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ON THE GOBOLPH1N ARABIAN Researches of John H Wallace Show Authenticity of Picture Arabian a Misnomer for Fa ¬ mous Progenitor Start of Stud Career Accidental BY SALVATOR SALVATORRecently Recently Daily Racing Form printed an interesting article contributed by Mr C J Fitz Gerald regarding the portrait of the Godolphin Arabian now lent to the Jockey Club and hanging in its rooms in New York City the owner being Dr James K Murptty of Tulip Hill West River Md The sketch of the famous progenitor which the article incorporates justly states that the first pub ¬ licity given this portrait was due to the late John H Wallace most famous as the founder of the American Trotting Register but who began his career as a pedigree au ¬ thority by the compilation of a thoroughbred stud book bearing his own name of which the first volume the only one ever published appeared in 1SG7 1SG7Wallaces Wallaces thoroughbred stud book was not a success It encountered the direct rivalry of S D Bruces American Stud Book of which the first volume appeared in 186S and as Bruce had powerful influences behind him and Wallace had none Bruces work sur ¬ vived after a hard struggle and became our standard Wallace compiled the manuscript for Volume II of his wont but it was never published and was probably destroyed unless it has for a half century laid in some old desk or drawer accumulating dust and the yellow tone of antiquity antiquityWallace Wallace like all men of discrimination had long recognized the fact that the alleged portrait of the Godolphin by Slubbs for generations everywhere current was a mon ¬ strosity a figment of the imagination Stubbs is not known ever to have seen the living horse he portrayed and the likeness he perpetrated of him fully evidences that fact In one of the early volumes of the old Turf Register however Wallace discovered mention of a portrait of the Godolphin that had for many years hung at Tulip Hill which was a true portrait and absolutely un ¬ like the Stubbs caricature caricatureWALLACE WALLACE PUBLISHES PICTURE PICTUREJohn John H Wallace was a great digger who wanted above all things to get to the root of matters so he did not rest until he had obtained the privilege of reproducing it in his Monthly in 1877 as Mr Fitz Gerald narrates This may be found in the issue of May that year Mr Wallace had the Tulip Hill painting carefully redrawn by James C Beard the wellknown illustrator and animal painter of that day brother of Daniel C Beard similarly well known and still living he having of late years though of advanced age become prominent in the Boy Scout and Woodcraft movements Beards drawing was engraved for Wallaces Monthly on wood by Pierson one of the leading New York engravers of that day and the plate in the Monthly is an excellent one At this time J H Wallace had never visited England but in 187S he did so and then made it a point to visit Houghton Hall in Norfolk where the original painting of which the Tulip Hill one was a replica was last known to have been owned He found it still there the property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley and was allowed to inspect it minutely He also found it to correspond exactly with the Tulip Hill picture in all respects The latter painting was signed merely D M pinxt D M painted it But the Houghton Hall original bore the de ¬ tailed inscription The original picture taken at The Hills by D Murrier painter to H R II the Duke of Cumberland The Hills meant Gogmagog Hills the last home of the Godolphin Arabian where he died and was buried in 1753 1753PURTHER PURTHER FACTS GIVEX BY WALLACE WALLACEWe We may therefore consider the pedigree of the painting now hanging in the Jockey Club rooms as absolutely authentic Mr Wallace related further facts about it in his work The Horse of America published in 1S97 and therein gave another excellent reproduction of it which was specially drawn for the volume by the distinguished animal artist Robert L Dickey Thirdly and most recently a photoengraving made direct from the original canvas will be found in the recently published Blooded Horses of Colo ¬ nial Days of Mr F B Culver of Baltimore This however is not so clear and distinct as the pictures published by Wallace Either the painting has deteriorated since 1S77 or else the photo from which Mr Culvers plate was made was not a good one It is not improbable that an expert could clean the canvas and bring all its original values to the surface once more moreAs As regards the origin and history of the Godolphin Arabian while Eugene Sue in his famous yarn entitled in the English ver ¬ sion The King of the Winds wove a more or less absorbing romance about him he is not responsible for the story that he was picked up in the streets of Paris by Mr Coke a Norfolk Quaker in or about 1730 or that he later became the teaser for Hob ¬ goblin and upon that horses refusing to mate with Roxana was