From the Sidelines By Suzanne Clary
The Horse Show Bride and Groom
W
hich do we enjoy watching many others like it, “The National” was assured more? The horses or the instant success. hats? Every May, just as the The sport of riding was an expensive one and azaleas in our gardens start not surprisingly facilitated by belonging to a to pop, most of America directs its attention club. By 1891, the galloping growth of private to the Kentucky Derby and “the two most exciting minutes in sports.” Equally diverting is the pastime of critiquing straw boaters and feathered fascinators while sipping a julep or two. But in 1883 all the action was here in New York in November. The event to see, and be seen at, was the National Horse Show at the old Madison Square Garden. Just like today, the many splendors of competition in jumping and dressage at the Horse Show were mirrored or even outshined by the elaborate outfits of the riders and spectators that made headlines as far away as Chicago. “There were thoroughbreds in the ring and thoroughbreds in the boxes.” Another column described the MRS. ADELAIDE MCGIBBON ON HER social whir, “[A]ll this week CHAMPION SADDLE HORSE ROSALIND wealth and fashion will vie with AS FEATURED IN A 1910 ISSUE OF COUNTRY LIFE. the equine aristocracy of the country in attracting attention for it is with the horse show that New York’s clubs in America rivaled those established winter social season customarily begins.” in London. One writer who observed The week-long, pre-Thanksgiving extrava- country institutions in Tuxedo, Pelham and ganza was founded by a group of New York Cedarhurst, Long Island rightly concluded, men, many of whom were members of the Rid- “The raison d’etre of most of these clubs is the ing and Driving Club of Brooklyn, a trot’s dis- horse.” Horses of course needed sizable and tance from Prospect Park. Despite its deceptive comfortable quarters, as did their owners. name, the originating association was a purely In New York, the Riding Club at 7 West 58th equestrian-minded brotherhood (though they Street, provided members with stabling as generously, or perhaps begrudgingly, provided well as “a good-sized ring for exercise, dining access and dressing rooms for their equally rooms, and (of which there can hardly be too accomplished wives and daughters). As an many) bath-rooms and dressing rooms…The outgrowth of this well-subscribed club and man who has had an hour’s exercise in the Park 150
WESTO NMA GA Z IN E GRO U P. C O M
and has got in a perspiration…and is in danger of getting a cold before he gets home. Hence the advantage of being able to dress and have a bath where his horse is kept.” The equestrian amphitheatre was not solely for men. Women were not excluded from either the riding or training of horses in the same way that they might be diminished in other competitive arenas. If anything, exhibiting at a horse show gave women a spotlight where they could excel. One of the standout female riders of the period was Cornelia Adelaide Doremus. She began riding at ten years old encouraged by her father Cornelius Doremus, a giant in the New York insurance industry and a member of the aforesaid Flatbush fraternity. Adelaide began exhibiting horses at 15. For 12 years she rode one of the most successful saddle horses ever known. Her horse, named Chester, was himself a native New Yorker raised in Gravesend, Long Island by another prominent horsewoman, the legendary Clara Ridley Gerken. Women were known to run thoroughbred farms in the West and South but Clara’s estate, called Gerkendale, was the only establishment of its kind on the East Coast managed and owned by a woman. Her 23-acre showplace produced horses that won over 300 coveted awards at state fairs and horse shows from Syracuse to Philadelphia to White Plains. Her sleek champions easily held their own with the purest of their Kentucky peers. Reporters uniformly deflected any notion that Gerken’s profession might be unsuitable for a woman – she was “not a bit ‘horsey’ in appearance…