Rosy Mule

Meet Rosy Mule!  

2015 Swallows Day Parade, San Juan Capistrano, CA
Photo by Amy Morris

I never thought of a mule as elegant, but this picture sure has changed my mind!  Rosy Mule even has a fan Facebook page!!!  Rosy & Jacquelynn host a group ride in or around the San Diego area once every month. 

Here is Rosy's bio:

I was born in Hemet, CA in 1996 and lived there until 2001, when I was bought and moved to my home in San Diego. 

I started my career with lots of local shows, camp trips and trails. Now, I primarily camp and do group trail rides, although I thoroughly enjoy the show ring and hope to pick it back up soon!

Loula Long Combs

Loula Long Combs, daughter of lumber baron R.A. Long, was a world famous equestrienne and owner of Longview Farm in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. She dedicated her life to raising and showing horses but she was well known throughout the community as a philanthropist and passionate animal lover.

There are two other presentations on Loula Long Combs that have focused on her personal history and as a carriage collector. I will discuss Mrs. Combs as a woman of her time, who came of age during the era of Progressive reforms and who reflected the cultural milieu of that time.

Local historian Jane Flynn included Loula Long Combs in her book, Kansas City Women of Independent Minds, a collection of short biographies of prominent women in Kansas City history. Mrs. Combs, known primarily for skills as a horsewoman, might seem an unusual choice since most of the others in this collection were known for their work in social causes, political reforms, or as artists, educators, or in other professions. However, Loula Long Combs was definitely a woman with an independent mind and one that was attuned to the changes going on around her.

The Progressive era, from roughly the 1880s to around 1920, was one characterized by reform movements of all kinds. The best known of these is the suffrage movement which culminated with gaining the vote for women with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. However, there were other reforms as well: prohibition, children’s welfare and prevention of cruelty to animals. Mrs. Combs played a role in each of these movements.

While she never expressed any interest in politics that I found in the Museum archives, she did advocate equality for women in the world she knew best - the horse show ring. One of the first steps she took toward gender equity was discarding the traditional side saddle and its habit of ankle length skirts to riding astride like her male peers. Like the Bloomer girls of the late nineteenth century who traded skirts for those voluminous pants in order to take part in a more active, athletic life of riding bicycles or playing tennis, Mrs. Combs wanted to be able to play polo and jump horses. She found the sidesaddle handicapped her ability to do her best. She adopted the split skirt and later jodhpurs and coats so that she could compete equally.

Even as a young girl, Loula Long was an aggressive horsewoman. Early in her life in the show ring, she ignored the accepted rule that women should ride in ladies classes only. She competed in, and won, open roadster classes that were usually for men because of the strength required to manage the horses. In London, England in 1910, she drove her prize winning horse, The King, as the only woman in the open roadster class, and won first place at the Olympia Horse Show. She won again in 1913 in Madison Square Garden where she shocked the more sedate Eastern men by racing her horse Aspiration in Midwestern style around the ring. Often turning corners on two wheels and flying past her competitors to the cheers of the audience. Her showmanship gained her recognition from Barnum and Bailey who asked her to join the circus, a request she found amusing but declined.

Loula Long displayed her sense of equality in her personal life as well. As a wealthy young woman who travelled the horse show circuit at home and abroad, she was sought after by many with marriage proposals that she consistently refused. When a European nobleman travelled to Kansas City to ask for her hand, she took him to the stable to meet her horse, The King. The King expressed his displeasure by trying to nip him. Miss Long turned him down as well.

Finally on April 22, 1917, when she was 36 years old, she married Robert Pryor Combs, a man she had known for years, the son of the minister of the Independence Boulevard Christian Church where her family attended services. Several years her junior, an age difference that was unusual at that time, she wrote in her autobiography My Revelation that she decided to marry him when she observed him helping a team of mules haul a heavy wagon on a hill after being abused by their owner.

Their relationship was one based on equality and respect. As she wrote: “Very often, after women are married, their husbands object to their doing things that keep them away from home, or to having them in the public eye… But Pryor has always been most understanding….He encouraged me to go on and enjoy my horses and my shows. He even suggested that I show under my maiden name, but we decided the entries would be made in the name ‘Loula Long Combs.’” Pryor Combs later sometimes received mail addressed to Mr. Loula Long Combs.

Following in the family tradition, Loula Long Combs attended church services every Sunday. Like many Progressive reformers, she was a firm believer of temperance and did not drink alcohol, smoke, dance or swear. She practiced charity by providing clothing and toys to children of farm employees as well as making sure they went to school by using Farm vehicles to transport them every day. Every year she hosted a horse show and the proceeds usually went to the organization that was closest to her heart, the Animal Protection Association.

The Women’s Chamber of Commerce in Kansas City recognized Mrs. Combs with a luncheon in her honor on October 13, 1953 at the Hotel Phillips. They presented her with a plaque with this inscription: “World Famed in horsemanship, Mrs. Combs whose activities also extend into philanthropic, cultural and religious fields, participates as well in civic affairs for the community.”

In 1967 she was elected to the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame. The honor was given to 88 outstanding competitors, two from every sport. She shared the equestrian honors with Major General Guy V. Henry, Chief of Cavalry, United States Army.

Loula Long Combs died in 1971 at Longview Farm. Most remembered her for her showmanship in the ring, wearing elaborate hats and driving her high stepping hackney ponies. She represented the best of an earlier era and a fading class and culture that placed value on an old adage that to whom much is given, much is expected. Other reformers from the Progressive era tried to make the world a better place by giving women equal rights, by helping the poor and ending cruelty to humans and animals alike. In so many ways, Loula Long Combs was very much a part of that world.

Information about Mrs. Combs was acquired from the Community Curator and the Kansas City Museum. 