mated with her the produce being the famous racer Lath These are strictly British traditions and most of them may be found recorded in the original Introduction to a General Stud Book issued by Wcatherby in 1791 This was thirteen years before the birth of Sue who was born in 1804 and published his first book in 1831 Sue had a prodigious imagination as The Wandering Jew and The Mysteries of Paris to say nothing of other romances literally devoured by our grandfathers are vivid testimony But he merely decorated the original English traditions about the Godolphin preserving their outlines outlinesRESEMBLES RESEMBLES FRENCH CAB HORSE HORSEThat That the name Arabian is a complete misnomer as applied to the Godolphin horse has for a hundred and fifty years or more been conceded To call him a Barb is equally unwarranted All that is necessary to con ¬ vince a horseman of this is to look at his portrait which resembles no Oriental horse of any established breed that ever was seen In type the horse whose portrait carefully done from the life may be seen today at Houghton Hall in England and in replica at the rooms of the Jockey Club resembles the small cab or cart horses that were common in France in the eighteenth century at which era it was not at all unusual for entire or in the old phrase stone horses to be used for menial purposes purposesIn In his notable work Racing in the Bad ¬ minton Library the Earl of Norfolk and Berkshire says of him quite truly The Godolphin Arabian whose portrait has come down to us was a common looking horse and it is not surprising to hear that before coming to this country he had been drawing a cart in Paris To this day many of the small Tarbes entire horses which are used in gigs and general common work on the high roads of France much resemble the portrait of that illustrious sire sireAs As a matter of fact there is no suggestion of speed in the Godolphins conformation On the contrary it is that of a little wagon pony We might get something closely re ¬ sembling him today by crossing in some lighter blood with that of the Suffolk Punch His head in the portrait appears somewhat idealized but at that is little finer than those of many Shetlands He is the antipodes of the highcaste Oriental horse either Arab or Barb in his entire makeup particularly his markedly drooping rump and its peculiar structure otherwise which recall those of the oldfashioned Norfolk trotters of a cen ¬ tury ago of which imported Bellfounder and his descendants in this country were types typesFAMOUS FAMOUS HORSE USED AS TEASER TEASERMr Mr Fitz Gerald quotes from a French veterinary work of 1789 which states that the Godolphin was bought in Paris for eighteen louis dor This was about SO The facts seem established that after Mr Coke got him home to England he made a present of him to one Williams the keeper of a coffee house in London which was fre ¬ quented by devotees of the turf One of these was Lord Godolphin who expressing the wish to procure a teaser for his fash ¬ ionable stallion Hobgoblin Williams in turn gave the little Frenchman to him and the horse went to Hobgoblin Hall at Gogmagog Hills and assumed that role until accident which molds in so surprising a fashion so many destinies both human and equine lifted him out of it and into immortality These circumstances are proof of the fact that he was considered practically valueless At that date Oriental horses were in keen demand in England and commanded high prices Had there been any idea either from his history or his individuality that the exParis cart horse was one he certainly would not have been twice given away and then converted into a teaser The whole fab ¬ ric of fiction about his having come orig ¬ inally from some royal stables in Bar bary to the royal stable of Louis XV in France from which through intrigue or jealousy he had become an outcast upon the streets of Paris originated many years later after he had become one of the great fath ¬ ers of the British thoroughbred It was then thought necessary to deck him out with an Oriental origin and royal antecedents antecedentsIt It is the fashion among the nobility and gentry of Great Britain to trace their an ¬ cestries back at least to the time of the Norman conquest and if their fancy dic ¬ tates even to that of Alfred the Great if not of Boadicea The late Edward Augustus Freeman devoted the great part of his long and learned life to his History of the Nor ¬ man Conquest Avhich period he investigated so thoroughly that his work has become the definitive standard upon it In its produc ¬ tion he had of necessity to become familiar with the ancestries of all the families of that period and it is interesting to learn that his verdict upon the official pedigrees of the latterday noble families of England was that they are mostly monstrous fictions In this respect they are strictly comparable to those of the noble families of the British Stud Book as is not at all surprising
