The Disappearing Horse
By PEGGY STACK
T T noon, on regular days of the week, the big brewer's van rounds the corner of this unimportant street, and pulls up across the way. The two horses are given their bait, cloths are thrown over their backs, and they are left for about half-an-hour while the driver and van-boy have their dinner at the near-by café. If it is holiday time, children stand around in groups. The small boy and girl from No. 5 were once invited to climb on to the high driving seat and, who knows? others may be offered this rich experience if they wait upon the occasion. I have come to know these horses well, and enjoy watching them. Both are big animals, high-spirited and in splendid condition, and their coming and going make a matutinal event whose interest never stales. It adds charm to the street—more than can be said of the motor vehicles, which contribute only noise of a rather unpleasant kind. " I daresay we shan't be seeing the horses much longer," said my neighbour the other day ; and, indeed, it is impossible to live in London and remain unaware of the speed with which horse- drawn traffic is disappearing from its streets. At any time it may be one's own neighbourhood which is affected. We were on familiar terms with the old grey cart-horse who brought the coal and amiably received our titbits. Now he is gone ; and one day, perhaps, we shall miss the milk-cart pony who mounts the pave- ment in front of No. 28 to investigate the dustbin and in general behaves as if the street belonged to him. How do they spend their working lives, these horses of the metropolis, and what do their owners think of their prospects?
For information I went first to the brewery headquarters, on a Sunday, in order to find the vanners at home, and there saw about thirty in their stalls. I was introduced first to a black mare called Margaret. " Eighteen years old and as fat as a bullock," said the foreman, patting her belly. Margaret curved her head past his shoulder and regarded me attentively, making me wish I had brought a lump of sugar. (This, indeed, is exactly what she was looking for, as it appeared that every week-end a young lady from a large neighbouring office brought nearly a pound of sugar—all the lumps that her colleagues had not wanted in their tea—and distributed it through the stables.) Thereafter we passed from stall to stall, and all the horses turned expectantly.
We stood a long time looking at Marylegs, a bay, winner of 46 firsts and 25 seconds, who was now past van work and used mainly for going round the yard on the clean-up. She was twenty-six and the oldest horse at present in the stable. Quaker and Northolt; both aged about seventeen, were still in harness. They and all the other draft horses pulled the vans from Mondays to Fridays, their day beginning at 6 a.m., when they were watered and fed, groomed and harnessed. By 9 o'clock they had begun their journeys, which would.eover an average distance of five miles out and back, and the middle afternoon found them in their stables again( " Dependable things, horses," said the foreman. " And they don't go sick on you. No engine trouble as you might say." I asked him how long these horses were likely. to 15e retained, and he shrugged his shoulders. " No telling. You see," he ex- plained, " things aren't easy for them today. All these traffic lights. It's a starting and stopping all the time, and people get impatient who don't understand horses." He spoke with his hand stroking the flanks of a dapple grey. " Move over. darling." (He called all the horses " darling.") " All I know," he con- cluded, " that the stalls falling vacant aren't getting filled up."
After the brewer's I visited a dairy firm, at whose chief depot I was shown the long building that once sheltered nearly a hundred middle-draft horses. Lately it has been partitioned, and only a third of it is still used as stables. The foreman ex- plained the reason for the change. " Money talks," he said. " This little lot get through a daily 40 lbs. of fodder, and every one of them costs £3 per week to keep." A six-day working week is the rule here, and since people like to get their milk early, the preparations for the road have to begin at 5 a.m. The horses now occupying the stalls were those off shift, and the foreman took me to see them one by one. His present favourite was a little black mare who once pulled a hearse. She lay now on her side, asleep and snoring. although her eyes were open and she kicked from time to time at a fly that was trying to settle. ".That's how I like to see them: taking it easy on their day off." The man spoke affectionately and leant over the stall watching the mare.
Not all London horses work so strenuously. Some of the barrow ponies, for instance, are idlers by comparison, as I dis covered when I went the next morning to our local street-market and asked the owner of a vegetable-stall how many hours his horse worked. " Next to none," was the answer. There is a twenty-minute drive every morning to and from Covent Garden, after which the pony is stabled for the rest of the day except for an occasional evening pleasure trot. He described it as a decent little cuss, and assured me it could sit up and beg like a dog, a phenomenon I was invited to witness any time I cared to come round to the stable after hours with a sweetmeat or carrot. He advised me to come soon as he was saving up to buy a motor- van: " Quicker and cheaper," he said.
I had not yet visited the railway goods-yards, where more draft-horses were once employed than anywhere else in the London area. Behind one of the main-line stations I discovered the cobbled stables that are unchanged in appearance from the days when they accommodated 600 horses, a number now reduced to 60. Some were in their stalls , the rest bringing in the vans at the end of the day's work. At a factory one would hesitate to stop and question tired hands waiting to get home to their teas, but here were men who, as soon as they perceived that I was genuinely interested in their horses, seemed anxious to linger and talk, especially the older ones. Sid, driver of forty- seven years' experience, is hailed by his mates to come and tell me about old-time conditions and his long no-accident record. Charlie, too, presently comes up, touches his cap, and asks diffidently if I would like to see his horse, who he says has had a " worrying day " but is now feeling more itself.
They spoke racily of their charges and recalled the special characters: Nance, who used to queue up for her buns at the Billingsgate coffee-stall, and the old roan who more recently learnt to switch on the electric light of his stable—a feat vouched for by the veterinary surgeon who was conducting me round. But in spite of the personal esteem in which these animals are held, there is a general feeling, here as at the other stables, that . the horse is " up against it " in a big city. The judgement is that' he is slow, unprofitable and unsuited to the hustle of modern traffic. Moreover, in the large stables his proper maintenance calls for skilled labour which is not forthcoming.
Within our generation, it may be, the last stall will be empty 1, of its living occupant ; patches of oil will appear on the ground the straw now covers, and the placid sound of munching be superseded by the roar of revving engines. Probably the firms will make more money in that day. But something precious, nevertheless, will have gone from our town-life—a humane influence, a dignity and grace.
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