A "Blue" For Illi (1954)

A Blue For Illi (aka Blue Ribbon Winner)
Nancy Hartwell, il. Don Sibley
1954, Henry Holt and Company

This was the spot where Illi liked to linger when the horses were out.  She would stand, one foot on the rail, watching the sleek brown or gray or black bodies stretch and arch themselves in the most beautiful curves in the world.  Was there anything more beautiful than a horse in action?  Was there a better friend anywhere than a horse?

Ilona Horvath is standing in the lushness of Philadelphia's furthest suburbs, the gently rolling countryside of Chester County.  Walking down a country lane past a sprawling gentleman's farm, on her way to the snug home of her second family, the Enrights, Illi's come a strange, hard distance from her birth in Budapest.  The daughter of an artist and a lawyer, Illi had a happy childhood and even when she was evacuated from the city in 1943, she continued briefly to enjoy a snug middle-class existence at the government horse farm (the real Kisber Stud, which bred Thoroughbreds) her grandfather manages first for the Hungarians and then for the invading Germans.  But by 1945, the 10-year-old's childhood is effectively over.  Her parents, opposed to the invading Germans, have been arrested and killed, her grandfather dies protecting her from a guard, her older brother's run off to join the guerrillas, and even her beloved young stallion Vidam must be left behind.  As Illi expresses it herself in an essay, that was the end of the "well-bred little girl;" she "became one of the lost children of Europe who lived from day to day in the best way they could."  In her case, she fought her way to a Children's Camp for displaced people and managed to get herself sent to America, to be a companion for a middle-class couple's disabled daughter, Ardis.  She's been there a while now, and is happy enough, but still unsure of her future.

Whew.  To her credit, Hartwell presents all that information in a natural way and not in the action-packed paragraph format I just used. 

Back to the horses.  With the unerring instinct of many a less-challenged horsey heroine, Illi manages to attract admiration and help from the Major, one of those invaluable wealthy neighbors who own quality horses and has a soft spot for spunky girls.  Illi and falls in love with his horse Hocus-Pocus (aka Pokey), who reminds her painfully of the lost Vidam.

She was standing in the road, trying to get up her courage, when she heard the soft clop of hoofs and looked up the lane to see Neal coming along on Rockabye and leading another horse, a stud colt not more than two years old and tacked up for riding.  He was a perfect little chestnut with a white star on his forehead and dark, wide-set eyes, proudly arched neck, and four dainty white stockings. 
Illi stood rooted to the spot.  She must be dreaming, because it was exactly like the dream, the one that still came back to her, the one from which she always awoke with a feeling of keen disappointment.  It was the dream where she saw Vidam coming down from the Kisber stables, headed straight for her.

There are misunderstandings, romances for both Illi and Ardis, and a pair of reunions that are both unlikely and deeply believable.  The action culminates at the Devon Horse Show. 

The author is capable and stylish, and the heroine's complicated life is inherently interesting, but the action - and the various eligible boys - become confusing and the horse material is handled gingerly.  While the heroine's love for horses is well done, the actual riding scenes are few, far between and not exactly convincing.


Illustrations and Covers
Unfortunately, my copy is a battered old former library book without a dust jacket.  The original Holt hardcover cover can, for the moment at least, be seen at Amazon.  There was a Berkley Highland paperback edition in 1963, which can also be seen at Amazon.
The illustrator for the Holt originals was Don Sibley, who was a prolific illustrator of children's books, to the point where I knew I knew that name.  His horses are more like statues than living animals, but the minimalistic drawings throughout the book - often only on half a page - are typical of the time period, and nostalgically appealing. 



About the Author
Nancy Hartwell (1890-?) was a pseudonym for Claire Hartwell Callahan, who also wrote under the name Ann Kilborn Cole.  She wrote several young adult novels, but none of the others had an equine aspect.  She was born and raised in Philadelphia, attended Trinity College in Washington D.C., married in 1921and lived most of her adult life outside the city in the town of Pottstown. 

