The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

Numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, were Turks, and to these we may add Mr. Darley’s horse, known as the Darley Arabian, number 13, for he was brought from Aleppo in Turkey, far removed from Arabia, and famous for the great numbers and excellence of its horses many centuries before Arabia had any horses. To carry horses, for sale, from the deserts of Arabia, where they are scarce, to the region of Aleppo, where they are very plenty, and of the highest quality, would be simply “carrying coals to Newcastle.” We may therefore safely conclude that the ten horses here enumerated were Turks.

Numbers 4, 7, 11, 12, 16, 20 were Barbs, as they are named in the list. It is a surprise to me that these six horses should be designated as “Barbs,” for it has been the usage of many generations to call these horses “Arabians.” As late as 1819 the Dey of Algiers sent several Algerine horses as a present to the Prince Regent of England, and they were always spoken of as “Arabians.”

Numbers 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 are all unsatisfactory as to their origin. Number 17—Lord Godolphin’s horse—is wholly unknown as to his blood elements, and further on his history will be considered. Number 18 “was brought over,” but from whence nobody knows. Number 19 is in the same condition, and not one of his different owners has been able to tell us anything about his origin. Number 21 was, possibly, an Arabian, but the Duke of Newcastle, who knew the horse well, seems to have doubted his genuineness on account of his inferiority. However this may have been, he preceded other importations so many years that it is not known that he ever sired a colt, and as a progenitor we may as well strike him out. Number 22 seems to be in darkness, and all efforts to find his origin having failed he may as well be classed as unknown. Number 23 is furnished with no evidence that he was entitled to be classed as an Arabian. Numbers 24 and 25 were confessedly not genuine.

This reduces the analysis to its lowest form and shows that in the original foundation stock, including Mr. Darley’s horse (13), there were ten Turks and six Barbs that can be accepted with reasonable certainty. This leaves eight so-called “Arabians,” from which we must eliminate numbers 17, 21, 24, 25, leaving numbers 18, 19, 22, 23, without any evidence whatever that they were Arabians except in name. From these four rather obscure animals, therefore, according to the Rous dictum, the English race horse must have derived every drop of his blood; and yet there is not a scintilla of evidence either direct or inferential that any one of them, or the ancestors of any one of them, ever saw Arabia. From the custom of calling every horse from abroad an “Arabian,” that has prevailed in England for more than two hundred years, it is fair to conclude that there was no Arabian blood in the foundation stock. It was the blood of the Turks and the Barbs, commingled with that of the native blood that had been bred to race for centuries, that furnished the foundation of the modern English and American race horse.

Blood in the race horse is an imperative necessity, but it must be blood that has been carefully selected from winners, and raced for generations, or it is of no value as an element of speed. If the English race horse had been a strictly pure exotic from Arabia Deserta, as Admiral Rous maintained, he would have been of no value either as a race horse or the progenitor of race horses, without many generations of careful selection and development of speed.

The Godolphin Arabian was altogether the greatest horse of his century. He flourished during most of the reign of King George II., but the horsemen of the world, even Englishmen themselves, know far more about him than they do about the reign of that monarch. Still, nobody knows anything of his birthplace, his origin or his blood. He was to the English race horse what Rysdyk’s Hambletonian has been to the American trotter. Neither of them was ever in a race, but each of them stood immeasurably superior to all others of his day as a progenitor of speed, at his own gait. From the latter we had reason to expect speed because we knew he inherited speed, but from the former we had no reason to expect anything, for we knew nothing of what he inherited until he proved his inheritance by what he transmitted to his progeny. Some of the principal semi-tragic incidents, so far as known in the early life of Godolphin Arabian, were seized upon by the great novelist Eugene Sue, and out of them grew a “horse novel” from his gifted pen. The horse was foaled about 1724, was brought to England from France about 1730, and died at Magog Hills, 1753. There seems to be a substantial agreement among those who had the best opportunities to know that the horse was employed on the streets of Paris as a common drudge in a cart and driven by a brutal master. A Mr. Coke, who is represented to have been a Quaker, was in Paris on business and he happened to witness the brutality of the ruffian who was this horse’s master in trying to make him draw a load of wood up a steep acclivity on to a new bridge, which the horse after repeated trials and clubbings was unable to accomplish. To relieve the poor brute from his sufferings, Mr. Coke’s feelings of humanity asserted themselves, and he stepped forward and bought the horse on the spot and had him released from the cart. Mr. Coke, it is said, brought the horse to London and presented him to Mr. Williams, the proprietor of a famous coffee-house, and Mr. Williams presented him to Earl Godolphin.

In September, 1829, Mr. John S. Skinner commenced the publication of the first horse magazine that ever appeared in this country, and in the first number there appeared a steel engraving purporting to be executed by the famous Stubbs and to represent the great horse, Godolphin Arabian. Not many years afterward I came into possession of a copy of this publication from the beginning, and the sight of this picture always impressed me as the most ludicrous abortion of the likeness of a horse that could be conceived of. The neck was absolutely longer than the body, the legs were about strong enough for a sheep, and all over it lacked strength of both muscle and bone to a most absurd extent. When this picture appeared in London, some years before, it was laughed at by all artists as well as by all men who knew anything about the shape of a horse, as a monstrosity, and it was received in the same spirit on this side of the water; but it bore the name of a great artist and that was sufficient to secure the approbation of the unthinking and the unknowing. The only key to the origin of the horse, the only pedigree that can be given, must be found written in his own structure of bone and muscle and brain. A true delineation, therefore, of his form and shape became a matter of the highest moment, not merely to satisfy the curiosity of the curious, but as a study of the true sources of his wonderful prepotency.

