Horsey Men
Have you ever calculated how much respect you can buy with a sudden half-crown?
A railway porter will give you quite a lot, an hotel porter will unbend slightly, and under its influence even a taxi-cab driver, if the fare is about seven and sixpence, will appear fairly human. But if you want your money's worth, go briskly into Aldridge's or Tattersall's on the day of a horse sale, walk up to a man who wears a white jacket and holds a whip, give him half a crown and say at the same time: "Selling any hunters to-day?" You know at once that you have made a hit. As an American would say, he reacts immediately. In one swift eye-sweep he has made a mental note of you; he knows the kind of horse he thinks you ride, the way you will ride it, and so on. He looks knowing, a quality shared by all men even remotely connected with the sale of horseflesh, and, slightly closing one eye, he whispers:
"Come with me, sir!"
* * *
You are in a stable facing the posteriors of many horses. The hunters, the aristocrats of the sale, are boxed together in a corner, but there are big hefty carthorses and sturdy hacks of every kind. You look down the catalogue: "Bay mare, has been ridden side-saddle and astride." What lovely girl rode her side-saddle and astride, you wonder, called her "Nelly," and came to the stable every morning with a lump of sugar?
"Look out, sir!" says your admirer, as he taps Nelly's hocks lightly with his whip, causing her to swerve round and show you a dilated pupil and a suspiciously poised near-side hoof. "Now, sir, that's your 'oss, that is!"
You don't deceive him. You don't explain that you are only doing this for fun, to while away a weary hour, to banish ennui. On he goes, a natural-born auctioneer. She's your weight, she is, and she has a lovely mouth, she has, and he wouldn't be surprised if she was a marvellous jumper, he wouldn't....
For one half-crown and a minimum amount of attention you can spend hours with this man prodding flanks, feeling hocks, and running your hand over withers, but the best thing to do is to run down the horses, call them "rough stuff," and go off into the yard where they are having a sale.
Now horse fancying has created a unique type of man familiar to you in the country, but never seen in London except at these sales. When you regard them en masse the effect is remarkable. You feel that if a coach-and-four suddenly drove in they could all take seats and drive out looking like one of Cruikshank's illustrations in Dickens. People would say: "What are they advertising?"
They are horse-faced, thin, bow-legged, and some of them actually suck straws—most difficult things to find in London these days if you contract the habit. They wear little fawn coats with pearl buttons and tight little gaiters well up on the tops of their boots; and they walk with a roll. You have seen a wicked man in a night club on the movies look at the heroine. He screws up his eyes and looks straight at her ankles, and then slowly insults her with his eyes as his gaze ascends. These horsey men look at horses just like that: their eyes glance contemptuously at hoofs, linger sneeringly on fetlocks, wander disparagingly over other parts of the anatomy, then they say: "Wind sucker," or "Roarer," or "Eats her bedding," and light a cigar.
* * *
Into the ring is led a chestnut mare.
She is a lovely thing, and you can tell by the way she trembles and tosses her head that she is not having a good time. She does not understand. There are many things she does understand. She understands the man into whose waistcoat it is so good to place her moist muzzle, she understands the slightest move of him in the saddle, and she loves to obey when, feeling the faintest pressure of his knees, she breaks into a canter over soft grass, and falls again into a trot, to find his hand patting her sleek neck.
Why isn't he here? He has never let others take control of her before! In a moment, no doubt, he will come and drive all these men off; and then they will go out together to their own place as they have always done. She looks round. Whinnies. But her man is not there.
Then the auctioneer, a little fellow in a silk hat, explains that this splendid chestnut mare, sound in wind and limb and eye, is being sold to save her summer keep. The horse fanciers come a step nearer, they whisper, they begin to bid....
Bang! The hammer descends. The little chestnut mare starts suddenly as if she knew that she had got a new master.
* * *
They lead her out under the wide arch of the livery stable, and in the proud tossing of her head and her backward looks you seem to read: "Where is that man of mine, and why—why doesn't he come?"