Lillian Chaudhary

It is a sad day for me as I just found out this wonderful lady passed away today.  Lillian restored every sidesaddle I owned that needed work and we became friends during the many conversations we had.

Lillian Chaudhary at Heritage Tack & Saddlery has been working with both astride saddles and sidesaddles for over 30 years.  Her expertise in the field of saddle design and construction is recognized globally.  In addition to her work with the saddles themselves, she has also given many lectures and conducted clinics in which she shares her knowledge with those seeking to build a strong foundation in the elegant art of riding aside.You can read more about her here:


http://www.heritagetack.com/about/

Cammie King..

..or as we knew her, Bonnie Blue Butler

 Eleanore Cammack "Cammie" King (August 5, 1934 – September 1, 2010) was an American former child actress. She is best known for being one of the actresses who portrayed "Bonnie Blue Butler" in Gone with the Wind (1939). She also provided the voice for the doe "Faline" as a fawn in the animated Disney film, Bambi (1942).

 King was born in Los Angeles, Californic. While her acting career only spanned four years during her childhood, she appeared in two of the biggest movies of the era, Gone with the Wind and Bambi.

 She was the godchild of Herbert Kalmus, co-founder of Technicolor, and became his stepchild in 1949 when he married her mother, Eleanore King. Cammie King was married twice and had two adopted children.   Her father-in-law from her second marriage, Judd Conlon, was a musical arranger for many Disney films including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953).

In the early 2000s, King made a guest appearance as a contestant on the TV game show To Tell the Truth, hosted by John O'Hurley. Upon reflecting on her film career, King once joked, "I peaked at 5." She spent 40 years working as a marketing coordinator for the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce.
King privately published a small book Bonnie Blue Butler: A Gone With the Wind Memoir in 2009, mainly selling copies directly to fans via personal appearances and the internet. King died on September 1, 2010, at her home in Fort Bragg, CA. at age 76, from lung cancer. She is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

Chapter 2 - More Information on Kittie Wilkins

Additional information found in Women in Idaho History.

Katherine Caroline, aka “Kitty,” Wilkins was born in Nevada and moved to Bruneau County, Idaho with her family is the 1880′s. She joined the family’s cattle and horse ranching business at the age of twenty-one in 1879. Her father began taking Kitty to horse shows and she found that she had a knack for the business and decided to begin her own horse ranching business. She is said to have chosen horses because they were more profitable and less difficult to work with. She began her business with just one horse, which she stated she bought with $40 she received as a gift, and a contract with the U.S. Army. Her business boomed and was soon selling almost 600 horses per year. Some years were even more exceptional, such as 1895 when Kitty sold over 3,000 horses.

As Kitty’s success grew, so too did her contracts and her reputation. She was contracted to provide six railroad carloads (of which each car held 26 horses) of “broke,” or semi-tame, horses for sale every two weeks. When Kitty was able to consistently deliver on the contract, her reputation as the “Horse Queen of Idaho” was spread by newspaper from coast to coast. Idaho historian Arthur Hart said that Kitty was probably the most well-known Idaho woman of her time. Kitty herself was no stranger to creating publicity and often told vivid stories of her days as a horse trader. She even dubbed herself the “Queen of Diamonds” after her company’s Diamond brand.
Kitty Wilkins took an enormous risk in the livelihood and life she chose. Not only was she a woman in a field dominated by men, she was incredibly successful at it. Some of her ranch hands have estimated she made over $2,000,000 during her career. What made Kitty so successful was not just her tenacious spirit, but also her incredible mind for business. When others wasted time looking for auctions or shows to sell their horses, Kitty auctioned them right out of the railroad car. Kitty Wilkins succeeded because she had the skills and heart necessary to become Idaho’s “Horse Queen.”

