PART X.—THE FIRST TOM HAL
By John Trotwood Moore
The first Tom Hal of which there is any record was a roan pacer about fifteen hands high or a little over, with a black mane and tail, very strong and well muscled, and of a great deal of style. He was a clean-limbed, beautifully-turned little saddle horse (if tradition has it right), remarkably fast at the pace and going all the saddle gaits, especially the running walk or fox trot, so desirable then, as now, when a business gait under the saddle was needed. This was about the year 1824-5; and he was ridden (so says tradition) by a Dr. Boswell, who bought him in Philadelphia and rode him from that city to Lexington, Ky., his home. Boswell called him a Canadian, and declared he was the best saddle horse he ever rode. He also said he was an iron horse, and later, to prove it, he agreed for a wager to ride the horse from Leesburg, Ky., to Louisville, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and back, in the same day. It was midsummer at that. He did it, but tradition says the hard, hot ride came nearly ruining the horse, causing him to go blind. I have often thought of this Dr. Boswell. A right gallant pill mixer and letter-of-blood he must have been. I have never heard anyone describe him, but I think I can: A good natured, horse-loving, poker-playing, jolly cuss, a little fat, with a well padded seat, or else he had not been so fond of a saddle and seventy-five miles a day. No skinny man ever sticks to a saddle long. They prefer to walk, even in those days when all the goods for the Western Settlement (as Kentucky and Tennessee were called) were purchased in Philadelphia and hauled across the mountains five hundred miles, or floated down the rivers a thousand. So Boswell loved a horse, and loved to ride. He was not averse to sharp horse-trading (as was customary in those days), nor did he fail to put up a little wager now and then, as witness his bet that he could ride Tom Hal from Leesburg to Louisville and back in a day.
Now, in studying Boswell and his horse, we must go back to the times in which they lived. Philadelphia was the city which then rivaled New York, and was the business market for nearly all the Western and Southwestern States and Territories. In our story of the Hermitage we have seen that General Jackson bought all the goods for his store, even as far as Nashville, in Philadelphia. It was the great mart for the Western world. And all men rode in those days. There were few roads, and rough ones, and when the now famous Dr. Boswell (it is very likely he was a young fellow, who finished his medical education at old Jefferson College) started back to Kentucky, the cheapest and best way to get there was to buy a Canadian pony, ride him through, and sell him in Kentucky. Anyway, that is what he did.
A sad pity it was that the booted mixer of pills and calomel did not leave some record behind as to just what the little roan was. A sad pity he did not tell us in enduring lines why he called him Tom Hal, whom he beat in a horse trade when he got him, whom he robbed when first he mounted the original Tom Hal and rode him to Kentucky to fame.
For Boswell is famous—yea, as the other one was, for the other one is known as the biographer of Johnson, and this one as the biographer of the little Canadian pacing stud horse, the immortal Tom Hal, the pregenitor of the tribe of Hals.
Glorious Boswell, we know not what was his life, nor how nor when his taking off; nay, nor whom he took off—though we may be sure that in his day and generation he did his share with his lancet, his blue-mass and his calomel. Doubtless around the classic town of Lexington, perhaps even from Leesburg to Louisville, he left in his track lamenting widows and heart-broken orphans, whose sires first called in the horse-trading Boswell, and whose widow next called in the undertaker. Many a night, too, he rode the little pacer through the mud and sleet to the cabin of some lusty pioneer who had partaken too freely of biled cabbages and moonshine, and let a quart of blood from his guzzled body at the time he needed it most, or put a hot rock on the stomach that already had too much thereon. Often—often—the little pacer followed the trail of the stork at a two-minute clip, until, doubtless, in the language of Sentimental Tommy, he knew the difference between the wail of a “kid” and the groan of a “deader.”
And the pride of it—the glory of it! Didn’t every barefoot boy know him? “That’s Dr. Boswell an’ Tom Hal.”
“Didn’t the boys around the old fort store know him?
“Doc, thet’s a hell of a good little pony you’re ridin’.”
Didn’t all the old grannies know him: “Thar comes the Doctor, Sal, a-ridin’ his little amblin’ stud. Lemme get some clean sheets on the bed.”
Didn’t all the world know him—all the great, wide world, extending from Leesburg to Louisville? For there was nothing beyond. You bet your life they did. They all knew “Doc an’ his pacin’ stud.”
And Doc died and went the way of all the others he helped over the Styx, and, saddest of all, he left us nothing that we know.
For knowledge at last is just nothing that we know.
Less even than Shakespeare. For we know positively three things of Shake: He stole a deer in his youth, he married Anne Hathaway in his manhood, and he died and left a will in his older age—left a will in which he very cautiously told what was to be done with his best bed. But Tom Hal, the equal of his kind—equal even to Billy Shake and Dr. Jonson—of Tom Hal (he never had any best bed), and all we know is he was bought in Philadelphia, was a little, clean-limbed, rubber-hard pacer, and had his eyes ridden out of his head by a little wind-galled, blood-letting Doctor.
