIM: Actually, for aristocrats and royalty and things like that, they often did some sort of physical examination of them, so they actually were encouraged not to ride for that reason, if it would look like they had, in any way looked like they had lost their virginity some other way.

AMY: Right, just keep it all “protected” down there, I guess, just in case!

KIM: Horrible!

AMY: But in any case, once Anne started riding that way, it was “monkey-see, monkey-do” for everyone else who wanted to follow the queen, of course, and it’s crazy to think that it wasn’t until the early part of the 20th century that the practice finally ended. I mean, if you stop and think about it, it’s just kind of preposterous and counterintuitive to sit that way.

KIM: Yeah, and dangerous! I mean, “Hey -- why don’t you just perch sideways on a 1500-lb horse!”

AMY: Yeah! Give that a whirl! But it was dangerous in more ways than one. Obviously, you were more likely to get seriously injured if things went awry in any way, but then there’s also just the physical toll that it would have taken on a woman’s body. So Kittredge London wrote in this article, “A side-saddle makes riding a more difficult feat. It increases the danger a hundred fold. It makes perfect poise and harmony of body an impossibility. It taxes the muscles unequally and makes long distance riding harmful.” In other words… get thee to a chiropractor!

KIM: And I can’t imagine the horse loves it either, so if you’re an animal lover, I mean come on. The poor horse is being ridden by someone not centered on its back….that can’t be comfortable.

AMY: As time went on, riding side saddle was seen as the only dignified way for a true lady to ride (especially in European culture)… there were some exceptions. Catherine the Great, famously … There is an amazing painting of her in uniform, sitting astride a horse which is a portrait meant to depict her badass military coup when she dethroned her incompetent husband.

KIM: She’s like, “Yeah, screw this… I’m going to run this country, AND I’m going to be comfortable while I do it.”

AMY: Yeah, totally, and she’s running the show, so why shouldn’t she, right? And, you know, as for that OTHER Catherine the Great “horse story…” (you probably know the one I’m talking about, and if you don’t, you can Google it because it’s too disturbing to mention here….)

KIM: Maybe don’t Google it.

AMY: Yeah, maybe don’t Google it. But just know that that anecdote is completely and utterly false. It’s just misogynistic b.s. that was spread by her political enemies and it ended up getting perpetuated over time, sadly, because whoever’s in power is the one writing the history. But that’s another story, and we’re not going there. So my experience with saddlery and anything else equine-related basically begins and ends with those coin-operated ponies outside the grocery story that I would beg my mom for a quarter to ride growing up. So I’m going to do my best to kind of describe how riding side saddle worked and what the tack was like. I just know that word “tack.”

KIM: Yes.

AMY: That’s what you call horse equipment right?

KIM: Yep.

AMY: Okay, so the earliest side saddles back in the Middle Ages were basically just a pillow and a piece of wood. And the woman always sits facing the left, by the way… not sure why, but I think maybe because\ you mount a horse from the left, so that’s the side you’d be getting on -- or maybe because most people are right-handed. I don’t know. But the ladies were not really “riding” the horse at that stage. They were really just sitting there clinging on for dear life and hoping they didn’t fall off. And there was no way of controlling the horse with that kind of equipment. But there was something, also, called a pillion, which was a sort of cushion that a lady could sit on facing sideways perched behind a male rider.

KIM: Yes, I’ve seen that in movies. And I also remember in the Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath was remarked upon as riding astride, which would have been something out of the ordinary.

AMY: Yeah, which is really kind of perfect for the “Wife of Bath” given her personality, right? Confident, strong-willed, defiant… gotta love her. So getting back to the mechanics of the sidesaddle, the ever-fashionable Catherine de Medici came up with a version that was a bit of an improvement. It involved a pommel that you sort of hook your right leg around, and then your left leg fitted into a stirrup on that side of the horse. Then in the 1830s, a saddle with two pommels was invented. So it kind of hooked both of your inner thighs…(And the only way I can think to describe that -- I looked up pictures -- is kind of like Suzanne Somers’ “Thigh Master,” if you remember that.

KIM: I had one. I shouldn’t have admitted that, should I?

