Black Beauty

Summary

Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, subtitled 'The Autobiography of a Horse', is narrated by a handsome black horse with a white star and one white foot. He grows up in a pleasant meadow under a kind master, Farmer Grey, and his mother Duchess teaches him to be gentle and good and to work willingly. Broken in kindly, he is sold to Squire Gordon of Birtwick Park, where he is well cared for by the coachman John Manly and the boy James Howard, and befriends the bitter chestnut mare Ginger, whose temper was ruined by harsh handling, and the pony Merrylegs. At Birtwick Beauty saves his master by refusing to cross a broken bridge in a storm, survives a stable fire, and gallops through the night with John to fetch Dr White for the gravely ill mistress. Afterward, the inexperienced stable-boy Joe Green gives him cold water while he is overheated and he falls dangerously ill. When the mistress's health requires the family to move abroad, Beauty and Ginger are sold to the Earl of W—, at Earlshall, where Lady W— insists on the fashionable bearing rein, a strap that holds a horse's head painfully high. Ginger rebels and is injured; Beauty is worn down. A drunken groom, Reuben Smith, rides Beauty with a loose shoe on a stony road; Beauty falls, his knees are broken and scarred, and Smith is killed. Blemished and less valuable, Beauty descends through a series of owners: a livery stable whose customers ride him badly, a well-meaning but ignorant owner whose groom steals his oats, and then the London cab trade. There he is fortunate in Jerry Barker, a decent cabman who keeps the Sabbath and refuses to overdrive his horses, and meets a worn-out Ginger again, later seeing her body carried away on a cart. When Jerry falls ill with bronchitis and must leave the cab trade, Beauty is sold to harder masters, hauls heavy loads, and collapses. Nursed back to partial health by a farmer and his kind grandson Willie, he is sold to three ladies in the country. There the groom turns out to be Joe Green, now grown, who recognises him. Beauty ends his days in comfort, remembering his old meadow.

Top Lessons

• Kindness is a form of competence

  The best handlers in the book are also the most skilful, and cruelty often springs from ignorance or fashion. Sewell argues that knowledge and sympathy together prevent suffering.

• Fashion can be cruel

  The bearing rein is used because it looks elegant, not because it helps the horse. The book shows how social display can require hidden pain.

• Seeing through another's eyes

  By giving a horse the narrative voice, Sewell makes readers feel what working animals endure. The book is an early demonstration of fiction as a tool for empathy and reform.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Though a book about horses, it carries a good deal of Victorian medical and social-medical content. The night ride for Dr White shows the dependence of rural medicine on horse transport. Beauty's chill after Joe Green's error, and his treatment by a horse doctor, show period veterinary practice, which included bleeding. Reuben Smith's drunkenness and death reflect the temperance message, and the book repeatedly connects drink to cruelty and accident. Pain is a central subject: the bearing rein, broken knees and overwork are described from the sufferer's point of view, which makes the book useful in discussions of how pain is witnessed and believed. Sewell's own chronic disability and dependence on carriages frame the story.

• Part I (Birtwick chapters)

  Beauty and John ride through the night to fetch Dr White for the gravely ill mistress.

• Part I (Birtwick chapters)

  Joe Green gives the overheated Beauty cold water and no blanket; Beauty falls seriously ill and is treated by the horse doctor and nursed by John.

• Part II (Earlshall)

  The bearing rein's effect on Beauty and Ginger: pain in mouth, neck and windpipe.

• Part II

  Reuben Smith rides drunk, Beauty falls and breaks his knees, Smith is killed; Beauty is left scarred and devalued.

• Part IV (London)

  Jerry Barker falls ill with bronchitis from exposure and must give up cab work.