Paris Review Daily have just published the fifth in my Écuyères series about the circus and hippodrome horsewomen of nineteenth-century Paris. It’s about Céleste Mogador, who was so many things it was hard to cram it all into the essay, not least because she left so much of her own life writing behind. Please go …
Continue reading “Céleste Mogador: Lioness of the Hippodrome”
A new essay on an equestrian stuntwoman who set Second Empire Paris alight: Sarah l’Africaine, following on from an earlier piece about the mystery horsewoman Selika Lazevski. Here’s some information about my sources: Most of the firsthand material is combed from Gallica, the incredible, searchable digital collection of the French national library. The quotations in …
Continue reading “The Story of the “Black Gazelle” of the Paris Hippodrome: Sarah L’Africaine”
Scraps of incomplete research I’m doing to trace the history of cream-coloured horses at Versailles and earlier French royal stables. I knew the Hanoverian monarchs of England had cream-coloured carriage horses (the “Hanoverian creams” mentioned in W J Gordon’s Horse World of London in 1893), and that cream horses are mentioned by François Robichon de …
A list of horse coat colours taken from The School of Horsemanship by François Robichon de la Guérinière (first complete edition 1733. Translated by Tracey Boucher. Published by J A Allen, London, 1994): light bay chestnut bay black-brown golden bay dapple bay jet black rusty black dapple grey iron grey silver grey tiger (grey with …
Continue reading “Peach Blossom, Trout and Tiger: Horse Colours in 1730s France”
Thank you to Slaminsky for pointing me towards these scents for the wealthy and horse crazy. Parfums de Marly present a range of equine-themed perfumes: Godolphin: “opulent rose note, leading to a woody-leather scent base. Top notes: thyme, saffron, cypress, green notes, fruity notes and mate. Heart: rose, iris and jasmine. Base: leather, vetiver, cedar, …
Today’s Times has a piece by Adam Sage on Saonois, a favourite for the 2012 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. It’s behind a pay wall here, for those with access. Saonois belongs to 34-year-old village baker, Pascal Treyve, who snapped him up for €8,000 when he was rejected by the industry as being “too small”. …
Rosi Hochegger and Scout and Bartabas with his greatest horse, Zingaro
Thank you to French site Hyppoblog for passing on news that the Musée Vivant du Cheval in Chantilly is launching a new show to honour the equestriennes of the nineteenth century circus. These ladies performed haut école movements and bold tricks like leaping over dining tables and through hoops – all while side-saddle. They were …
The post below is somewhat out of date. My essay on Selika was published by the Paris Review Daily on 9 February 2018, and can be found here. Here’s a post listing the research undertaken about Selika and giving pointers for further investigation. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– This lady has been Tumblring around the internet lately, and she’d …
It’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe day, and, as Fran Jurga at The Jurga Report points out, that means it’s time for France to produce beautiful and/or hilarious horse-themed adverts. She’s collected a herd of them here – I highly recommend ALL of ’em!