Kittie Wilkins - a historical account

IDAHO's own, Kittie Wilkins, known as the Horse Queen of Idaho, was perhaps the most famous western woman in the country at the turn of the twentieth century. The Wilkins Horse Company owned close to ten thousand horses in Owyhee County, Idaho, the largest herd owned by one family in the West, and its boss, Kittie, was the only woman at the time whose sole occupation was selling horses. Newspaper reporters all over the country were fascinated by her success and her character, and reports, features, and interviews with her were published in thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia, as well as Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.
Today, Wilkins is virtually unknown outside of Owyhee County. Even her gravestone is wrong, naming her “Kitty Wilkins” instead of “Kittie.” Philip Homan, a catalog librarian and associate professor at Idaho State University, is attempting to save Wilkins from obscurity. He is writing the first scholarly biography of her life and gives presentations about her for the Idaho Humanities Council’s speakers bureau program. For Homan, Wilkins’s story is essential to the history of the American West: “To Americans, she was the very model of the westerner, and her story epitomized the West.”
Wilkins was born into the horse-dealing business. Her family began building its enormous herd when she was a little girl in the 1860s. In the 1880s, she began accompanying her father on his business trips to the Midwest, and he soon discovered that she was a natural at horse trading. When she was older, Wilkins was fond of telling the story of how she got her start: When she was two years old, she received a gift of two twenty-dollar gold pieces to be invested for her. Her father took her forty dollars and used it to make a deal on what should have been an eighty-dollar horse. As Wilkins told the San Francisco Examiner, “From the increase, all my bands have come.”
Rather than hiring a commission agent, she sold her horses herself. She traveled to the Midwest and, without a chaperone, attended the livestock markets. “Often I am the only woman in a crowd of two hundred or more horse dealers,” she told the Boston Advertiser. “Sometimes people come out to the stockyards to see in me a new curiosity, and there are a few who try to flirt or make sport of me. I just walk up to a group of such men and, looking them squarely in the face, say, ‘Do you gentlemen wish to look at my horses?’”
Wilkins made the biggest horse sale in the American West in 1900, when she sold about eight thousand horses to a single buyer in Kansas, who was supplying horses to the British Army for the Boer War. Homan points out that Wilkins sold about 10 percent of the American horses that went to South Africa, making her probably the largest supplier of horses in the war.
The later years of Wilkins’s life were marked by tragedy. In 1909, her foreman, who was most likely her fiancé, was shot and killed in a range war over water. Later that year, gold was discovered in Jarbidge Canyon of northeastern Nevada, setting off the last gold rush in the West. In the first few years, the only way to Jarbidge Canyon was over the elevated plateau known as Wilkins Island, the location of Kittie Wilkins’s horse range. Part of the Wilkins’ land included hot springs nearby. “Virtually overnight,” Homan writes in an article for Idaho magazine, “the Jarbidge gold rush turned the Wilkins Hot Springs into a mining camp and the Wilkins Island into the highway to Jarbidge.” Wilkins wanted to build a hotel at the hot springs to take advantage of the new traffic, but in 1910 a squatter on the land claimed possession of it. Wilkins sued the squatter for recovery of the land, but the judge ruled in favor of the defendant and the hotel plans were dashed. “The Wilkins Hot Springs was the strongest link in the Wilkins family’s chain of ranches across Owyhee County,” Homan writes, “and as their hold on the place grew weaker, their wealth and influence began to decline.” Wilkins spent the last years of her life in Glenns Ferry, Idaho, where she spread her remaining wealth among charities.
Homan argues that one of the reasons Wilkins is such an important historical figure is because she differed so dramatically from the stereotype of the “new woman” that prevailed in her time. People expected such a successful female horse dealer to be a “suntanned masculine woman in a short skirt and a cowboy hat.” Instead, they were surprised to find that “she was an utterly Victorian, feminine woman.” She insisted on riding sidesaddle, and always dressed in the latest fashions: “She came to the stockyards and the sale rings in a full riding habit, with a riding skirt down below her toes,” Homan says. “I think this is one of the reasons that perhaps she’s been ignored by contemporary scholars, because she was a Victorian woman. At least at first she opposed women’s right to vote. . . . She wasn’t a feminist in any contemporary sense of the word, except that she was absolutely independent.”

Information found in the Humanities Magazine - March/April 2012

Paulina Schumann

Positvely - the most amazing sidesaddle video I have ever seen!

http://blip.tv/circopedia/paulina-schumann-video-1965-3858802

.and here is her story!

The daughter of Charlie Rivel (José Andreu), the famous Catalan clown, and Carmen Busto, herself the daughter of a clown, Paulina Luisa Andreu Busto was born in Barcelona, Spain on February 17, 1921, where her parents performed with the Andreu family's circus, Circo Reina Victoria; Paulina was, therefore, thrown into the circus world from the very moment she first opened her eyes.

During a family engagement at Paris's Empire Circus-Theatre in November 1926, five-year-old Paulina performed a parody of Josephine Baker, accompanied by her younger brother, Juanito, on percussion.

Around the same time, her father had begun presenting a famous parody, on the flying trapeze, of Charlie Chaplin. In London the following year, while her father was winning a competition of Chaplin impersonators, Paulina appeared dressed like Jackie Coogan in the movie The Kid.

The family grew larger with the birth of two other brothers, Charlie Junior and Valentino. In 1930, the Rivels embarked on a long tour of Argentina, where Paulina learned to dance the tango and developed a dance act duet with Juanito. In 1932, in Vienna, she and Juanito impressed Austrian audiences with their stage rendition of the Blue Danube waltz.

In the 1930s, the Rivels toured Europe, appearing in virtually every circus and variety house on the Continent. Then Charlie Rivel, who had performed his trapeze act with his brothers and had created with them a successful clown trio, The Andreu-Rivels, decided to go his own way. He launched a separate career, with the help of his wife and sons, and several partners. For these family engagements, Paulina developed a remarkable tight wire act, which she would perform for many years.

Prior to World War II, the Rivel family was a staple of German variety theatres, which were frequented by the era's top social and political figures. During one evening show, Paulina was asked to present flowers to Nazi leader Hermann Goering, who was sitting in a box. During the war, the family moved to neutral Scandinavia. There, Charlie Rivel began a series of return engagements with the Schumann family, owners of the famous Cirkus Schumann. The Schumanns were already renowned for their equestrian presentations, but Paulina would help make them the preeminent equestrian performing family in the world.

It was in Scandinavia that Paulina met Albert Maximilian Schumann (son of the circus's director, Oskar Schumann); they were married on November 28, 1946. Meanwhile, Paulina's brothers began a brilliant international career with an acrobatic and dance act, The Charlivels, while their father continued his ascension to international stardom as a clown, increasingly reducing his company to what would eventually be just a straight man.

Equestrian Diva
Following the birth of her two sons, Benny (b. 1945) and Jacques (b. 1947), Paulina's father-in-law asked her to present a "liberty" act with six horses, even though she had no equestrian experience. She answered, "I will do it, but I will do it my way." The former acrobat and variety dancer was determined to bring her knowledge of the crafts and aesthetics of variety shows into the far more conservative world of classic equestrian circus.

She began by introducing an uncommon sophistication in lighting, costume design, musical arrangements, and thematic presentations, demanding what was, at the time, an unusual amount of financial investment (especially in the costumes).

In 1947—the year of Paulina's equestrian debut—British producer Tom Arnold and director Clement Butson launched a huge winter circus show at the Harringay Arena in London. The Schumanns, who had previously worked intermittently for Bertram Mills Circus, the other great London winter circus, began an association with Tom Arnold, one that would help them establish their reputation as the world's foremost equestrian family.


