XVI
THE HORSE SHOW
"I suppose, Mr. Idiot," observed Mr. Brief, as the Idiot took hisaccustomed place at the breakfast-table, "that you have been putting ina good deal of your time this week at the Horse Show?"
"Yes," said the Idiot, "I was there every night it was open. I go to allthe shows--Horse, Dog, Baby, Flower, Electrical--it doesn't matter what.It's first-rate fun."
"Pretty fine lot of horses, this year?" asked the Doctor.
"Don't know," said the Idiot. "I heard there were some there, but Ididn't see 'em."
"What?" cried the Doctor. "Went to the Horse Show and didn't see thehorses?"
"No," said the Idiot. "Why should I? I don't know a cob from a lazyback. Of course I know that the four-legged beast that goes when you sayget ap is a horse, but beyond that my equine education has beenneglected. I can see all the horses I want to look at on the street,anyhow."
"Then what in thunder do you go to the Horse Show for?" demanded theBibliomaniac. "To sleep?"
"No," rejoined the Idiot. "It's too noisy for that. I go to see thepeople. People are far more interesting to me than horses, and I getmore solid fun out of seeing the nabobs go through their paces thancould be got out of a million nags of high degree kicking up their heelsin the ring. If they'd make the horses do all sorts of stunts, it mightbe different, but they don't. They show you the same old stuff year inand year out, and things that you can see almost any fine day in thePark during the season. You and I know that a four-horse team can pull atally-ho coach around without breaking its collective neck. We know thattwo horses harnessed together fore and aft instead of abreast arecalled a tandem, and can drag a cart on two wheels and about a mile higha reasonable distance without falling dead. There isn't anything new orstartling in their performance, and why anybody should pay to see themdoing the commonplace, every-day act I don't know. It isn't as if theyhad a lot of thoroughbreds on exhibition who could sit down at a tableand play a round of bridge whist or poker. That would be worth seeing.So would a horse that could play 'Cavalleria Rusticana' on the piano,but when it comes to dragging a hansom-cab or a grocery-wagon around thetanbark, why, it seems to me to lack novelty."
"The idea of a horse playing bridge whist!" jeered the Bibliomaniac."What a preposterous proposition!"
"Well, I've seen fellows with less sense than the average horse make apretty good stab at it at the club," said the Idiot. "Perhaps mysuggestion is extreme, but I put it that way merely to emphasize mypoint. I've seen an educated pig play cards, though, and I don't seewhy they can't put the horse through very much the same course oftreatment and teach him to do something that would make him more of anobject of interest when he has his week of glory. I don't care what itis as long as it is out of the ordinary."
"There is nothing in the world that is more impressive than a fine horsein action," said the Doctor. "What you suggest would take away from hisdignity and make him a freak."
"I didn't say it wouldn't," rejoined the Idiot. "In fact, my remarksimplied that it would. You don't quite understand my meaning. If I owneda stable I'd much rather my horses didn't play bridge whist, because, inall probability, they'd be sending into the house at all hours of thenight asking me to come over to the barn and make a fourth hand. It'sbad enough having your neighbors doing that sort of thing withoutencouraging your horse to go into the business. Nor would it please meas a lover of horseback-riding to have a mount that could play grandopera on the piano. The chances are it would spoil three goodthings--the horse, the piano, and the opera--but if I were getting up ashow and asking people from all over the country to pay good money toget into it, then I should want just such things. In the ordinary dailypursuits of equine life the horse suits me just as he is, but for theextraordinary requirements of an exhibition he lacks divertingqualities. He's more solemn than a play by Sudermann or BlankettyBjornsen; he is as lacking in originality as a comic-opera score by SirReginald de Bergerac, and his drawing powers, outside of cab-work, asfar as I am concerned, are absolutely nil. A horse that can draw apicture I'd travel miles to see. A horse that can't draw anything but aT-cart or an ice-wagon hasn't two cents' worth of interest in my eyes."
"But can't you see the beauty in the action of a horse?" demanded theDoctor.
"It all depends on his actions," said the Idiot. "I've seen horses whoseactions were highly uncivilized."
"I mean his form--not his behavior," said the Doctor.
"Well, I've never understood enough about horses to speak intelligentlyon that point," observed the Idiot. "It's incomprehensible to me howyour so-called judges reason. If a horse trots along hiking hisfore-legs 'way up in the air as if he were grinding an invisiblehand-organ with both feet, people rave over his high-stepping and callhim all sorts of fine names. But if he does the same thing with hishind-legs they call it springhalt or stringhalt, or something of thatkind, and set him down as a beastly old plug. The scheme seems to me tobe inconsistent, and if I were a horse I'm blessed if I think I'd knowwhat to do. How a thing can be an accomplishment in front and a blemishbehind is beyond me, but there is the fact. They give a blue ribbon tothe front-hiker and kick the hind-hiker out of the show altogether--theywouldn't even pin a Bryan button on his breast."
"I fancy a baby show is about your size," said the Doctor.