Great is Billy Shake! Great is Tommy Hal! Genius runs in parallel lines, and after centuries of mixing recipes to produce it, mankind has given it up and is willing to let it hit the earth now and then, untrammeled by toe-weights, unreined, unchecked, unbitted and unspurred. Shakespeare once wrote a description of a horse. You will find it in Venus and Adonis (if you’re not an old maid or a preacher), and this verse is as great and beautiful a description of Tom Hal, as he was and as he must have looked then (barring his “fet-locks shag and long”), as the poem itself is the most vivid and beautiful story of red-hot, immodest love:
“Look, when a painter would surpass the life
In limning out a well proportioned steed,
His art with Nature’s workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living would exceed:
“Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fet-locks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide—
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider, on so proud a back.”
But the horse of Shakespeare’s day was not the horse of Tom Hal’s day.
“Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,” doubtless expressed the Norman blood that Shakespeare knew. To-day the round-hoofed ones are plugs, the short-jointed ones are cart horses, and those with fetlocks shag and long are close kin to the Mustang.
But the rest of it was Tom Hal:
“Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostrils wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong.”
Yes, all this was the first Tom Hal—and more.
Lexington, Ky., May 3.
Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Nashville, Tenn.
My Dear Sir: In one of your issues you say that “in 1816 Maria, at Lexington, Ky., beat Robin Grey.” My maternal grandfather, Benjamin Hieronymous, of Clarke County, Ky., was Robin Grey’s original owner (owned his dam, of course), and slept all night in the stall with her the night little Robin was foaled, March, 1804—such glowing visions inspired him of the coming prodigy.
Hence, if Maria beat Robin Grey in 1816, it was when Robin was twelve years old. But there must be some mistake about it. If reliance can be placed on tradition, it was the boast of my grandfather to the day of his death, June, 1859, when in his ninetieth year, that Robin Grey won every race, from one-quarter to four miles, that he ever entered. In boyhood I read the worn copy of a famous placard, of which this is the substance: “Captain Cook’s celebrated ‘Whip’ challenges any horse, mare or gelding to run any distance, from one-quarter to four miles, barring Robin Grey.”
Captain Cook was a Virginian, and owned, I think, a famous mare, “Fanny,” or I may have the names mixed, and give my early impressions. For more than fifty years the children and grandchildren of the grand old man were raised on Robin Grey. No man ever idolized the genus horse as he did—not General Jackson, nor Hanie, nor Bailie Peyton. I fear he was really a crank on the subject of the horse, and Robin Grey was his prophet. Two gentlemen were once visiting his paddock, when one of them (perhaps in a spirit of fun) discredited a pet of its owner. Quick as a flash the critic went down. In a moment the assailant was penitent, led the victim tenderly to the house, washed the crimson from his face, saying: “I’m sorry—I’m—so sorry! But you oughtn’t to insult my horses. There now; it’s all over!” Better offend him personally a thousand times than to insult his horses.
It was at the old Lexington race track. Robin Grey was there, and his owner, also, of course. “Hurry up, Mr. Hieronymous! The other horses are about ready to start,” the judges called.
“Go ahead, gentlemen, whenever you like,” replied the enthusiast, “a quarter or a half minute, or such a matter, doesn’t make the least difference to Robin Grey. He’ll be in at the home stretch.”
I could relate, if you had the patience to read, many amusing and, to me, at least, thrilling stories of Robin Grey. Mr. Hieronymous sold a half interest in him to Col. John Hunt, grandfather of the afterwards famed cavalry leader, Gen. John Hunt Morgan, such were the exigencies of security debts. But the old man never loved a child more devotedly than he loved Robin Grey.
I must modify the statement that Robin Grey never lost a race. Once, the old Lexington track had been recently repaired and widened, and a bridge near the first quarter laid across a gully to supply the necessary width, and covered with dirt. Unfortunately Robin Grey took this side of the track, went, heels up, through the treacherous but unsuspected pitfall, threw his mount and himself to the ground, but was up at once and waited for his rider to spring again into the saddle, for Robin had the brains of a statesman. Even then he made sufficient speed to save his distance.
Please don’t ever tell it, especially to “one of his kinfolks,” that anything on four feet ever beat Robin Grey! You mustn’t “insult his horses!”
Sincerely for Trotwood,
C. E. MERRILL.
[Our authority, as may be seen from the chapter quoted, is Hon. Bailey Peyton, now deceased, than whom no more accurate authority on that subject existed. We are glad, however, to publish the above.—Ed.]
He who jests is weak, and nothing kills greatness like humor.