The new producers were impressed by Paulina's ideas and her sense of showmanship. They agreed to invest in her expensive costumes and staging concepts. The results of this financial collaboration could be seen each year in the fully produced, brilliantly themed equestrian acts they presented in the circuses of Stockholm, Göteborg, Copenhagen, and Harringay. Working year-round in a series of circus buildings, with long stands in each, gave Paulina and Albert a comfortable laboratory in which they were able to experiment with new concepts in their equestrian presentations.

Inspired by international folklore themes, Paulina designed acts that were enhanced by Butson's staging gifts. They developed a host of high-school riding presentations and liberty acts, combining horses of different breeds and robes. They created some unusual novelties, such as an "Equestrian Potpourri" with forty horses in the ring simultaneously. Among other remarkable achievements was the production of The Troika; Carnival in Venice; Madame Bovary in the Bois de Boulogne; and Fiesta en Sevilla (1951), which included the bareback riding troupe of Enrico Caroli. Her association with Tom Arnold's Harringay shows lasted until 1954.

In the winter of 1958, the Schumann family appeared again in London, this time with the Bertram Mills Circus at the Olympia of Kensington (where the Schumanns had been featured from 1937 to 1946, before Paulina's arrival). The Schumanns' acts included Albert and Paulina; their sons Benny and Jacques; Albert's brother, Max, with Max's wife Vivi and their daughter Katja; and Douglas Kossmeyer. Benny was also integrated in Paulina's tight-wire act.

During this period, Paulina became the director-choreographer in title of the Schumanns' equestrian acts, most of which were inspired, musically as well as in costuming, by the great movies of the era. Always alternating high-school and liberty acts, the Schumanns staged superb equestrian impressions of Doctor Zhivago, My Fair Lady, Robin Hood, Gigi, as well as Schumanns in Mexico (1963), Feria de Primavera (1964), and From The Good Old Days: Paris 1900 (1965).

In 1965, Paulina's most remarkable achievement was a liberty act based on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue: It still stands today as a seminal presentation, with the use of "naked" horses, smoke effects, and a poetry then rarely seen in equestrian acts. It succeeded a previous act of the same style (special effects and naked horses), titled Dawn on the Putza Featuring a lavish high-school act based on My Fair Lady, the Schumanns performed their final season with Bertram Mills in 1967, when the legendary British circus presented its final performances.

The Royal Families of Sweden and Denmark always attended the Schumanns' opening nights in Stockholm or Copenhagen. In London, Queen Elizabeth II never missed their performances, always visiting the stables with Paulina and Albert following the shows. In Sweden, Paulina also appeared in two movies: Gøngehøvdingen (1961) and Dronningens vagtmester (1963).

Last Years In The Ring
Cirkus Schumann didn't long survive Bertram Mills: it closed in 1969. By then, Paulina and Albert had separated. Paulina retired from equestrian arts and started a new circus career: In 1972, she began to act as "straight woman" to her father, Charlie Rivel, during the final decade of the legendary clown's rich international career. After her father's death in 1983, Paulina retired from performing.

Paulina Schumann retired in Cubelles, Spain, the Catalan village where she and her father were born. In 2008, she was awarded the Medalla de Oro de las Bellas Artes from the hands of H.M. Juan Carlos, King of Spain, and the Catalogna's Culture High Award for the Circus Arts. In 2010, the Arts Santa Mònica museum in Barcelona, Spain, hosted a major exhibition on her life and career, Un Segle de Circ: Paulina Andreu Rivel Schumann.

Information found in Circopedia.

Ethel Oliver

Sadly there is very little information about Ethel Oliver.

She was an Edwardian actress with a birth year listed as 1892. This undoubtedly is incorrect though since the name Ethel Oliver was very popular at that time and..

..since Ethel is pictured on a print at the National Portrait Gallery site, in the chorus of "The Orchid" at the Gaity Theatre,in 1903! I somehow doubt that she was 11 years old at the time!

The International Movie database has an Ethel Oliver listed in two silent Movies in "The Return" (1921) and "A Soul's Awakening " ( 1922 ). She was also listed as being in the chorus of the play entitled The Orchid at the Gaity Theatre in 1903.

There is no other info or pictures regarding these films and it is unlikely that there are copies available for perusal. Since Ethel seems to have spent her working life in the UK, she either moved here to start her career and retired to the US afterwards, or was here all along.
Ethel Oliver. (1892 - 22 Sep 1946)

* DEATH: 22 Sep 1946, Spokane, Washington
* BURIAL: UNKNOWN, Pines Cemetery, Spokane, Washington ????

The Above information was gleaned from a website owned by PPC collector.

Charlotta Ågårdh Orsmark

Here is yet another wonderful Sidesaddle Riders Biography! Meet Charlotta from Sweden! She wrote such a wonderful piece about herself and her country, that I thought I would just quote her as she sent it to me.



















"I am a horsecrazy girl living in southern Sweden, near the city of Helsingborg. I live on a farm with horses, dogs and chickens. We have a large forest with many wild animals, including elk, deer, rabbits, foxes, badgers, raccoon and many beautiful birds. Besides my interest in horses, I'm very interested in hunting and hunt as often as I can with my English springer spaniels.
We are close to the Danish border, and here is many horses and riders. Unfortunately, not many of the riders who ride in side saddle. Approximately 0.00005% of riders ride in side saddle. We don't have any contests and side saddleriding is limited to shows and pausenumber of large events. On a landarea of ​​16 500 km2, we are only three riders who rides shows in side saddle

I am always been fascinated by women who have been riding in side saddle but in Sweden is difficult if not impossible to find a good side saddle. If you do not know what is a good side saddle is even more difficult. It was not until we had a performance in school as my dream came true. I borrowed a very old and beautiful saddle of a friend's friend, however, it was in bad shape but we survived and I was totally saved!
After that I began my quest for a own side saddle. I tested almost all saddles that were for sale in Sweden. There were long, short, wide and narrow saddles, some in better condition than others. Finally I found the three treasures I have now:
* One side saddle have belonged to the Swedish Baron Oscar Dickson, and has been used during the 1700's on his pink hunting lodge in central Sweden. This saddle is constructed around 1820 and have no leaping head.
* One side saddle is made in early 1700's in Malmö (a city close to me). It is a parade saddle who are incredibly beautifully decorated. It lacks both leaping head and balancestrap and is in original condition since manufacture. This saddle is a museum piece, and nothing I ride in on a daily basis, it is used only for occasional photo shoots.
* My new side saddle is manufactured by Alphonse Camille Jeune in Paris in the late 1700's. It is a modern twist with leaping head. Right now it is under renovation, but soon I will be able to ride in it.