"Well--yes," said the Idiot, "I guess perhaps you are right, as far asthe exhibit is concerned. There's something almost human about a baby,and it's the human element always that takes hold of me. It's the humanelement in the Horse Show that takes me and most other people as well.Fact is, so many go to see the people and so few to see the horses thatI have an idea that some day they'll have it with only one horse--justenough of a nag to enable them to call it a Horse Show--and pay properattention to the real things that make it a success even now."
The Doctor sniffed contemptuously. "What factors in your judgmentcontribute most to the success of the Horse Show?" he asked.
"Duds chiefly," said the Idiot, "and the people who are inside of them.If there were a law passed requiring every woman who goes to the HorseShow to wear a simple gown in order not to scare the horses, ninety percent. of 'em would stay at home, and all the blue-ribbon steeds increation couldn't drag them to the Garden--and nobody'd blame them forit, either. Similarly with the men. You don't suppose for an instant, doyou, that young Hawkins Van Bluevane would give seven cents for theHorse Show if it didn't give him a chance to appear every afternoon inhis Carnegie plaid waistcoat?"
"That's a new one on me," said Mr. Brief. "Is there such a thing as aCarnegie plaid?"
"It's the most popular that ever came out of Scotland," said the Idiot."It's called the Carnegie because of the size of the checks. Thenthere's poor old Jimmie Varickstreet--the last remnant of a firstfamily--hasn't enough money to keep a goat-wagon, and couldn't tell youthe difference between a saw-horse and a crupper. He gives up his hallbedroom Horse-Show week and lives in the place day and night, coveringup the delinquencies of his afternoon and evening clothes with a longyellow ulster with buttons like butter-saucers distributed all over hisperson--"
"Where did he get it, if he's so beastly poor?" demanded the Lawyer.
"He's gone without food and drink and clothes that don't show. He hasscrimped and saved, and denied himself for a year to get up a gaudyshell in which for six glorious days to shine resplendent," said theIdiot. "Jimmie lives for those six days, and as you see him flittingfrom box to box and realize that he is an opulent swell for six days ofevery year, and a poor, down-trodden exile for the rest of the time, youdon't grudge him his little diversion and almost wish you had sufficientwill power to deny yourself the luxuries and some of the necessities oflife as well to get a coat like that. If I had my way they'd awardJimmie Varickstreet at least an honorable mention as one of the mostinteresting exhibits in the whole show.
"And there are plenty of others. There's raw material enough in thatHorse Show to make it a permanent exhibition if the managers would onlyget together and lick it
into shape. As a sort of social zoo it isunsurpassed, and why they don't classify the various sections of it Ican't see. In the first place, imagine a dozen boxes filled with membersof the Four Hundred, men and women whose names have become householdwords, and wearing on their backs garments made by the deft fingers ofthe greatest sartorial artists of the ages. You and I walk in and arepermitted to gaze upon this glorious assemblage--the Americannobility--in its gayest environment. Wouldn't it interest you to knowthat that very beautiful woman in the lavender creation, wrapped up in abillion-dollar pearl necklace, is the famous Mrs. Bollington-Jones, whoholds the divorce championship of South Dakota, and that those two chapswho are talking to her so vivaciously are two of her ex-husbands, VanBibber Beaconhill and 'Tommy' Fitz Greenwich? Wouldn't it interest youmore than any horse in the ring to know that her gown was turned out atMrs. Robert Bluefern's Dud Studio at a cost of nine thousand sevenhundred and fifty dollars, hat included? Yet the programme says never aword about these people. Every horse that trots in has a number so thatyou can tell who and what and why he is, but there are no placards onMrs. Bollington-Jones by which she may be identified.
"Then on the promenade, there is Hooker Van Winkle. He's out on bail forkilling a farmer with his automobile up in Connecticut somewhere. Thereis young Walston Addlepate, whose father pays him a salary oftwenty-five thousand dollars a year for keeping out of business. There'sJimson Gooseberry, the cotillon leader, whose name is on every lipduring the season. Approaching you, dressed in gorgeous furs, is Mrs.Dinningforth Winter, who declined to meet Prince Henry when he was here,because of a previous engagement to dine with Tolby Robinson's petmonkey just in from a cruise in the Indies. And so it goes. The placefairly shrieks with celebrities whose names appear in the _SocialRegister_, and whose photographs in pink and green are the stock intrade of the Sunday newspapers of saffron tendencies everywhere--butwhat is done about it? Nothing at all. They come and go, conspicuousbut unidentified, and wasting their notoriety on the desert air. It is amagnificent opportunity wasted, and, unless you happen to know thesepeople by sight, you miss a thousand and one little points which are the_sine qua non_ of the show."
"I wonder you don't write another Baedeker," said theBibliomaniac--"_The Idiot's Hand-book to the Horse Show, or Who's Whoat the Garden._"
"It would be a good idea," said the Idiot. "But the show people musttake the initiative. The whole thing needs a live manager."
"A sort of Ward MacAllister again?" asked Mr. Brief.
"No, not exactly," said the Idiot. "Society has plenty of successors toWard MacAllister. What they seem to me to need most is a P. T. Barnum. Aman like that could make society a veritable Klondike, and with theHorse Show as a nucleus he wouldn't have much trouble getting the thingstarted along."