A Man, His Cab, and . . . What?

For those among you who were not at the last Hansoms meeting (and if you're a member of the Occupants of the Empty House, you probably were) here's a quick replay of what you missed: One invasion from the abovementioned southern Illinois scion; two speakers; a whole lot of good food; three winners of the quiz on REDH; and Bob Burr's toast to a previously ignored Canonical character, one without whom our scion could not exist. Bob's discovery of our oversight took most of the membership by complete surprise; it seemed incredible that we could have celebrated John Clayton in our rituals, taken the name "Hansoms" in honor of his cab, and yet overlooked the third member of that transportation team -- the horse. It's a wonder that the whole club isn't barred from every saddle club, every Lippizzan stallion show, and every cowboy movie that ever came to Peoria.

How could we forget John Clayton's horse? Well, let me quote from the Canon for a moment:

"I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes."

Those words belong to John Clayton himself, and that sentence, buried amid his answers to Holmes's questioning, is absolutely all that we have in print about the horse that pulled cab number 2704. Other passages mention how "the cab flew madly" or speak of "a hansom cab with a man inside," but nowhere is there any other mention of the cab's source of motion. It's no wonder Clayton's horse has slipped by our notice so long; yet that hardly seems a satisfactory excuse. Somehow, we should have realized that every cab must have a horse, and that John Clayton' s hansom was certainly no exception.

Sadly, we are probably not the first to treat that horse with less than she deserved. As John Clayton's hansom was "out of Shipley's Yard," it would seem that he rented both his cab and his horse from Shipley, the fellow who owned the yard. Renters, of course, have never treated their leased property with the respect that they would were they the owners, and in the case of John Clayton and his horse, we find little evidence to show otherwise. In the one sentence the horse is mentioned, it is being whipped, and from the other passages such as "the cab flew madly," we can see that this poor horse's life was definitely not an easy one. Every time some toff in a phony black beard offered Clayton a few extra pence, out came the whip, and the poor horse was in for a hard run amid the dangers of London traffic. The mare in front of 2704 would not be the first horse to have the shaft of some other coach or cab rammed into her chest or shoulder.

I may be wrong in this dismal surmise, of course, and I sincerely hope I am. Most of my cab-horse data is drawn from Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty, which was originally written for a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. It contains a good deal on the life of a London cab-horse, most of which seems fairly accurate, yet may have been biased by the intent of its writer.

Ill-treated or not, however, Clayton's mare deserves a special commemoration with the centennial of John Clayton's ride coming up this September. Bob Burr has suggested we give the horse a name after all this time, and I think that that would be a proper tribute to the old girl. So far, two names have been suggested by a member of that scurrilous band thal invaded our March meeting, and the horse in question deserves a larger selection than that.

As for myself, I'm going to save the now 25 cent cost of a stamp or the hurriedly scribbled note at our next meeting by getting my first suggestion in here and now: "Violet." It's a good Sherlockian name for a good Sherlockian horse. So, maybe it does insult half the women in the Canon -- if you have any better ideas, and I'm sure you do, pass them on to Bob. Filling in the blanks left by Watson and Doyle is the duty of every Sherlockian, and the name of John Clayton's horse is one gap we've left open too long.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, May1988)