A year of rereading 8: The Jill books by Ruby Ferguson
First edition with a photocopied dw.
I often say that everything I know about horses, I learned from reading Jill’s Gymkhana as a child and it’s true. Jill Crewe lives with her mother in a cottage near a small town called Chatton, surrounded by lovely countryside just perfect for riding ponies. In this first book, Jill is eleven, mad about ponies but too poor to buy one or even have lessons. This seems a familiar pony book trope: girl wants a pony, girl gets a pony but the books are lifted by the first person narration. Jill is quite funny and very honest about herself. Her widowed mother keeps them by writing rather whimsical stories which Jill thinks are awful but are very successful with other children. Her mother is often distracted by a book she’s working on but, although she allows Jill a lot of freedom, she’s very strict about behaving well. Her quiet words about being nicer to someone Jill doesn’t like often make Jill feel ‘rather wormlike’.
When Jill starts her new school, she meets her future best friend, Ann Derry, who has her own pony, a younger sister and a very fussy mother, quite different from Mrs Crewe. Also there is one of Jill’s great dislikes, Susan Pyke, a girl whose father buys her expensive ponies and perfect riding clothes. Jill has seen a lovely (but ‘ordinary’) pony called Black Boy. When her mother sells the rights to one of her books in America, she can afford to buy Black Boy for Jill. The problem is that Jill hasn’t a clue about riding properly until she’s rescued and given lessons by Martin, who used to be an excellent rider but is now in a wheelchair, due to an RAF accident (it’s 1949, remember). I’d forgotten just how very instructional the books are. If you haven’t mastered the ideas of ‘feet down, hands down, knees in, elbows in, back straight, look between your pony’s ears’ by the end of the book, there’s no hope for you. Good horsemanship is emphasised but even more important is putting your pony first. When you get home muddy from a ride, you must make your pony comfortable before dashing indoors for tea and you must be up early to muck out and groom your pony before school.
Although Jill and Ann despise ‘pot-hunters’, they and other young local riders are mad about gymkhanas, especially the annual Chatton Show. The books really are very horsy and, reading them one after another, I began to find Jill rather a bore because she thinks of *nothing* but ponies. In this she’s very different from my childhood heroine, Tamzin in Monica Edwards’ Romney Marsh series. In Wish for a Pony, guess what? Tamzin longs for a pony and eventually gets Cascade. She and her best friend Rissa love horses but they have a lot of other interests; Tamzin actually says that she doesn’t want to grow up to be a ‘long-faced horsy woman’. These are the kind of books I prefer, where the characters ride a lot but riding is just part of their lives and adventures.
Books
Jill’s Gymkhana, 1949
A Stable for Jill, 1951
Jill has Two Ponies, 1952
Jill Enjoys her Ponies, 1954
Jill’s Riding Club, 1956
Rosettes for Jill, 1957
Jill and the Perfect Pony, 1959
Pony Jobs for Jill, 1960
Jill’s Pony Trek, 1962 (retrospective)
This Caney illustration shows a young Jill before Black Boy has become her own pony
Reprint in the Hampton Library. These were cheaply produced and invariably have brown pages. They kept the original Caney illustrations.
1963. The first paperbacks were in the Armada series.
This cover is by Mary Gernat
The first Knight paperbacks changed the illustrations and turned Black Boy from black to piebald.
From 1972, the Knight paperbacks looked like this and had no illustrations. No wonder sellers ask so much for original hardbacks. For more about pony books, see my review of Heroines on Horseback by Jane Badger.