Dressage par le surfaix-cavalier des chevaux de cavalerie, d'attelage et de course en six et douze leçons
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The first training method for horse and rider published by a woman, a Paris milliner turned écuyère who trained the Tsar's own horses. Illustrated
Marie-Isabelle, Madame
Dressage par le surfaix-cavalier des chevaux de cavalerie, d'attelage et de course en six et douze leçons
Orné de huit dessins anglais. Nouvelle méthode par Mme Marie-Isabelle.
1858, Paris, Henri Plon; J. Dumaine
Second Edition
CHF 491.00
Sale price
CHF 491.00
Regular price
Overview
In 8vo. Pp. [1] f.e., [10], 284, [4], [8] plates, [1] r.e.
Second edition (often miscatalogued as the first) of the first method for the education of horse and rider published by a woman, in a literature until then the province of écuyers such as La Broue, La Guérinière, and Baucher. The daughter of a Parisian shoemaker and herself a milliner before becoming a horse trainer, inventor, and businesswoman, Marie Isabelle had an extraordinary path into the traditionally male world of equitation. The book presents and shows in pictures her own device, the surfaix-cavalier (rider's surcingle), as both a technical proposition and the culmination of that improbable career: she carried her method from Vienna to Saint Petersburg, where Emperor Nicholas I entrusted her with two of his own horses, and on to the cavalry barracks at Maidstone in England. The results appear as printed endorsements on the book's own title page (approval and purchase by the French Minister of War for every army riding school, and adoption by Nicholas I for the Russian cavalry), while the volume is dedicated to his successor, Alexander II. Reception was not universally kind, and Isabelle's claims to technical authority met considerable resistance from the overwhelmingly male military and equestrian establishment. Whatever the verdict on the device itself, the curriculum taught here runs well past ordinary dressage, into flag, drum-and-pistol, music, and sabre drill: the training of a cavalry mount, not simply a riding-school horse. This substantially enlarged second French edition was published jointly by Henri Plon and the military bookseller J. Dumaine in 1858 and expanded to 284 pages. An earlier French edition, published by H. Plon alone in 1857, comprised only 128 pages; the BnF preserves an exemplar of this rare first edition, which appears to have largely escaped subsequent bibliography and scholarship, with modern accounts commonly identifying 1858 as the first French publication.
Inside the book
The book moves from the horse's foundational training under saddle, in harness, and at the gallop, through chapters correcting particular faults, into a long sequence of individual lessons that carries the surfaix-cavalier method from its earliest aids (the crop, lunge whip, and spur) to the full repertoire expected of a trained cavalry mount. By the fifth lesson, the horse is introduced to drum, pistol, music, and sabre, alongside pirouettes, two-track work, rein-back, and work at the spur. The section on training racehorses sets out a detailed regimen: eight days of two-hour morning and evening walks before faster work begins, a snaffle bridle and exercise sheet, and a graduated program of trotting and cantering. It includes a pointed passage on stable safety, insisting that a young thoroughbred be ridden only by a very light, gentle-tempered rider and warning at length against allowing the boys exercising racehorses to play with the colts, attributing the resulting danger to the animal's own playfulness rather than vice. Eight lithographed illustrations accompany the text: an equestrian portrait of the author, sidesaddle, in riding habit and top hat, astride a piaffing horse, serving as the frontispiece; a plate of six horses shown fitted with the "surfaix-cavalier" apparatus from different angles; a plate of a two-horse carriage with its driver; and a diagram plate showing the harness fitted to a horse alongside a dressage crop and a vignette of a groom leading a horse, accompanying a table of rein settings for the twelve lessons of stable training.
Condition
20th-century half calf over marbled paper boards; five raised bands at the spine, with gilt lettering. Moderate rubbing at the corners. Marbled pastedowns; two ex-libris on the front pastedown, both associated with Paul Couturier de Royas. Usual edition irregularity in pagination, jumping from p. 80 to p. 118 (with seven unnumbered leaves between), confirmed against digitized copies. Very clean, with no foxing. Fine.
Dimensions (inches): 9 3/4 x 6 3/4 x 7/8
Why La Fenice likes it
We are big fans of interesting, eclectic lives, especially when they belong to women who found their way into places not particularly designed to admit them. Marie-Isabelle began fitting hats in a Paris shop, not horses in a manège. By 1858 she had trained horses entrusted to her by Emperor Nicholas I himself and become the first woman to publish her own method for training both horse and rider. Where the era's other écuyers wrote from a single court or riding school, she arrived at hers by way of Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and an English cavalry barracks. We would gladly have been among her pupils, sabre drill included.
About the author
Marie Isabelle (1814-1875), the daughter of a Parisian shoemaker, began her career as a milliner before reinventing herself as a horse trainer, inventor, and businesswoman, eventually demonstrating her methods before European courts and cavalry establishments.
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