Sixty-five years ago a correspondent of Mr. Skinner’s magazine, referred to above, and a descendant of Mr. Samuel Galloway of Maryland, spoke of an oil painting of Godolphin Arabian that had hung in the hall at Tulip Hill from the days of his childhood as still hanging there, and said that it was wholly unlike the Stubbs engraving. Mr. Galloway was one of Maryland’s land barons, an enthusiastic horse breeder, and a successful horse racer. He was educated at Cambridge, I think; and if so, no doubt he saw Godolphin Arabian many times before he died, for he was within four or five miles of him, and his sporting instincts could not fail to take him to see so great a horse when so near at hand. As he was a young man of great wealth and great ambitions, it is quite probable he was on terms of friendly acquaintance, if not intimacy, with Lord Godolphin, and thus secured the oil painting from that distinguished friend himself. This theory is strengthened by the fact that the picture still bears the coat of arms of Lord Godolphin.

To reach and secure this picture, or at least a faithful copy of it, became an object of continuous effort that was never intermitted for more than twenty years. At last, in the spring of 1877, one of the correspondents of Wallace’s Monthly, Prof. M. C. Ellzey, of Blacksburg, Virginia, wrote me that the picture was then the property of Dr. J. H. Murray (whose wife was a lineal descendant of Mr. Galloway) of Cedar Park, adjoining Tulip Hill, West River, Maryland, and that he would have the picture sent to me. In a few days it arrived, and when my eyes rested upon it, it was like the feast of a lifetime; for there was all that could ever be known of the greatest horse of his century. The painting was in a state of excellent preservation and the coat of arms of Lord Godolphin was plainly traceable. The horse is shown from his right side, in his rough, paddock condition, with his right hind foot a little advanced, and his head low and without any animation or excitement. The standpoint of the artist is a little forward of the shoulders, and he must have been a tall man or the horse must have been a low horse, or perhaps both, for he sees over the horse and portrays the fine spring of muscle over the loin, on the opposite side of the vertebra. From the position of the artist the drawing is slightly foreshortened, and this, together with the advance of his right hind foot, intensifies the droop of the rump, to some degree, in the outline. From the proportions, as shown in the painting, I would conclude he was below fourteen and a half hands high rather than above it. His head is striking and unusually large for an animal of his size, with remarkable width between the eyes, and without a star to lighten it up. His ear is not fine, and it droops backward as he stands, as if half-asleep. His mane is sparse and in disorder. His throat-latch is very good, and the windpipe large and well developed. The neck is of a fair length for a horse of his blocky formation, and there is nothing unusual about it except its great depth at the collar place. The slope of the shoulder is very marked and shows his ability to carry his head in the air when he wished to do so, but the shoulder itself is coarse and angular to an unusual degree. His withers rise very abruptly and there is great perpendicular depth through the carcass at this point. His back is remarkably short and the spread and arch of his loins is simply magnificent. But the point of superlative excellence is in the remarkable development of power in his quarters. His limbs, instead of being “spider legs,” are unusually strong for an animal of his size; indeed, they might be considered coarse for any horse that was pretended to be a race horse. His tail is of the usual weight and somewhat wavy. With the addition that there is a little white at the coronet of the right hind foot, and not forgetting his friend and companion the cat, I have made a somewhat detailed description of what is represented in the painting. Several artists examined the picture, and they pronounced it the work of an artist of ability and experience. The signature “D. M. pinxt” was carefully examined, but no one was able to throw any light upon the name represented by the initial letters “D. M.”

While this painting contained within itself evidence of its great value as a likeness of its subject, it lacked confirmation as “true to the life;” and nothing could supply this lack but to find a portrait of the same horse, painted by another artist, and then if the two agreed, the proof would be fully satisfying to the understanding. A little over a hundred years ago Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne, Duke of Leeds, and heir to Lord Godolphin, wrote Sir Charles Bunbury, a great race-horse man, that he had a painting of Godolphin Arabian, by Wootton, at Gog Magog Hills. Over sixty years ago an American gentleman wrote to Mr. Skinner’s magazine that he had seen a painting of Godolphin Arabian hanging in Houghton Hall, Norfolk. In 1878 my physician told me I must quit work for awhile, and that I had better visit the great Exposition at Paris that year. I was anxious to see the Fair, but I was a great deal more anxious to see those two paintings of Godolphin Arabian, if they were still in existence. Gog Magog Hills is a quaint old place, and the origin and meaning of its name is lost in a very remote antiquity. As it has not been the residence of its owners for more than a hundred years, it is much neglected. The people in charge were very obliging, and I was immediately admitted to the view of Wootton’s painting of Godolphin Arabian. The first glance was a complete vindication of the truthfulness of the Maryland painting as a true likeness in every important feature of the outline and proportions. The canvas is about four and a half by four feet, inclosed in a massive frame. After studying it and comparing it, point by point for more than an hour, with a copy of the Maryland painting, it became evident they were not painted by the same hand, although the horse had the same position in both pictures, with the exception that the right hind foot was thrown backward in the Wootton painting instead of forward, and thus gave a less abrupt droop of the rump. The head was precisely the same shape, but in the large painting the articulations were less distinct and expressive.