I have four different horses as I can ride in side saddle, some wilder than others. The horse that I ride at the shows is Sörby O'boy RNF 133. He is 140 cm high, 17-year approved New Forest stallion that I have had in 8 ½ years. Before we began with side saddleriding, we have competed in show jumping in the highest classes (120 cm) at the international level. We have also competed in the Swedish Championships in pony racing, dressage in the second-highest rating, and some low eventing classes.
I have two Swedish warmblood (mother Any Magic and daughter Magic Moon). The daughter Magic Moon is only four years old and has a foals in the spring but I think she become a super side saddlehorse when she gets a little older and more ridden. I have ridden her once with a side saddle (when we took the pictures) and she behaved perfectly! Her mother Any Magic has a bit more temper and surplus energy, which makes it a bit risky. Any Magic has an amazing jumpingcapacity and I will compete her in the show jumping instead of riding her in side saddle. However, I sometimes ride her in side saddle at photo shoots.
My "new" side saddlepony is an Irish cross pony who I have competed before but she has been on loan for 4 years. Three Tone is as high as O'boy and I have raced her in the same classes. She is an excellent jumper and my goal is to jump and ride hunting in side saddle with her.

I'm very interested in history and beautiful antics things so I have also tested the Academic Art of Riding. I've been training for Bent Branderup (Grandmaster of the Academic Art of Riding) both in side saddle (with O'boy) and astride (with Any Magic). Together with Any Magic, I have become Squire of the Academic Art of Riding.
I think it's great fun to ride side saddle and I read everything I come over to learn more. Unfortunately, there are very few books in Swedish, so I read mostly English and German literature. There are also short on equipment and clothing so I do most things myself. I hope that the interest for side saddleriding in Sweden is increasing. I believe that Sweden needs to better saddles, more knowledge and more good publicity for the public to be interested. Sweden has always been a bit "uncivilized" compared to Europe which has done that we do not have any established side saddletradtition but I will try to change it ;)"

To see some AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL pictures - go to Charlotta's web page:
http://charlotta-ridkonst.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=11462874

Lillian Chaudhary

Meet Lillian Chaudhary! Lillian is not only an accomplished sidesaddle rider, certified sidesaddle instructor, but one of only a handful of certified sidesaddle restorers. She even builds saddles from the tree up! Lillian restored my Champion and Wilton saddle and will be restoring my Knoud very soon!





















Lillian has been restoring sidesaddles since she was 15 years old. She found an old Western one from a second hand junk store for $5.00 in 1963. None of the cowboy saddlers would touch it. They told her to throw it in the dumpster. Lillian's Mother however, told her to take it apart and see how it was made originally. Then copy the bad pieces in new leather and put it back together. So she did and she rode in it. That began her education in Sidesaddles. She did that for a hobby until she ended up alone with 4 children and no job. Instead of giving up, she used this knowledge to support her family. 23 years later she is still doing it! She just restored an 1875 sidesaddle out of England that had no panels and only pieces of the billets left. She rebuilt it and it is good to go.

"Nice old Gal" Lillian reflected.

"I am only held back by the lack of trees so I have been buying old dried out junkers for the trees. Currently I have about 5 English trees to rebuild.
I still do repairs and restorations and I do ranch calls and I am going to a stable this weekend to reflock and re-billet some Dressage saddles. The sidesaddles have slowed down some so I am doing the astride saddles now."

The following saddles are all handmade from the tree up. She is searching for a new treemaker since the fellow she had making them is now retired and 83 years old!.
She did all the tooling and designed them as she made them.

Sorry ladies, but all these beauties are sold!





















Lillian conducts Sidesaddle Clinic's for amateurs. This photo is from one she taught in Sacramento, California in 2008.




















Lillian received the Member of the Year and International Sidesaddle Hall of Fame Award in 2006. She is pictured here with Linda Bowlby, another sidesaddle expert!



















Lillian has a web sight www.snowcrest.net/sadlmakr but it has not been updated in a while. Still very worth a visit! If you are interested in contacting Lillian about doing a clinic or help with your sidesaddle, her e-mail address is:
sadlmakr@yahoo.com

In the Spirit of the Civil War Era...

May I introduce you to one of the most famous American Saddlebred horses in the world, Traveller.




















Traveller, originally named Jeff Davis, was born near the Blue Sulphur Springs, in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia), raised by Andrew Johnston. An American Saddlebred, he was of the Gray Eagle stock, and, as a colt, took the first prize at the Lewisburg, Virginia, fairs in 1859 and 1860. As an adult gelding, he was a sturdy horse, 16 hands high and 1,100 pounds (500 kg), iron gray in color with black points, a long mane and flowing tail.