Other books by Author

Fiction
Gabriella
Shoestring Theater (1947)Dusty Cloak (1955)Senorita Okay (1956)
The Hills Of Home (1958)
Wake Up, Roberta (1959)
The Place On Wishbone Alley (1960)
Who Was Sylvia? (1960)
Something For Laurie (1962)

Nonfiction
The Golden Guide to Antiques
Old Things For Young People

Pagan The Black (1960)

Pagan The Black

Dorothy Potter Benedict, il. John Groth

1960, Pantheon Books

"Tomorrow's the day," Dad said. "Tomorrow we'll break Pagan."

Those were the words Sandy Seaton had been waiting to hear. Ever since he was nine and the wild black colt had been run onto the open range to grow up alone and Dad had said "Yes, tyke, he will be yours -- someday." Now, this Friday night, with school closed for the summer, Pagan three and he twelve, he heard the words he'd longed for and, instead of whooping and hollering, he sat still and silent at the table.

 

Sandy's silent worry is that Slim, his beloved mentor and his father's rough but dependable ranch hand, will push the temperamental young horse as he pushed the horse's dam, three years earlier, causing her death. It's not a baseless fear. The first chapter of this book uses an extensive flashback to establish the backstory of 12-year-old Sandy and his black stallion Pagan. Six years earlier, the Seaton family moved West from Washington, D.C., after Sandy's soldier father was injured in battle. Shortly thereafter, a stranger finds their ranch during a blizzard, bringing an orphaned filly inside the ranch house with him. The stranger is Slim Erickson, who becomes Mr. Seaton's right-hand man on the ranch. The filly is Siren, and she becomes the love of young Sandy's life. But after two happy years, his attempt to break her to saddle end in a savage bite and in Siren being exiled to winter on the range. When they bring her in the next summer, she has a colt.

"She wasn't spendin' her winter reformin'," Slim said.

When they try to separate mare and half-grown foal, the young Pagan shows signs of his dam's temper, and Siren herself has a fatal encounter with barbed wire. From then on, it's a struggle between Sandy and Slim over whether Pagan is safe. Their argument seems to resolve after a successful race at the local rodeo, but reappears when Pagan attacks a man.

Also in the mix, rather suddenly, is the family's adoption of a lost girl, Mistie, whose floozy mother dies in a bar fall caused by her latest boyfriend, a villain who holds a grudge against the Seatons stemming from an incident at the rodeo. Mistie, sulky and traumatized, begins to heal with the help of a mare, Sunrise, lent by a neighbor. More adventures follow, including Slim saving Sandy's life, Mistie confronting her past, and Pagan on trial for his life.

I feel like I've come across the akward Sandy/Slim scenario in other horse books. For some reason, the author is reluctant to put father and son in true opposition, so they put in a hired hand, an experienced man with horses but one who lacks sensitivity or education, who's plenty stubborn and loudly opinionated, but often wrong.

The Mistie plot seems to belong to another book. The implication is fairly clear that her mother's all but a prostitute, and Mistie's being groomed for a similar fate. It's similar in tone to the hard-edged breaking scenes, but the content is disturbing for a children's book.

Of course, a boy and a great black stallion starred in another 20th century children's book. Here, as in Farley's series, the boy is at first conscious of not being entirely in control of the situation when he's riding his horse. But as he and Pagan learn, he gains control. As Slim growls,

"A critter ain't a machine... You got to ride him every minute an' I mean ride."

About the Author

Dorothy Potter married Charles Calvert Benedict (West Point, 1915) They had three children - Charles Calvert Benedict, Jr., Patricia and Calvert P. Charles was a West Point grad who served in WWI and died on active duty in a flight accident at Langley Field, VA in 1925. Both sons went into the military and both followed their father into West Point; Charles Jr. followed his father into West Point and died over Manchuria when a Japanese plane made a kamikaze attack on his bomber in 1944. Calvert served for 35 years, including a stint as commandant of the U.S. Army command in West Berlin. Patricia married another career soldier, Col. Harrison Lobdell, Jr., also from a military family; four of her grandsons went to West Point, and two served in Iraq.  Dorothy apparently never remarried, dying December 4, 1979. She was buried at Cold Spring Cemetary, Cold Spring, New York.

