Perhaps nothing illustrates better what I have called the versatility of the trotter than this contest with the Hackney in the latter’s own especial field—if he may be said to have any. Of course there could be no contest between the horse of a special breed and the nondescript as a harness horse for speed or usefulness on the road, whether the distance were half a mile or a hundred miles; but in the show-ring the Hackney men claimed absolute pre-eminence for their “high-acting” horses. They did not dare contest with the trotter in the matter of road speed, so to have any contest at all the trotting horse men had to “carry the war into Africa.” This they have done with a vengeance. They have taken the pure-bred trotting horse, dressed him in the fashion dictated by the Hackney “faddists,” taught him the Hackney tricks, the preposterous Hackney action and all that, and have beaten the Hackneys not once but time and again right on their own ground, viz., at the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden. In almost all cases in classes where trotters have been admitted to compete with Hackneys, the former have carried off the honors within the past two years. Many notable instances might be cited, but one will suffice. At the National Horse Show, 1896, a class was offered for “half-bred Hackneys,” sires to be shown with four of their get. The Hackney end of the argument was upheld by Mr. A. J. Cassatt’s renowned prize-winner, imported Cadet, with four of his get. Against him was entered the well-known trotting sire Almont Jr., 2:26, with four of his get, and though the judges were gentlemen identified more or less with the Hackney interest, so superior in form, action and style were the four youngsters by the trotting sire that they carried away the honors from the chosen progeny of one of the most noted Hackney show horses in the world.
In the sale ring this verdict has been corroborated. The highest prices—the record figures—paid in the fashionable New York market for park horses, “high steppers,” or by whatever name the merely spectacular harness horse may from time to time be called, have been paid for trotting-bred horses: and in advertised sales of “Hackneys” it has become somewhat common to encounter half-trotting-bred and full-trotting-bred horses.
While no genuine American and horseman can without regret see a typical American horse mutilated and his action perverted in the manner required to bring him into “Hackney” classes at the National Horse Show, or in the markets where New York society people buy their stub-tailed horses, it is some compensation to know that these experiments have demonstrated the superiority of the American-bred horse even in the field claimed as especially that of the Hackney. And the Hackney “fad” in America, while it lasted, accomplished a good end in so far as it directed the attention of American breeders more to the importance of form and style, and taught them that in their own trotting families they have the material from which may best be produced, in form and style and quality as well as in speed, pre-eminently the most excellent park horses in the world.
CHAPTER XXIX.
INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES.
Tendency to misrepresentation—The Bald Galloway and Darley Arabian— Godolphin Arabian—Early experiences with trotting pedigrees—Mr. Backman’s honest methods—Shanghai Mary—Capt. Rynders and Widow Machree—Woodburn Farm and its pedigree methods—Victimized by “horse sharps” and pedigree makers—Alleged pedigree of Pilot Jr. conclusively overthrown—Pedigrees of Edwin Forrest, Norman, Bay Chief and Black Rose—Maud S.’s pedigree exhaustively considered—Captain John W. Russell never owned the mare Maria Russell—The deadly parallel columns settle it.
A few years more than forty have slipped away since I first began to give serious attention to the subject of horse history and to contribute an occasional article to the press on that subject. Among my very earliest observations, or I might say, experiences, was the realization of the fact that exaggeration as a habit of thought and utterance was practically universal among horsemen. Sometimes I have thought this tendency to the untrue resulted from the ammoniacal exhalations of the stable, but this thought is not a satisfactory solution, for some of the greatest liars about horses have never known anything about stables. Then, again, I have thought that a really skillful metaphysician might write a learned disquisition of the question and satisfy himself as to the cause of this moral delinquency, but nobody would be able to understand him when he had completed it. This wretched vice, so prevalent everywhere, was not restricted to the professional country “hoss jockey,” ready to “swap” with every man he met on the road, but it reached up to men of otherwise excellent character, and these men would “stretch the blanket” tremendously about the blood and other qualities of the horses they were selling. The only way we can account for an otherwise honest and truthful man exaggerating the merits and blood of his horses must be (1) in the fact that he has become attached to him and thinks him better than he is, or it may be (2) that he bought with a false pedigree and without examining it, he assumes it is true and represents it accordingly. But underlying all this, the representation cannot be disproved, and (3) it may add to the market value of the horse.
This weakness of human nature, so pervasive of all interests connected with the horse, did not originate in this country, but came from the old world. We inherit it from our ancestors. “The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Take the case of the little bald-faced, pacing-bred horse known in the old records as “The Bald Galloway” and while it is not probable he had a single drop of Saracenic blood in his veins, he is fitted out with a grand pedigree, full of that blood. Although I have already referred to this horse as an exemplification of the dishonesty of the early records of English pedigrees, I will again look at it in a more specific manner. He was nothing more nor less than a little native horse, belonging to a tribe of noted pacers in the southwestern part of Scotland and in the northern part of England. These Galloways were probably the very last remnant of pacers to be found in Great Britain. He is represented in the books to have been by a horse called “St. Victor’s Barb;” dam by Whynot; grandam a Royal Mare. The Bald Galloway was foaled not later than 1708, and it was probably a few years earlier. His reputed sire, “St. Victor’s Barb,” is not to be found anywhere and was probably fictitious. His dam was represented to be by Whynot, and this horse was not foaled till 1744—thirty-six years after his grandson was foaled. The grandam is given as a “Royal Mare,” which in that day was a convenient way of rounding out a pedigree, just as we now attempt to round them out when we know nothing of the blood by saying “dam thoroughbred.” “The Bald Galloway” was one of the most successful stallions of his day, and yet he was nothing in the world but a good representative of the old pacing Galloways of that portion of Scotland then called Galloway. He was low in stature, but he was esteemed as one of the greatest and most valuable racing sires of his generation. One of his sons—the Carlisle Gelding—was still a race horse when he was eighteen years old.