In the spring of 1861, a year before achieving fame as a Confederate general, Robert E. Lee was commanding a small force in western Virginia. The quartermaster of the 3rd Virginia Infantry, Captain Joseph M. Broun, was directed to "purchase a good serviceable horse of the best Greenbrier stock for our use during the war." Broun purchased the horse for $175 (approximately $4,000 in 2008)[1] from Andrew Johnston's son, Captain James W. Johnston, and named him Greenbrier. Major Thomas L. Broun, Joseph's brother recalled that Greenbrier

... was greatly admired in camp for his rapid, springy walk, his high spirit, bold carriage, and muscular strength. He needed neither whip nor spur, and would walk his five or six miles an hour over the rough mountain roads of Western Virginia with his rider sitting firmly in the saddle and holding him in check by a tight rein, such vim and eagerness did he manifest to go right ahead so soon as he was mounted.

– Major Thomas L. Broun

General Lee took a great fancy to the horse. He called him his "colt", and predicted to Broun that he would use it before the war was over. After Lee was transferred to South Carolina, Joseph Broun sold the horse to him for $200 in February, 1862. Lee named the horse "Traveller" (spelling the word with a double 'l' in British style).

Lee described his faithful horse in a letter in response to Mrs. Lee's cousin, Markie Williams, who wished to paint a portrait of Traveller:

If I was an artist like you, I would draw a true picture of Traveller; representing his fine proportions, muscular figure, deep chest, short back, strong haunches, flat legs, small head, broad forehead, delicate ears, quick eye, small feet, and black mane and tail. Such a picture would inspire a poet, whose genius could then depict his worth, and describe his endurance of toil, hunger, thirst, heat and cold; and the dangers and suffering through which he has passed. He could dilate upon his sagacity and affection, and his invariable response to every wish of his rider. He might even imagine his thoughts through the long night-marches and days of the battle through which he has passed. But I am no artist Markie, and can therefore only say he is a Confederate gray.

– Robert E. Lee, letter to Markie Williams

Traveller was a horse of great stamina and was usually a good horse for an officer in battle because he was difficult to frighten. He could sometimes become nervous and spirited, however. At the Second Battle of Bull Run, while General Lee was at the front reconnoitering dismounted and holding Traveller by the bridle, the horse became frightened at some movement of the enemy and, plunging, pulled Lee down on a stump, breaking both of his hands. Lee went through the remainder of that campaign chiefly in an ambulance. When he rode on horseback, a courier rode in front leading his horse.

After the war, Traveller accompanied Lee to Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. He lost many hairs from his tail to admirers (veterans and college students) who wanted a souvenir of the famous horse and his general. Lee wrote to his daughter Mildred that "The boys are plucking out his tail, and he is presenting the appearance of a plucked chicken."

In 1870, during Lee's funeral procession, Traveller was led behind the caisson bearing the General's casket, his saddle and bridle draped with black crepe. Not long after Lee's death, in 1871, Traveller stepped on a nail and developed tetanus. There was no cure, and he was euthanized to relieve his suffering.


Traveller's grave at the Lee ChapelTraveller was initially buried behind the main buildings of the college, but was unearthed by persons unknown and his bones were bleached for exhibition in Rochester, New York, in 1875/1876. In 1907, Richmond journalist Joseph Bryan paid to have the bones mounted and returned to the college, named Washington and Lee University since Lee's death, and they were displayed in the Brooks Museum, in what is now Robinson Hall. The skeleton was periodically vandalized there by students who carved their initials in it for good luck. In 1929, the bones were moved to the museum in the basement of the Lee Chapel, where they stood for 30 years, deteriorating with exposure.

Finally in 1971, Traveller's remains were buried in a wooden box encased in concrete next to the Lee Chapel on the Washington & Lee campus, a few feet away from the Lee family crypt inside, where his master's body rests. The stable where he lived his last days, directly connected to the Lee House on campus, traditionally stands with its doors left open; this is said to allow his spirit to wander freely. The 24th President of Washington & Lee (and thus a recent resident of Lee House), Dr. Thomas Burish, caught strong criticism from many members of the Washington & Lee community for closing the stable gates in violation of this tradition. Burish later had the doors to the gates repainted in a dark green color, which he referred to in campus newspapers as "Traveller Green."

The base newspaper of the United States Army's Fort Lee, located in Petersburg, Virginia, is named Traveller.

Traveller remains in the hearts and minds of Washington and Lee students to this day, and is the namesake of the University's Safe Ride Program. Students are known to exclaim "Call Traveller and you will get home safely."

Catherine "Skittles" Walters

Catherine "Skittles" Walters; 13 June 1839 – 4 August 1920 was a fashion trendsetter and one of the last of the great courtesans of Victorian London. Walters was rumoured to have had intellectuals, leaders of political parties, aristocrats and a member of the British royal family amongst her benefactors.


















She was born the third of five children at 1 Henderson Street, Toxteth, Liverpool, grew up in the Liverpool area and moved to London before her twentieth birthday. Her father was Edward Walters, a customs official, who died in 1864. Her mother was Mary Ann Fowler.

Her nickname is thought to have originated from her working at a bowling alley in Chesterfield Street near Park Lane. (Skittles is the game which evolved into bowling.) At other times she was known as "Mrs Behrens" and "Mrs Baillie" but is not thought to have married.




Her classical beauty was matched by her skill as a horsewoman, for which she was almost equally renowned. In the 1860s the fascinating sight of Catherine riding on Rotten Row in Hyde Park drew huge crowds of sightseers. Aristocratic ladies copied the cut of her perfectly fitting "Princess" riding habit, and she was well known as a trendsetter.



















A letter written to The Times in July 1862 described in detail the fever of anticipation among the waiting admirers of a thinly disguised Catherine:

"Expectation is raised to its highest pitch: a handsome woman drives rapidly by in a carriage drawn by thoroughbred ponies of surpassing shape and action; the driver is attired in the pork pie hat and the Poole paletot introduced by Anonyma; but alas!, she caused no effect at all, for she is not Anonyma; she is only the Duchess of A–, the Marchioness of B–, the Countess of C–, or some other of Anonyma's many imitators. The crowd, disappointed, reseat themselves, and wait. Another pony carriage succeeds – and another – with the same depressing result. At last their patience is rewarded. Anonyma and her ponies appear, and they are satisfied. She threads her way dexterously, with an unconscious air, through the throng, commented upon by the hundreds who admire and the hundreds who envy her. She pulls up her ponies to speak to an acquaintance, and her carriage is instantly surrounded by a multitude; she turns and drives back again towards Apsley House, and then away into the unknown world, nobody knows whither".























