1. The essential guide to living in New Hampshire andVermontThe essential guide to living in New Hampshire andVermont
What to Do | Where to shop | What’s new
$4.95 U.S. www.uppervalleylife.com
november 2014 - February 2015
VOL. 9 NO. 5
Landing Planes
on Frozen Lakes
The Thrill of Winter Flying
Aerial photos of the Upper Valley
Locally Made
Stocking Stuffers
Meet Riding Instructor
Toni Prince
Landing Planes
on Frozen Lakes
The Thrill of Winter Flying
Aerial photos of the Upper Valley
Locally Made
Stocking Stuffers
Meet Riding Instructor
Toni Prince
2. 40 Upper Valley Life uppervalleylife.com
If one imagined the quintessential Vermont horse
farm with a kindly, soft-spoken riding instructor who
espouses wisdom in every lesson, the farm would be Prince
& Pauper and the instructor would be Toni Prince.
For more than 40 years, Prince has been teaching chil-
dren to ride at her picturesque Norwich, Vt., home, which
sits on 15 acres of rolling green hills. While it is a working
farm, Prince has infused it with a sense of whimsy, a char-
acteristic she has in spades. (See sidebar on page 44.)
Of Bad Ponies and Fierce Determination
The mistress of the house (and no doubt she would
chuckle at the word mistress) is no less stylish. Prince, who
is in her 70s, works the farm all day (she rises at six and
doesn’t get to bed until midnight), every day in her usual
attire of soft pastel tops, light-colored trousers and ubiq-
uitous brightly colored hair bows. It is somewhat of a joke
around the barn that only Mrs. Prince, as her students call
her, could wear all white in a barn and never look dirty.
“Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on
clothes, so I figured, make do with what you’ve got, make it
clean, add a bow and…you’re there,” Prince explains laugh-
ing. Of her trademark bow, she says she has thousands and
has worn one every day since she was in her 20s.
Beneath Prince’s genteel manner is a woman who has
worked for every achievement. Her melancholic childhood
has infused her with a gift for connecting with children
and animals. She grew up in a log cabin that sat directly
across the street from Jackie Kennedy’s childhood home in
MacLean, Virginia.
“She lived on an estate, and I lived in a log cabin, liter-
ally,” says Prince. “Jackie was a great deal older than I, but
her sister, Nina Auchincloss, was my closest friend, so we
rode together every day.”
“I used to sit on the arm of Jackie’s chair and watch her
draw fashions, because that’s what she wanted to do as a
teenager, that was her dream. She was wonderful,”
By Jaimie Seaton
Photography by Lars Blackmore
W h o t o M e e t
Toni Prince:
The Original Steel Magnolia
The renowned equestrian opens up about
her childhood and her teaching philosophy.
› › › › ›
Toni Prince at her Prince & Pauper farm in Norwich, Vt.
3. 41November 2014 - February 2015uppervalleylife.com
Above: Isabel Estes
(left) on Toad, Tibby
Pepper on Strider,
and Liz Berendsen
on Luke ride to Toni
Prince as part of their
lesson.
Right: (From left)
Piper Ankner on
Drum, Jade Martin
on Nanny, Tibby
Pepper on Strider,
Isabel Estes on Toad,
Siena Curtis on
Roo, Toni Prince, Liz
Berendsen on Luke,
and Katie Lehman
with Noah.
5. 43November 2014 - February 2015uppervalleylife.com
says Prince, slowing her words, “a kind,
and lovely, lovely young woman.”
At the age of 7, Prince was given a
horse by a neighbor who could no longer
care for the animal. She was an only child
and her father had abandoned the small
family. Lacking the means for riding
lessons, the young Toni taught herself to
ride. Prince says her mother allowed her
to have the horse, as long as she grew up
to be a “winning rider.”
“She put incredible pressure on me
in every area of my life. I loved horses;
I didn’t necessarily love competition,”
Prince says.
Her mother told her that if she
wanted to keep the horse she had to fig-
ure out a way to pay for it, so at 10 years
old Prince began giving riding lessons to
other children, some older than she.
“Back then my teaching was limited
to how to ride a horse: start, stop, steer.
That was it. A glorified pony ride is what
it was, but it was enough money that I
could keep my horse.”
The hard work paid off. By the time
she was 12, Prince was competing on
other people’s horses. At the age of 14, she
won the state championship for equita-
tion in Hunter/Jumper.
“I learned by riding bad ponies,” she
says with a soft giggle.
Of Permission to Fail and
Cloud Gazing
Three years later Prince was on her
own, completely self-sufficient, a trait
that shines through to this day. She man-
aged a few years at George Washington
University, before meeting her husband,
Gregory, at a cocktail
party in Washington,
D.C., when they were
both 21. It was love at
first sight. After mar-
riage, the new bride put
her husband through
graduate school at Yale
“with the horses,” she
says proudly.
In the 1970s
Gregory took a job at
Dartmouth College
and the couple started
touring area proper-
ties. “As soon as I saw
this farm in Norwich
I knew, ‘That’s where I want to live!’” she
exclaims, recalling the memory. They
brought four horses with them, and set
out renovating their newly named busi-
ness, Prince & Pauper.
“I always loved books, and I just
thought it was funny,” she explains.
“We used to joke about which one of us
was the prince and which one was the
pauper.”
Since that time, Prince has › › › › ›
Prince with her black labrador Pitter. Below: The autumn glow paints a tranquil
scene at the farm.