This was a challenging project, and I never did really find out too much about Mrs. Benedict. She would have been born at the end of the 19th or the start of the 20th centuries, and anyone born that long ago is much harder to research online. The only reason I found this much was the military connection. It reminded me of researching a Mormon author, where you find out a slew of facts but they're all related to only one aspect of a person's life. It was certainly an interesting military background, but I was unable to dig up anything related to the most salient point from the perspective of this blog - the Potter family's ranch in Montana.

Books

Pagan The Black il. John Groth (1960)

Fabulous il. Joseph Papin (1961)

Bandoleer il. Joseph Papin (1963)

Other writing

Consort: A Comedy in Three Acts     (1934)

One Virginity by pseud. Benny Dick (1938)

Let's Not Drown The Symphony - essay in The Christian Herald?

"Tough Guy Belisarius" by Dorothy Potter Benedict in Ladies Home Journal

Book Sale again

I had an extremely satisfying Saturday, getting up early enough to walk the dog in the cool of the morning and accomplishing various chores before driving excitingly fast down the interstate to a library that was having a used book sale.  I came away with several things I should not have bought but couldn't resist, including this Knight Books edition of a Black Stallion book....

According to the stamp inside, it once belonged to The British School in the Netherlands.  And now it belongs to me in New Jersey.  I'm always fascinated by foreign editions that pop up in book sales.  Their journeys are so impressive, and their look is so distinctive.  There were a few other obviously-not-natives, including an Enid Blyton book that tempted me as her books always do, being so completely adorable, until I open them up. And then my head explodes from the sheer obnoxiousness of the language.   

A small, sweet book about one family's memories of living on Assateague, the island famous for Misty and Pony Penning.  It's is now a wildlife reserve, the residents having moved to Chincoteague.

This, however, was my favorite find.  I'd read about it recently online and was tickled to find it here amidst the hordes of more common and/or recent books.  It does feature a horse who brings together a shy girl and a brash boy, but it's really more teen romance than horsey, so it'll be going over to one of my other neglected blogs for review. 

A fellow browser summed up my feelings about used book destiny when she spotted a book in a mass of paperbacks lined up on a table and said, to the book, "There you are," as she plucked it out.  

Horses at Target

Because even when I'm shopping, all I do is think of blog posts.  The tricky part lately has been to, you know, write them down. 

Ponies!  Pink and green bedding!  Interesting that they chose western saddles. 

And in the dollar section, yet another version of Black Beauty.  I'm somewhat inured to alarming art for the newer, cheap horse books but when I saw some of these, I immediately had to bundle the book into a quiet aisle and take many photos.  I liked the cover, though. 

Dalmation Press, adaptation by Louise Colln, illustrations by Micheal Fisher

Flying horse!

The Wonderful Ice Cream Cart (1955)

The Wonderful Ice Cream Cart
Alice Rogers Hager, il. Mimi Korach
1955, The Macmillan Company

Jerry peered through the doorway and rubbed his eyes.  He had never seen anything like this in America.  Drawn up in grand style in front of the shop was a small, sturdy white horse with tassels on his feet and a coat which shone like satin.  Behind the horse was a cream-colored cart, with a cream-colored roof.  All over the car were paintings of fruit and flowers.  A gay, decorated panel ran around the lower edge of the roof and underneath, in the exact center of the ceiling, hung a crystal chandelier, its prisms chiming in the breeze.

I must say, I’ve never seen anything like this in America, either.  I’ve seen carriage horses wearing Phillies caps, and riding horses wearing fly masks, but never a horse pulling anything which featured a chandelier.

American kid Jerry Tuck meets Belgian kid Jean Pierre Auriol in Brussels, where the Tucks have relocated for a year in the 1950s.  Jerry knows little French, is financially secure and has a father; Jean Pierre knows little English, is struggling to help his mother make their shabby flower shop pay, and his father has been missing since the end of the war.  They get along beautifully, though, and Jerry agreeably falls in with Jean Pierre’s friendship with Papa Goncourt, an ice cream vendor, and his horse Bobo.  The two boys help Papa and Bobo find a new sales line for the winter months and a snug new home when he falls ill.  Their attentions are rewarded with a vacation in the Ardennes.  Bobo, of course, takes them there:

The church bells were ringing as they drove steadily out the long avenue and tiny, pale green leaves curled their fingers around the limbs of the chestnut trees.  The chandelier tinkled a faint, elfin tune in time to the click of Bobo’s heels, and Jerry suddenly knew he would rather be taking this trip than anything he had ever done in his life.