She counted among her lovers Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, with whom she eloped for some months to America in the second half of 1862; Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington (later the eighth Duke of Devonshire), whom she pursued to New York during the American Civil War; Napoléon III; French finance minister Achille Fould; and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). She was also the first love of the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who remained infatuated with her for the rest of his life.





















During her life as a courtesan, her discretion and loyalty to her benefactors became the focal point of her career. There were many rumours about her being involved with certain wealthy men of the time, but she never confirmed or denied these. This gave her great weight in the courtesan lifestyle, and made her a sought after commodity. This also gave long life to her career, and helped her to retire a wealthy woman of society around 1890. Her estate was worth £2764 19s. 6d at her death. As well as her home in Mayfair, which according to DNB she had from 1872, a court case in which she was sued for non-payment of a tailoring bill refers to her having other addresses, possibly properties she owned. Two were hotels, one in France.
















She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 15 South Street, Mayfair, and was buried in the graveyard of the Franciscan Monastery at Crawley.















In 1864 a London publisher, George Vickers, brought out three fictionalized biographies: Anonyma: or, Fair but Frail; Skittles: the biography of a Fascinating Woman; and Skittles in Paris. The author was possibly William Stephens Hayward, or Bracebridge Hemyng. Their open sale (and commercial success) caused expressions of moral concern in contemporary newspapers and magazines.

In 1861, Alfred Austin, a future Poet Laureate, referred to 'Skittles' by name in The Season: a Satire, his poem satirizing mid-Victorian social mores. He described her dramatic appearance in Rotten Row, and the covert and jealous interest society ladies felt for her. He also suggested she and other celebrity prostitutes were attractive not merely because they offered sex but because they were more natural, less repressed and less boring than the well-bred girls who came to London for the marriage 'season'.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's poetic sequence The Love Sonnets of Proteus and his later work Esther are thought to be based on his early affair and later friendship with Walters.

The painter Edwin Henry Landseer submitted a picture called 'The Shrew Tamed' for the Royal Academy exhibition of 1861. It showed a beautiful girl in riding habit reclining against the neck of a horse which is on its knees among the straw. It was ostensibly not a portrait of Walters, but the alleged model, the noted horsewoman Annie Gilbert, resembles her, and the juxtaposition of horse, beautiful woman and prevailing mood of languor troubled contemporary critics; some clearly assumed Walters herself had been the subject. The picture gained the alternative title of 'The Pretty Horsebreaker'.

In Charles Reade's novel A Terrible Temptation (1871) the character of the courtesan Rhoda Somerset is partly based on Walters.

If you want to read more about "Skittles" go to this interesting blog:
http://mybadgirlblog.blogspot.com/
Look on the sidebar to the right to find "Reviving Skittles" which has many chapters that includes quite a bit more detail - especially about her love life!

Lionel Edwards

Lionel Edwards 11 September 1878 – 13 April 1966; was a British artist who specialized in painting horses and other aspects of British country life. He is best known for his hunting scenes but also painted pictures of horse racing, shooting and fishing. He provided illustrations for Country Life, The Sphere, The Graphic and numerous books.

















The son of a doctor, Edwards grew up at Benarth, a small estate in Conway, North Wales. His father, from whom he acquired his love of fox hunting, died when he was seven. From an early age, he showed a talent for drawing horses, an artistic trait which may have come from his maternal grandmother, who was a pupil of George Romney. It seemed he was heading for an Army career until it became apparent that his talents did not lie in that direction, so his mother allowed him to study art in London, first with A.S. Cope and later at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and Frank Calderon's School of Animal Painting. He became the youngest member of the London Sketch Club at the age of nineteen. In 1905, he married Ethel Wells and the couple moved out of London to Radley, in Oxfordshire, and later to Worcestershire, before moving back to Benarth. They both were enthusiastic fox hunters: during his life, Edwards hunted with almost every pack in the country.





















On the outbreak of the Great War, he volunteered as a Remount Purchasing Officer along with his contemporaries, Cecil Aldin and Sir Alfred Munnings. On being demobilized, he and his family moved to West Tytherley, near Salisbury, where he lived for the rest of his life.

















His artistic output was remarkable: he wrote almost 30 books and illustrated many more, including editions of Black Beauty, Lorna Doone and The Black Arrow, in addition to numerous private commissions. He became a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art in 1926 and the Royal Institute in 1927. His favorite medium was watercolours, although he used oils more in his later years.















Many people feel his horse portraiture is some of the best of his time. Ivester-Lloyd illustrated a number of books and also on occasion made humorous illustrations. Included in his work are foxhunting and beagling watercolors, and numerous drawings of country life. Among sporting art collectors, his work has become as much sought after as his contemporaries, Lionel Edwards, Gilbert Holiday and G.D. Armour.


















He worked to the end of his life, dying from a stroke at his home on 13 April, 1966.

I was unable to locate even one photo of Lionel Edwards or his wife.

Alice Roosevelt

Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth (February 12, 1884 – February 20, 1980) was the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. She was the only child of Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee.

Alice led an unconventional and controversial life. Despite her love for her legendary father, she proved to be almost nothing like him. Her marriage to Representative Nicholas Longworth (Republican-Ohio), a party leader and 43rd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was shaky, and the couple's only child was a result of her affair with Senator William Borah of Idaho. She temporarily became a Democrat during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and proudly boasted in a 60 Minutes interview with Eric Sevareid broadcast February 17, 1974, that she was a "hedonist".
























