Who Was Black Beauty?

Was he a real horse, of a fictional character?

by Margaret Bennett

Anna Sewell's story of Black Beauty is one of the most famous and best loved books of all time. But who was Black Beauty? To answer this question, we must look back to the time in which the fictional horse, Black Beauty, lived. Anna Sewell's classic tale of 1877 was set in Victorian England. Due to a leg injury suffered as a child, Anna Sewell knew a life dominated by pain. A gentle person, she wrote of her only book...."I am writing the life of a horse ...Its special aim ... is to induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding of the treatment of horses.”

And the treatment of horses she saw then was less than ideal in the streets of the growing industrial world of the late 1800s. Horses powered almost every form of transport, from coal wagons to carriages for the very wealthy. During the 1890s, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs (the taxis of their day) alone on the streets of London, needing twice that number of horses to operate. Yet working horses were often victims of cruelty and neglect.

Anna Sewell's sensitive words show us how horses served people in so many ways. Using the life story of a handsome black Thoroughbred, told in his own words, Black Beauty describes the experiences - both good and bad -that horses endured. Beginning his life in the fields of a kind owner's stable with equine friends, Black Beauty finds himself passing through a variety of homes, becoming by turns a riding horse, fancy carriage horse and later, a lowly cart horse. Black Beauty describes his life, as he is worked and used as horses were then, sometimes treated well, sometimes not.

The black horse's friends are the fiery chestnut mare Ginger, who tells her tale of rough training, and the gentle pony Merrylegs, from a happy and caring home. The lives of Black Beauty and Ginger intertwine as they encounter all kinds of owners and in one case, find themselves the equine servants of high society. In this role, subjected to painful bits and the dreaded "bearing rein", which forced their heads high in a tight, uncomfortable position, the story tells vividly the life of Victorian carriage horses. It was partly thanks to Anna Sewell that this cruel device was eventually banned from use.

Although Black Beauty has a happy ending, the reality for actual working horses of this fictional horse's time was a different story. They often died in harness due to overwork and lack of care, or in the words of Black Beauty's friend Ginger, broken and dispirited at the end of her life, horses were simply "used up".

So, who was Black Beauty? Black Beauty represented the working horses, the riding and driving horses, of Victorian times. Although the fictional Black Beauty was created from the imagination of a caring writer, there were many real "Black Beautys" being ridden and driven more than 100 years ago.

Horsepower August/September 1999