They visit Jean Pierre’s uncle, a monk working at a convalescent hospital for veterans of the war, and Jerry hears the very old legend of the magical horse Bayard for the first time.  The boys go riding in the woods –

… Jean Pierre guided Bobo through the gate and across the highway, turning him into a faint trail which wound upward into the forest.  The sun filtered through the pine trees, dappling the forest floor with golden pennies.  All around them was deep, fragrant silence.

- where they come across a mentally unbalanced resident of the hospital teetering on a cliff.  They rescue him, and return to Brussels as heroes.  But something nags at Jerry, and he eventually tells his parents he suspects that the man they rescued is Jean Pierre’s father.

There are more adventures, a contest, a parade, and a homecoming.  And the final line belongs to the little white carthorse, which seems fitting.

The primary attraction of the book, and its strongest point, is the uniqueness of the setting and background.  The boys’ adventures are rooted in the horrors of war, but while the effects of WWII are all around, there are few direct comments on it.  The emphasis is much more on the ancient past - the legend of Bayard, the walled farm in the Ardennes – and the present of two boys being pals.  The writing isn’t very interesting, and the action has a curious way of both lagging and leapfrogging.  A chapter will pass slowly, and then the next chapter is suddenly some unspecified time in the future.  You get the sense of an author not entirely in control of her plot, or not entirely convinced of its interest.

Links
Author- Syracuse University Library – papers
Author - Notes about her aviation interest and work

The legend of Bayard at Wikipedia
TheFour Sons of Aymon at Wikipedia

Brussels returns to horse and carriage days with horse-pulled trash trucks

About the Authors

The author and the illustrator for this book were restless women.  Professional career women – a journalist and a commercial artist – they both ended up chronicling the Second World War from Europe.

Author
1894-1969
Hager lived and worked all over the world as a journalist who specialized in aviation news, a war correspondent during WWII, and an employee of the State Department in the 1950s. 

Other books (nonfiction)

Brazil, Giant To The South
Wings Of The Dragon: The Air War In Asia
Washington, City of Destiny
Wings Over The Americas
Frontier By Air (Brazil Takes The Sky Road)
Wings To Wear
Big Loop And Little: The Cowboy’s Story

Other books (fiction)

Janice, Air Line Hostess – YA, career romance
Washington Secretary - YA
Love’s Golden Circle - YA
Dateline: Paris – YA, career romance
The Canvas Castle - YA
Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter - YA
So High The Hill

Of the lot, a few have minor equine relevance: Cathy Whitney has to leave her beloved horse behind when Daddy is elected president; the heroine of The Canvas Castle balks at moving yet again for her father’s job, in part because she’s acquired a horse; and Big Loop and Little is a nonfiction photo essay of the ranch life.

Kirkus, the fabulously acid review which has been around for quite a while, summed up Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter in typical style:

Sic Transit--Margaret Truman, Caroline, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. Well now it's Cathy Whitney, who has to leave her horse Sinbad behind, nickering, when her father is elected President. There's the absolutely ""terrific"" flight there and the first days are drenched in gala occasions from the inauguration on; but there are problems--she doesn't like her quarters and she is allowed to do ""her suite"" over--and she misses Sinbad and her best friend; she resents the disruption of family life. But Sinbad is sent for and Cathy inaugurates ""Ice Box suppers a la White House"" and she gets to have an hour a day with Daddy, and sister Ann gets married, and Cathy Whitney is going ""to be the girl with the lamp""--upholding the symbol of this family. About all that can be said for this is that it indulges girls with fifty stars in their eyes and not a scintilla of sense in their heads. There is a prefatory note, acknowledgements and foreword, along with the welcome reassurance that the ""White House is real.

 Illustrator

Mimi Korach Lesser (1922-)
She went to Europe toward the end of WWII as part of a program for artists to sketch portraits of soldiers in evacuation hospitals, to send home to their families.  Her account of her experiences is something.

Library of Congress Veterans History Project

Korach’s narrative of her time in 1945 Europe
Brown University Library – an example of Lesser’s portraits