Alice Lee Roosevelt was born at the Roosevelt family home on 6 West 57th St. in New York City. Her mother, Alice, was a Boston banking heiress. Her father, Theodore, was then a New York State Assemblyman. Two days after her birth, in the same house, her mother died of undiagnosed Bright's disease; also, on the same day, her paternal grandmother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, died of typhoid fever.

Theodore was so distraught by his wife's death that he could not bear to think about her. He almost never spoke of her again, would not allow her to be mentioned in his presence, and even omitted her name from his autobiography. Therefore, his daughter Alice was called "Baby Lee" instead of her name. Alice continued this practice late in life, preferring to be called "Mrs. L" rather than "Alice".

Seeking solace, Theodore retreated from his life in New York and headed west where he spent two years traveling and living on his ranch in North Dakota. He left his infant daughter in the care of his sister Anna Bamie Roosevelt, also known as "Bye". Some Roosevelt biographers have claimed that he showed no affection for his child, but there are letters to Bamie that reveal his concern. In one 1884 letter, he said of Alice, "I hope Mousiekins will be very cunning, I shall dearly love her."





















After returning east, and running for and losing the election for mayor of New York City in 1886, Theodore Roosevelt went to London where he married a childhood friend, Edith Kermit Carow. He and Edith would have five children and be married until his death in 1919. Edith would outlive both her husband and his famous cousin Franklin, dying in 1948. There were strains in the relationship between him and his daughter, and he had very little interaction with her during her earliest years, leaving the work to other people, such as his sister Bamie, Alice's maternal grandparents and even his second wife, Edith. Alice was continually shuffled about from one house to another, even as a teenager, and she later said she often felt like he loved her "one-sixth" as much as the other children.

There were also tensions in the relationship between young Alice and her stepmother, who had known her husband's previous wife and made it clear that she regarded her predecessor as a beautiful but insipid, childlike fool. As Alice Longworth later recalled, her stepmother once angrily told her that if Alice's mother, Alice Lee Roosevelt, had lived, she would have bored her father to death. Despite these strains, it would be Edith, the demanding stepmother, who would save Alice from a life possibly in a wheelchair or on crutches when Alice came down with a mild form of polio and one leg and its muscles grew shorter than the other. By Edith's uncompromising regimen of nightly forced wearing of torturous leg braces and shoes, even over Alice's sobs, Edith ensured that Alice would grow up with almost no trace of the disability. Alice was able to run up stairs and touch her nose with her toe well into her 80s.


























Alice, always spoiled with gifts, matured into young womanhood and, in the course, became known as a great beauty like her mother. However, continuing tension with her stepmother and prolonged separation and little attention from her father created a young woman who was as independent and outgoing as she was self-confident and calculating. When her father was governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a quite conservative school for girls in New York City. Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will!"

When her father took office following the assassination of President William McKinley in Buffalo (an event that she greeted with "sheer rapture"), Alice became an instant celebrity and fashion icon. While proud of her father's accomplishments, she also was painfully aware that his new duties would give her significantly less of his time even as she longed for more of his attention. She was known as a rule-breaker in an era when women were under great pressure to conform. The American public noticed many of her exploits. She smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, kept a pet snake named Emily Spinach (Emily as in her spinster aunt and Spinach for its green color) in the White House, and was seen placing bets with a bookie.


Alice with her dog, Leo, a Maltese. She was also given a Pekingese named Manchu, by the last Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi in 1902.













Alice married Nicholas Longworth, a Republican U.S. House of Representatives member from Cincinnati, Ohio, who ultimately would rise to become Speaker of the House. Their 1906 wedding was the social event of the season. They bought a home at Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., now the headquarters of the Washington Legal Foundation.

A scion of a socially prominent Ohio family, Nick was 14 years Alice's senior, and had a reputation as a Washington, D.C. playboy. While the two made a handsome couple to the ever-interested public, their political differences and loyalties would cause private dissension.[12] Alice publicly supported her father's 1912 Bull Moose presidential candidacy, while Nick stayed loyal to his mentor, President Taft. During that election cycle, she appeared on stage with her father's vice presidential candidate, Hiram Johnson, in Nick's own district. Nick later lost by about 105 votes, and she joked that she was worth at least 100 votes (meaning she was the reason he lost). However, he was elected again in 1914 and stayed in the House for the rest of his life.

Alice Longworth's campaign against her husband caused a permanent chill in her marriage to Nick Longworth. During their marriage, Longworth carried on numerous affairs. As reported in Carol Felsenthal's biography of Alice, and in Betty Boyd Caroli's The Roosevelt Women, as well by TIME journalist Rebecca Winters Keegan, it was generally accepted knowledge in DC that Alice also had a long, ongoing affair with Senator William Borah, and the opening of Alice's diaries to modern historical researchers indicates that Borah was, by Alice's own admission, the father of Alice's daughter, Paulina Longworth (1925–1957).
















It is possible her change in political leanings was the result of the social upheavals occurring in American society at the same time. Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing into the 1970s, the struggle of African Americans for social and legal equality could not have escaped the notice of a woman always known for approaching everyone she first met with respect, without regard for their station in life. As an example of her attitudes on race, in 1965 her African American chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Longworth to an appointment. During the trip, he pulled out in front of a taxi, and the driver got out and demanded to know of him, "What do you think you're doing, you black bastard?" Turner took the insult calmly, but Longworth did not and told the taxi driver, "He's taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!"[


















After many years of ill health, Alice died in her Embassy Row home in 1980 of emphysema and pneumonia, with contributory effects of a number of other chronic illnesses. She was 96. Alice Roosevelt Longworth is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.