My Years as a Pony

Between the ages of 8 and 11 I thought I was a pony. I was not alone: my friends were in the grip of a similar delusion. We created fantasy mounts called Daybreak or Nutmeg, then became them. We never ran when we could gallop, at all times slapping our sides for greater verisimilitude. Jumps were constructed and then scrambled over or refused with much rearing and neighing. Fortunately our brothers were still pretending to be Spitfires, so our behaviour, on the whole, passed unremarked.

The intensity of these games was fuelled by the longing for a pony and the knowledge that it wouldn’t happen. Even riding lessons were expensive at 7s 6d an hour, though they were essential. How else could you display your riding kit? I had a pair of third-hand jodhpurs, a yellow polo-neck jersey knitted by my long-suffering granny, a check Viyella shirt and a tie printed with horses’ heads and restrained by a tie pin embellished with horseshoes. I even owned a hard hat which was excruciatingly uncomfortable: I have a rather large head. How right our dear late Queen was always to commit her safety on horseback to a vintage Hermès headscarf. But other than this and enviously spectating at gymkhanas with a satchel of Marmite sandwiches, the main way of feeding my pony obsession was by borrowing pony books from my local library. I cannot convey how important the library was in the 1950s. In my Letts diaries, the same entries are endlessly repeated: ‘Went to Church’, ‘Washed hair’ and ‘Went to Library’, but the greatest of the three was the library. I’d love to be able to say that I sped straight to the Brontë section. In reality my twin literary loves were boarding-school stories and pony books. I still have a huge affection for both. Stories about boarding-school life were formulaic but that’s what I loved about them: the signposting was unabashed and the rules clearly laid down. The shy heroine had just joined the Lower Fourth but would soon have a zany best friend to pilot her through the shark-infested waters of St Faith’s. Familiar tropes abounded. Unpopular girls, girls who sneaked and wouldn’t share their tuck, were called Rhoda or Muriel. Loyalty to your chums was everything. The story had to happen over one term and the story arc would be triumphantly resolved by who won the end-of-term Interhouse Lacrosse Cup. There was often a shocking subplot such as who had stolen the Pet Club subscription money. If it was a Second World War story, suspicion would eventually fall on the unfriendly German teacher, Frau Schmidt, who was often to be seen on the cliffs, signalling frantically to enemy submarines. Clearly, in the event of an invasion, the German High Command needed all the money they could lay their hands on. I loved pony books with equal intensity. Those by the incomparable Pullein-Thompson sisters, Diana, Christine and Josephine (11 million copies sold worldwide), were first in my heart, closely followed by Ruby M. Ferguson, she of the ‘Jill’s Gymkhana’ books (see SF no.58). I knew a serious aspirant rider ought to be studying The Art of Equitation by the likes of Colonel ‘Jumbo’ Chudleigh Fortescue. But what my young self pined for, panted for, were books with thrillingly simple titles like: I Wanted a Pony or Six Ponies or Pony Club Team. These books breathed the warm fug of the stable, describing the duties I longed for, like grooming and keeping my tack in tiptop order, and they allowed me entry into that magical world of gymkhanas and Pony Club camps. Of course they had their own formulaic tropes. The heroine was invariably not well off, and she’d been bought a decidedly iffy, untrained pony whom a farmer wanted to unload for £15 plus tack. Via kindly friends she would learn schooling and proper pony management. The story would lead inexorably towards triumph at the local gymkhana. But the road there was strewn with embarrassing falls and snooty girls. Muriel’s equestrian equivalent (she who would not share her fruitcake) was a Susan or a Fiona whose parents were wealthy but who were nouveaux riches pot-hunters. What this actually meant was that they were constantly buying their daughters expensively trained show ponies, which were summarily sold if Susan or Fiona didn’t win a red rosette and a cup in every class she entered. Both types of book told a rattling good yarn, but while school stories were uncomplicated good fun, pony books had a level of seriousness about them. Their moral message was clear and unequivocal: if you own a pony you have duties and responsibilities. However tired you are, the pony comes first. It needs feeding and watering, and then it must be tucked up in a clean stable with a net of fragrant hay. Furthermore, if you are offered a young, untrained horse your role is to help it fulfill its potential by gentle and patient schooling, not by using a whip and brute force. In all these books there was a great deal of technical riding advice which I drank in. Who else was going to teach me the difference between a standing and a running martingale, information that has served me well throughout my adult life? Years ago I was fortunate enough to interview Christine Pullein-Thompson when she and her husband moved to a moated former parsonage near Diss in Norfolk, a house full of warmth and animals. She gave me a fascinating insight into the world she and her sisters had known in rural Oxfordshire. Their large shabby house was set in a landscape filled with Majors and Colonels, many of whom, like their own father, had been injured in the First World War. He was reduced to selling that new commodity, the Fridge. To make ends meet their mother wrote pony books under her maiden name of Joanna Canaan. I knew and loved them: among my favourites was A Pony for Jean, followed by Another Pony for Jean and – you guessed it – More Ponies for Jean. Seated at the kitchen table, Joanna Canaan had written at least one book a year for forty years. She set her daughters an excellent example and that was just as well, because she didn’t believe in a traditional education for her girls, though their brother naturally went to Eton. Self-reliance, she taught her daughters, was everything. They listened carefully. Thus by their mid-teens they had not only set up their own riding school but had also joined their mother at the kitchen table. The three teenage sisters started their writing careers with a joint endeavour called It Began with Picotee. It was snapped up and published in 1946. I asked Christine when they’d all learnt to ride. ‘Quite late in the day,’ she replied, somewhat dryly. ‘Up till then we’d simply scrambled on to available ponies and hung on till we fell off. It probably didn’t occur to our mother that lessons might be a good thing until we were all lying, concussed, in separate rooms. And as soon as we’d learnt, we wanted to teach other people.’ Psychologists have offered various tedious theories about the attachment of little girls to horses –in particular declaring that they are drawn to those muscular heaving flanks by prepubertal sexual longings. I couldn’t possibly comment. But for my generation, the explanation seems so much simpler. We were 1950s girls, still obliged to wear gloves and hats to school and to strive at all times to be ladylike. We were also thought to be in need of the support of a manly arm. Pony books gave the lie to all that by offering us vigorous, admirable role models, in a sport where men and women could compete equally. It’s gratifying to discover that many of the books I loved are back in print, seventy years later, beautifully presented and published – incontrovertible proof, if any more were needed, of the imaginative power and value of pony books. It’s wonderful to know that the books that gave me such pleasure are clearly delighting a new generation of pony-loving little girls all over the world.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 77 © Frances Donnelly 2023