Black Beauty

knees!
     
    ‘No, my lord, of course
not,’ said York, the grovelling little bastard.
    ‘They’ll soon take you
away,’ said Ginger. ‘It’s a hard world.’
    I tested the ground with my
hoof; yes, indeed, the world was very hard.
    Through the recommendation
of York, the bastard, I was bought by the master of the livery stables. I found
myself in a comfortable stable, and well attended to. There were some nice
pictures on the wall and a three-piece suite.

28

A JOB-HORSE AND HIS DRIVERS
     
    I’ve always been driven by people
    Of which there are a few
    They were English, Irish, Chinese and even a Jew
    Some drivers have no control over their horse
    I had a driver who did not know his left from his right
    So he drove me in bloody circles all bloody night
    Some drivers are insane, and not to blame
    They can be driving, and are never seen again.
     
    Some poor horses have been
made hard and insensible by just such drivers as these, and may, perhaps, find
some support in it; but for a horse, you can depend upon its own legs. My motto
is, ‘Never use a horse without his own legs.’ Some drivers fall asleep; some
used to fall backwards in the carriage and get carried away.
    Drivers are often careless
and will attend to anything else rather than their horses, like a woman with no
knickers. My driver was laughing and joking with the lady with no knickers. He
was sitting next to her and feeling her all over, and thus we drove into a shop
window. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said the driver, ‘I’ve had to stop my
groping.’ A farmer helped me out of the shop window. He put me in my stable
that night, but he went off and continued groping.

29

COCKNEYS
     
    Some people like to drive us like a steam train
    They make us eat lumps of coal again and again
    Eating coal we were fit to bust
    Eventually it shot out the back as dust
    My best master was Farmer Cray
    Even he turned out to be gay
    He carried a pot of Vaseline
    You couldn’t tell where he was, but you could smell where
he had been.
     
    There is a steam engine
style of driving, and these drivers keep shouting ‘choo-choo-choo-choo.’ People
never think of getting out to walk up a steep hill, yet we have to.
    Another thing, however
steep the downhill may be, they scarcely ever put on drag; one or two men put
on the top and skirts and stockings and go looking for sailors.
    These Cockneys, instead of
starting at an easy pace, generally set off at full speed from the stable yard,
some at 100 miles per hour. Some go so fast, we go past where we are going, and
have to start all over again. And some of them, they call that pulling up with
a dash. We call it fucking awful. And when they turn a corner, they do so so
sharply, we end up facing the other way.
    As we were near the corner,
I heard a horse and two wheels coming rapidly down the hill towards us. We had
no time to pull up. The whole shock came upon Rory. The gig shaft ran right
through his chest making him stagger back with a cry. It was a long time before
the wound healed — five years. He was sold for coal carting; and what that is,
is up and down those steep hills; they were delivering in the Himalayas.
    I went in the carriage with
a mare named Peggy. She was a strong, well-made animal, of a bright dun colour,
beautifully dappled, and with a dark brown mane and tail. She was very pretty,
remarkably sweet-tempered and willing — so I screwed her. Still, there was an
anxious look about her eye. She had some trouble; it was me. The first time we
went out to dinner together, I thought she had a very odd pace; she seemed to
go partly in a trot, partly in a canter — three or four paces, and then to make
a little jump forward. It threw the food all over us.
    ‘How is it,’ I asked, ‘you
are so strong and good tempered and willing?’
    ‘I was sold to a farmer,’
she said, ‘and I think this one was a low sort of man. One dark night, he was
galloping home as usual, when all of a sudden the wheel came against some great
heavy thing in the road — it was an elephant — and turned the gig over in a
minute. He was thrown out and his arm was broken, and some of his ribs.’
    After she left us, another
horse came in. He was young, and had a bad name for shying and starting. I
asked him why.
    ‘Well, I hardly know,’ he
said; ‘I was timid when I was young, and was a good deal frightened several
times, and if I saw anything strange, like a rhino or water buffalo, I used to
turn and look at it.