Opening Passage:
The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master's house, which stood by the roadside; at the top of the meadow was a grove of fir trees, and at the bottom a running brook overhung by a steep bank.
While I was young I lived upon my mother's milk, as I could not eat grass. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.
Summary: A mare named Duchess has a colt, whom she teaches to be well-mannered and gentle; the colt grows to be quite a handsome horse, very suitable for carriage-work, and therefore he receives the name 'Black Beauty'. Things go very well for a while, as Black Beauty is kept in a good situation, spending time with his friends in the stable, pulling the family carriage, and making friends with the other horses, most notably the goodhearted but somewhat snappish Ginger and the pampered pony Merrylegs. They are given good care by the coachman, John Manly. But the life of a horse is uncertain, and when the mistress of the house takes ill and needs a different climate, Black Beauty finds himself in other hands. The new situation is not terrible, but the master and mistress are less careful and considerate of their horses, and the grooms are far inferior to John Manly. A nasty incident with a drunken groom leads to a severe fall in which Black Beauty's knees are severely damaged; Black Beauty heals, but the knees make him no longer eligible for the higher-quality work of drawing carriage and carrying ladies. The result is that Black Beauty eventually ends up as a cab horse. The horse's relative luck holds good, as he ends up with a cabbie named Jerry who, poor and working class though he may be, goes out of his way to treat his new horse (whom he calls 'Jack') well, even refusing to take commissions or engage in profitable practices that could endanger him. The life of a cab horse is difficult, but, as Black Beauty notes, horses who are well treated don't mind work. But the life of a cabbie is also difficult, and having to be out in bad weather so often leads to Jerry growing increasingly sick. Black Beauty's fall continues, as his next situation is one in which he is overworked; he inevitably starts breaking down, although again his relative luck holds -- the owner of the cab company decides that he can get more money out of Black Beauty by nursing him enough to health to sell. He is bought by an old man, Mr. Thoroughgood, who specializes in rejuvenating mistreated horses, and through Mr. Thoroughgood's work ends up at last in a good place. Not all horses do, of course; at every stage things could have gone far worse than they did.
The story works not merely because the autobiographical voice is well done but even more because horses are animals who share in our own lives -- and in the nineteenth century, of course, to an even greater degree than in our own. One of the major problems the horses face in Black Beauty is that they live during the rise of the machine age, with the result that people often treat horses as inefficient machines rather than living creatures cooperating with them for mutual benefit. The horse is expected to be constant in a way that a living animal cannot be, and instead of easing up when things are getting difficult, people just whip the horse harder. Eventually, of course, horses treated that way will break, in one way or another; but precisely what the age of steam engines has done is to lead people to demand of the horse like a machine until it breaks like a machine. A further, and perhaps related, problem is that the people who ultimately spend on horses do not actually have much contact with them. This is a constant problem (indeed, still one today), but one of the differences between a genuinely good owner and a bad owner with good intentions is that a genuinely good owner knows enough about horses to make sure that the grooms are taking proper care of them and to avoid demanding what the horses cannot give. A similar, and less easily soluble, problem arises for cabhorses; the people who are paying cabbies never consider what the horses might need.
Another way in which the story works well is by building on the fact that, since horses are engaged in cooperative endeavors with human beings, the ills of the former are often symptoms of the ills of the latter. Horses being overworked is a sign that cabbies are being overworked; horses being treated ill in stables are a sign that something has gone wrong with the life of the groom. Sewell, of course, was not idly writing a story about a horse; she is addressing precisely the people who worked most closely with horses and showing ways in which the misfortune of horses is a side effect of the misfortune they, too, often receive.
The consistent them throughout is that everything lies in good or bad judgment. Drinking comes up as a problem several times precisely because it distorts judgment. Other sources of bad judgment are ignorance, inexperience, and shortsighted pursuit of money. The contributors to good judgment in the story are kindness and sympathy (most of all), moderation in action, and actual practice of religion, all of which, I think, are taken to work because they counter narrowness of focus and the blindness it causes. And because horses are cooperatively integrated into human life, the treatment of horses reflects the character of human lives; treating horses kindly is not separate from treating human beings kindly, and the quality of the lives of horses is not separate from the quality of lives of the human beings who own and use them. But, as with Joe Green, who as a young stableboy nearly kills Black Beauty through inexperience, later becomes a good and kind groom, the thing about judgment is that you can always improve it, if only you take enough time to think about how things are for everyone else -- including, at times, the horse.
Favorite Passage: One that jumped out at me was a brief exchange between two cabbies, Larry and Grant, the latter of whom has the nickname of 'Governor Gray':
“Well,” said Larry, “what is a fellow to do if his horse won't go without it?”
“You never take the trouble to see if he will go without it; your whip is always going as if you had the St. Vitus' dance in your arm, and if it does not wear you out it wears your horse out; you know you are always changing your horses; and why? Because you never give them any peace or encouragement.”
“Well, I have not had good luck,” said Larry, “that's where it is.”
“And you never will,” said the governor. “Good Luck is rather particular who she rides with, and mostly prefers those who have got common sense and a good heart; at least that is my experience.”
Governor Gray turned round again to his newspaper, and the other men went to their cabs.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