6. 44 Upper Valley Life uppervalleylife.com
coached countless children, including
her own, Tara and Greg (who went on to
be national champion riders themselves),
and Olympic skiing gold medalist Han-
nah Kearney. Most of her students are
young girls between the ages of 6 and
14 but there are a few older girls who
continue to go there to learn, to help
with the younger girls, but mostly just to
be around Mrs. Prince. Ostensibly she is
a riding instructor, and while she is an
expert horsewoman, horsemanship is
almost secondary to what Prince gives
her students.
rooms that Hollywood would design,
if Hollywood knew anything about
Vermont. The pièce de résistance is
a large dollhouse that Gregory built
for his daughter, Tara, containing four
stories of lovingly, detailed furnished
rooms and a miniature family. The top
floor is devoted solely to Christmas.
“When people come to my house
they marvel at things and I say, ’Yes I
play with my toys a lot,’” Prince says
with a chuckle.
“As a girl I had tea parties but we
couldn’t afford stuffed animals, so I
made them out of sticks. I had a live
one-legged grasshopper that lived in
an animal cracker box under the porch.
I made him a corral, with a little pond
and trees that I made, and he lived
there for most of the summer. The vi-
gnettes appeal to my playful and child
side. Maybe I never grew up.”
When asked if there is a parallel
between the horses and the antiques,
Prince laughs again and says, “You
don’t make any money at either one.
You do it because you can’t help it, be-
cause you’re passionate about it. They
are both hard businesses. Literally, you
do them because you love them.”
The Horse and The Bear Antiques
can be found at Antiques Collaborative
in Quechee, Vt. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5
p.m., seven days a week.
“About 10 years ago I thought, I
can’t do this forever and I’m never go-
ing to retire, so I better do something
about expanding,” says Prince when
asked about her antique business, The
Horse and The Bear.
She started the business in the
1989 when Gregory became president
of Hampshire College, and she
wanted to furnish the President’s
House, which had no furniture.
“I was staying at our home,
so I wasn’t about to denude it to
furnish the house in Amherst,”
says Prince. “I thought, okay, I’ll
go into the antique business!”
The Princes do about five
shows a year, and think of it as a
part-time occupation, but a tour
of their property is testament
to their love of antiques — and Toni’s
childlike whimsy. The treasures within
are hinted at above the barn, where
a miniature Colonial home with little
trees is perched above the door.
The main house is decorated with
lovely antiques and a toy collection
that would do the Smithsonian proud;
all set out as tiny vignettes. Included
in the massive and utterly charming
collection are a porcelain fox family;
a wooden ark, complete with zigzag-
ging ramps upon which the animals
ascend in pairs to a waiting Noah and
his wife; a little wooden barn with
farmyard and animals, including a dog
herding sheep; an ox-train pulling logs;
a wooden carriage being pulled by a
horse — driven by a woman — while
a male figure sits in the rear reading a
book, and everywhere horses. There
are model horses, paintings of horses,
pillows with horses, and horse-head
hooks.
The items are expertly arranged
among beautifully appointed and cozy
Antiques at The Horse and The Bear
“I don’t believe I teach young people
to ride,” she explains when asked about
her philosophy. “I say this to the children
over and over again. The horses are the
ones who teach them to ride, and I am
the translator of the language that is try-
ing to take place between the horse and
the child. And I do think of them as chil-
dren, even though that is not politically
correct. The horses are trying as hard as
they can to understand, or misunder-
stand, and the children are trying as hard
as they can to have the horse understand
and obey, and that’s the teaching, not me.
“The students come to me because
they want to be able to ride, and in order
to ride they have to understand them-
selves. So a lot of my teaching is based on,
‘Do you really understand what messages
you’re transferring to your horse?’ A lot
of times they don’t. They need to under-
stand their weaknesses in order to make
this collaboration work.”
Over the years, Prince has seen a
change in the children she coaches. With
a mix of frustration and concern, she says
that children today are much less child-
like, and they are very driven. She says
they have too much to do, and have lost
the ability to lie on their backs and make
cloud pictures, an activity she believes is
essential in a child’s life.
“I am not blaming parents and
teachers for that. I blame children’s fear
of failure. Where that comes from exactly
I don’t know, but many, many children
are afraid of failing and that’s not a happy
thing. They have also lost the ability to
take joy in the tiny little successes that
they achieve every single day. They lose
sight of this in the bigger fear of not suc-
ceeding; whatever their idea of succeeding
is. It’s coming from the children them-
selves and I find that very worrisome.”
Prince & Pauper Farm may be the
only place the youngsters are allowed and
even encouraged to behave like children
— and to fail. Prince’s students are not
expected to be perfect; they are expected
to try, take risks and, above all, enjoy
themselves.
“Learning to ride and teaching a
horse to be a good partner is a very, very,
Collection of antique horses at Toni Prince’s home
7. 45November 2014 - February 2015uppervalleylife.com
Hanover, N.H., native Jaimie Seaton has
reported for numerous titles, including
the Sunday Times of London and
Newsweek. She has lived and worked
in South Africa, the Netherlands,
Singapore and Bangkok. Jaimie is
currently completing her first novel,
and works as an interior designer at
C. Beston & Company in Hanover, N.H.
Learn more at jaimieseaton.com
Lars Blackmore grew up in Denmark,
and has worked as a photo journalist
since the early 1990s, covering
everything from concerts to conflicts on
assignment for the Associated Press,
Save The Children and others. Now
based in Norwich, Vt., with his wife and
two kids, he combines photography and
writing assignments with graduate work
at Dartmouth College.
very slow process. And for kids who have
been with me for a while and have worked
with the more difficult ponies, like
Drum: it’s been 10 years of struggling to
work with a throwaway pony that nobody
wanted. Now she’s a really, really good
partner. But 10 years is a long time in the
life of a child. They realize that you can’t
rush some of these things, and you better
lie on your back and look at clouds. Take
it easy and enjoy the trip.”
Toni Prince helps Jade Martin get the tack off Nanny after a lesson
at Prince & Pauper Farm.
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