QUEENS ON HORSEBACK

Shannon News, 9 March 1928, Page 3

QUEENS ON HORSEBACK

Royal tastes in horseflesh hav( ch?.uged much since the days of Queen ,\nnc ; the "huntress queen/' as Ben Jonson so flatteringly called her, whose favourite mount was a fat sorro ; steed with a cream-coloured mane (writes Mary Abbott in the Wcstmin -iter Gazette). When our daughter, Princess Mary, goes ahunt ing, she is usually mounted on a marc of dapple grey, a horse no modern painter would depict as anything but lilthe and muscular. A grey hunter was also Queen Maud of Norway's favour ite mount in the days when she used to attend meets of the West Norfolk foxhounds at Sandringham. It was the kind of hunting, of course, which ac counted for the ambling palfrey typf of mount favoured by queens of olri They shot driven deer with a dart. At lenst that was what Queen Ann. «as trying to do when she hilled om of her husband's valuable hounds b} mistake, nwl set up a great commotio! in consequence. Luckily, James I wa> almost as keen on punning as on hunt i?ig, or he might not, in order to mak up for the oaths -he hurled at th< queen, have sent her next day a jow< worth £2OOO as a "legacy from tin dead dog"', whose name had beer "Jewel.'' Nothing like that happened when Queen Elizabeth went hunting. If by chance one of Iht silver arrow's winged with peacock's feathers did go astray, there was no one to whom sht need apologise even if she were evej made aware of her. blunder, which would not be likely. For splendour there was not much to choose between the hunting costumes of these two Royal sportswomen. Anne favoured grow, velvet trimmed with lace and red ribbons; Elizabeth the ruff, farthingale, and a bcpluced . velvet hat. Save in republican France, where women still hunt the stag in the three-corned hat and wide-skirted habit coat —" Louis the Fourteenth's time, picturesque hunting costumes have become obso lete. Gone arc. the floating veil and stream-like habit with its short swal-low-tailed coat fashionable in Englana when Queeu Victoria went riding with Lord Melbourne. Yet with all her passion i'or a slim silhouette, no modern Diana would do what the Empress Elizabeth of Austria did to attain it

that is to have her habit sewn over her bare flesh ! *