If Wishes Were Horses: Nerve

Alice Hayes on nerve:

“No lady can enjoy riding, or become proficient in that art, unless she has good nerve. … Luckily, the large majority of girls who learn to ride possess abundance of nerve and pluck, an excess of which is often a danger to safety in the hunting field. … It is the custom to laugh at people who are suffering from temporary loss of nerve, but it is heartless to do so, as we have all, I believe, felt, more or less, what Jorrocks would term ‘kivered all over with the creeps,’ at some period or other of our lives. … It may, however, be consoling to ladies who are battling against loss of nerve, to hear that I have known brilliant horsemen lose their nerve so utterly that they were unable to take their horses out of a walk.”

This post relates to a chapter of the book If Wishes Were Horses: A Memoir of an Equine Obsession. If you have any questions to ask about the content, please fire away in the comments. The main online index for the book is here.

Published by Susanna Forrest

Writer Amazons of Paris, The Age of the Horse and If Wishes Were Horses.

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