‘They get us a side saddle, as they call it, of enormous weight and inconvenience, on which they plant pommels enough to impale three women; they place us in an attitude from which it is next to impossible to control a horse should he be violent, and in a dress which ensures a horrible accident should he fall, added to which, they constantly give us the worst quadruped in the stable; and yet, with all these drawbacks, such is our own innate talent and capacity, we ride many an impetuous steed in safety and comfort that a man would find a dangerous and incontrollable “mount”. For my part, I only wish I had been born a man…’
Kate Coventry in the novel Kate Coventry, An Autobiography (1856), by George Whyte Melville. “In our opinion,” said the Spectator, “… one of the cleverest of Captain Whyte Melville’a lively (if somewhat fast) performances.”