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

Tic-Tac (1973)

Tic-Tac

Leslie Baird, il. Ted Lewin (jacket)
1973, Dodd, Mead & Company

“At first my parents tried to ignore how crazy I was about horses,” Terry explained.  “They thought I’d lose interest.  But when I fell off a few times and still kept riding, they decided I needed some good lessons so I wouldn’t break my neck.  We asked around and found Briar Hill was the best.”

Terry Allen learned to ride at a small farm with an easy-going teacher.  She’s now moved up in the world to hunter/jumper barn Briar Hill Farm and its German cavalry officer owner, Captain Riskin.  Her parents are only willing to spring for a summer camp – all too short – but Terry, like most horse-crazy heroines,  will find a way to keep riding.  But first she must overcome her initial reaction to Riskin’s stern teaching style.  She does, of course, and quickly becomes a favorite pupil.

Terry convinces her parents that riding is a real passion, falls in love with the Briar Hill horse Tic-Tac, tangles with the inevitable sulky brat, Paula, and learns how to deal with being both a barn rat at the mercy of impatient adult boarders and a member of a riding team. 

I’m reluctant to be too critical, both because this is a fond favorite for many people and because Baird was just out of college when she wrote it, inspired by her own experiences with a horse named Tic-Tac.   However, I was disappointed by this book.   The plot and the characters are reminiscent of a modern series book, and the writing lacks ease or style.   

The details are convincing – as they should be, considering author was a barn rat and young competitive rider – and the riding sequences are believable and lively:

Shady jumped all the fences in the same bold style until the last, a stone wall topped by two poles.  When she tried to charge at it, Paula checked her with the reins.  Angrily shaking her head, Shady wrenched the reins from Paula’s hands and took an extra long stride that put her almost on top of the fence.  She twisted acrobatically as she took off, nearly unseating Paula.

And I do like the ending, which manages to be both appealing and realistic. 

A few things are quibbles, more emotional reactions than anything else.  The crusty old cavalry officer/instructor is both a cliché and an asshole.  He’s frequently nasty, and there’s a nasty undertone to the interactions between the students.  Terry notices and is burned by this a few times, but her thirst for riding lessons overcomes her initial doubts and she works hard to impress the old goat.  Sorry.  It works, she becomes a favorite and rapidly learns to overlook his behavior or take pride in surviving his tempers.  

I can see why it’s a favorite, actually.  It has a lot of horsey details of the sort that probably stuck in a lot of readers’ heads forever – how to enter a stall safely, why you shouldn’t let your horse barge into the hindquarters of the horse ahead, how to groom, how to clean a saddle…  That sort of thing is pure joy for a horse-crazy kid.  They’re the equine equivalent of 30 pages of deathly prose about how the spaceship flies – most people groan and skip to the space battle, but genuinely nerdy sci-fi fans dig in.  I just wish the space battle here had been better.

Horses

Tic-Tac: brown 4-year-old TB/QH gelding.
Red Sunset
Shady Lady
Warrior
Flip
Irish Mist
Martini
Bachelor Boy
Chico
Continental
Cricket
Merry Chase

About the Author

b. 1950
An impressively busy child who competed in figure skating and horseback riding, Baird became an equally busy adult who published books of poetry while still in college and this book just one year later.  She has coached figure skating, operated an equine trade show, and rides and trains at her own dressage farm in Ohio.

Full Cry Farm

There’s also a website connected to Down The Aisle, which appears to be from 2011.

Other books
The Smile Of Concrete Angels (poetry)
Open Corners (poetry, with husband Jeff McDonald)
Making Magic: Breeding and Birthing A Healthy Foal (with Meredith Weller, DVM)
Down The Aisle (memoir)

Short Stories

“Lessons With The Master” in Horse Tales For The Soul, Vol. 6
“Flo’s Passion” in Along The Way (Golden Hills Press)