AMY: There you have it! Anyway, so it’s on the inside of your thighs, but it’s a little more curved, so it cradles both of your legs. That way, as a rider, you had a lot more stability and control sitting up there. The problem with this, of course, is if you run into trouble, there’s no easy way of jumping free… especially with all the voluminous skirts. There was a serious risk that you could be dragged by the horse if things went wrong. And also it was much harder to mount and dismount without some assistance. It wasn’t until 1875 that the invention of the “safety apron” came along that was meant to open up if it got caught on these pommels. It’s basically like a hybrid apron-slash-wrap skirt, and it unsnaps if the skirt were to get caught on the saddle. You wear jodhpurs underneath the apron as well… (I did read that the snaps on this apron skirt is where the trend of pearl-button snaps on Western shirts originally comes from. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

KIM: Huh. I just have to say, come on! How many women probably died or were seriously injured riding this way? It’s ridiculous! Uggh, it makes me actually kind of mad. That really fits with the fact that naturally, women began to rebel against this idea of riding this way. I mean it was so dangerous. Especially in the American West, where horseback riding was kind of a way of life. But even in 1905, a male writer in the Los Angeles Times wrote: “The woman does not live who can throw her leg over the back of a horse without profaning the grace of femininity; or grasp with her separated knees the shoulders of her mount without violating the laws of good taste; or appear in the cross-saddle with any semblance of dignity, elegance or poise.”

AMY: Okay, he’s a jerk, and also he’s probably the guy spitting tobacco juice all over the floor, among other things, you know?

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Don’t lecture us about dignity and elegance please.

KIM: Exactly. So women in the Eastern United States were a little more married to the tradition of riding side saddle. It was seen as a more artistic way to ride. And I do get that on some level. I mean, it looks “pretty,” I suppose. I mean, remember the early seasons of Downton Abbey where Lady Mary is riding in her fabulous Edwardian riding habit sitting side saddle? 

AMY: Yeah, I do agree, it does look quite elegant in some respects, at least when I see it in film. And it did require some serious athleticism. But I think the women who lived in more rural areas just didn’t see the point, and why would they, you know? In the late 1800s Annie Oakley (who actually lived for a time in my hometown of Cincinnati and I was obsessed with her as a kid -- but that’s another episode). Annie was having none of it, obviously. So there were definitely women who did their own thing as time went on.

KIM: Yeah, there’s also another woman who was eventually part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, her name was “Two-Gun Nan Aspinwall,” (a great name) who accepted the challenge of riding a horse from San Francisco to New York. She rode astride in a split skirt just like Charmian Kittredge did. 

AMY: The Suffragettes were the ones who ultimately took this issue by the reins, pun intended. They wanted the right to vote, and they also wanted the right to ride a horse however they damn well pleased. They saw the practice of riding side saddle as oppressive. So, for sort of the same reasons that they embraced bloomers, they took up the cause of ending the side-saddle tradition. 

KIM: Yeah, they brought a lot of attention to the issue just as a sort of aside to their fight for the right to vote. By the 1930s it became culturally acceptable for women to ride astride. But there are still people today who enjoy the challenge of riding sidesaddle, and it remains a category of equestrian sports. There’s a famous annual sidesaddle steeplechase race called “Dianas of the Chase” in England.

AMY: I saw some pictures of that event in The Tatler and everyone just looks so posh. I have to admit I could see myself attending (on the sidelines) and wearing tweed of some sort. That sounds fun. And you know, even though the notion of riding sidesaddle is preposterous to me on one level, when I see it being pulled off, I am kind of in awe.

KIM: Yeah, first of all, I think that an idea of a costume party where we do the “Dianas of the Chase'' for our outfits after Covid would be amazing, and I think we need to put that on our list of things to do after Covid. And also, there’s a difference in knowing someone chooses to ride that way as opposed to it being the only allowable option. But Amy, you can dust off those tweeds next week, if you want — because we’re heading back to 1940s’ England and checking out yet another lost lady. This one is Jocelyn Playfair, and her novel A House In The Country.

AMY: And it’s not at all what you might expect from the title, is it?

KIM: No, it’s absolutely not, and we can’t wait to tell you guys all about it. It’s a quick little novel, so perfect for checking out in advance between now and next week if you have time and want to do so.

AMY: Until then, don’t forget to rate and review us, and consider sharing our podcast with anyone you know who might like the conversations we’re having. 

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AMY: Our theme song was written by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.