by Geraldine Brooks, 2022
Superb book! Geraldine Brooks can write! Her dialogue and descriptions are like Herman Wouk’s–they flow like water. The book is about a thoroughbred racehorse named Lexington. Jarret, a young black slave is in the stable when he is born at the Meadows in Kentucky in 1850, and he’s there with him when he dies at the Woodburn Estate in Kentucky in 1875. The love between this young black stablehand who educates himself on the sly, and manages to stay with this horse through thick and thin, and then saves him from nasty murderous rebels during the war, is beautiful.
There are painters, collectors, scientists, and grad students as the scenes switch from the late 1800’s to 2019 and back. You follow the stories of Jarret and Lexington, along with Thomas J. Scott, a painter of racehorses in the late 1800’s. Then, in the 2019 scenes, you have a budding love affair between Theo, a black graduate student in art history in Washington, D.C., and Jess, a scientist for the Smithsonian Institutute, who has been tasked with finding and putting together correctly the bones of Lexington.
Much of the parts about Lexington are true. She says in the title page: “This is a work of fiction inspired by actual events.” Historical figures in the book are the horse, Lexington; his owners-first, Mr. Elisha Warfield; then, Richard Ten Broeck; lastly, Robert Alexander. The painter, Thomas J. Scott, is also historical, although she imagines him as gay man. Jarret, the black stablehand turned groom, trainer, wealthy Canadian freeman, is imagined because she was not able to find any information about him, except for one line about him describing a missing painting of Lexington as being led by “black Jarret, his groom.” She did base his character on two slaves of Robert Alexander’s who helped train his horses and went on to be successful trainers on their own after Alexander’s death: Ansel Williamson and Edward D. Brown.
Other historical figures in the book: Cassius Clay, the emancipationist married to Warfield’s daughter, Mary Jane Warfield; Mary Barr Clay, their daughter who became a leading suffragist; Harry Lewis, a black horse trainer who was so successful he bought his freedom and went on to work with Mr. Warfield and train Lexington. In the book, he is Jarret’s father, although in real life he had a son, “Lewis.”
Here are some good lines:
Page 5: “Jess loved the interior architecture of living things. Ribs, the protective embrace of them, how they hold delicate organs in a lifelong hug. Eye sockets: no artisan had ever made a more elegant container for a precious thing.”
Page 23: “Mr. [Cassius] Clay had a newspaper that opposed slavery, and he had freed all the slaves he’d inherited. This was a strange and a rare thing in Kentucky…”
Page 25, Theo: “His diplomat parents had instilled in him the value of face time: never write a memo if you can make a phone call, never make a phone call if you can meet in person.”
Page 77, Warfield’s Jarret – “When it came to starting a racehorse, Jarret had a different mind to his father. Harry had always followed the general practice, which was to throw a boy up for however long he could stick, as the young horse bucked and spun and put him on the ground. It would go on so until the horse, discouraged, grudgingly accepted a rider.
“Jarret watched all this, but he saw it from the horse’s point of view. The colt couldn’t tell the difference between a harmless boy and a mountain lion that would rip his throat open. He could feel the inbred fear of the colt, vulnerable prey in the wild, terrified as a predator leaped up onto his back.
…”He worked in the horse’s own stall, where the colts and fillies were most relaxed. Jarret always started with the bridle, taking it apart so that the horse learned first to accept the headpiece over his sensitive ears and, later, the bit in his mouth. Next came the saddle pad and surcingle, tightened in slow stages. Only then, the extra weight of the saddle. Finally, he’d get one of the smaller boys to lie across the horse’s back for a few minutes at a time, getting the horse used to the idea of carrying a human’s weight. At every step, Jarret would pat and praise the horse…”
Page 105, modern day, Jess talking to Catherine, an English Veterinarian: “Nothing unusual. Nothing illegal. Just the business itself–racing horses before they should even be ridden, wrecking their bones before they’ve finished growing. I mean, back in the days we were talking about earlier–Eclipse, for instance, didn’t see a racetrack until he was five. But now we race them at two, and train them hard before that. Pump the poor things full of bute to get them on the track when they’re hurt and should be resting. So many trainers asking me to fix the horse up for just one more race. And then, if I did, and the horse managed to run well through all the pain I’d masked with steroids and analgesics, it’d be just one more after that. Finally, that same horse, that beautiful, brave animal that had given its best, would either break down catastrophically and be destroyed, or stop winning and basically be thrown away.”
Regarding Lexington in the 1850’s, page 106: “They invented a mass-produced stopwatch because people got so interest in his record-breaking times.”
Page 145, Jarret is on a riverboat with Lexington, transporting him to New Orleans, Metairie, for Ten Broeck: “As Jarret’s fear of the unfamiliar eased, he’d come to enjoy the journey–the river’s changing vistas by day; the view, at night, of other steamboats, passing by like cliffs of radiance.”
Page 163, Jarret is having to work with the other slaves picking cotton: “The Fatherland chapel was a different thing entirely, built for the slaves. Somehow, the exhausted congregation found the strength for singing and witnessing, a joyful noise only briefly interrupted by the White preacher’s dull sermon about the duty of obedience and the promise of reward in the next life for the hardships of this one. “This preacher say the exact same thing, just about, every Sabbath,” Gem whispered. “When Uncle Jack preach, the way he tell the stories, make it seem like the Bible happened just a week or so since, right here in Mississippi. You could swear he know Abraham and Isaac and all them folk personal.”
“When Uncle Jack replaced the White preacher the second Sunday of the picking, Jarret understood what Gem meant. He preached out of the book of Job, and all through the following week, words from that lesson rang in Jarret’s mind as he toiled. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? It was some comfort to know that another man, in a far-off time and a distant place, had given voice to the same despair. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. And yet, that man had endured, according to Jack’s account of how the story went. Jarret tried to hold that thought as he suffered.”
Page 164, Jarret is watching his fellow slaves closely and learning: “He hadn’t had thoughts like that before. Even as his world contracted and pressed in upon him, in equal measure his heart expanded. One day, bending to the picking, he saw a snakeskin, dry and twisted, blown against the stem of the cotton plant. He wondered if the snake had to struggle to shed that constricting encasement and if it suffered before it could break free.”
Page 175, Jarret learns how to read from the Scriptures, taught by Uncle Jack: “Well, if you set on it, Uncle Jack know to read his Bible. I recall he talked about setting up a Sabbath school some years back. It ain’t strictly allowed, folk like us learning they letters, so he say it just gone be a Bible study. But, he didn’t get no takers that time. Folk just wants to rest come Sunday, or they too busy making they garden or mending they clothes. But I heard tell he teach his own boys.” Gem grinned. “And they got to learn, since they don’t got no say in it.”
Page 176-177, Uncle Jack read to Jarret from the Bible about the mighty horse and how he is not afraid of anything: “Jarret ran the words through in his mind. “Clothes his mane with thunder,” he repeated softly. “That’s good. It makes you see the power in the neck. And the part about how he devours the ground, rejoicing in his strength. It feels just that way some time. But I don’t know about being afraid of nothing. Most horses I know are afraid of plenty.”
“Well, the Scripture here is talking about war horses. I guess they’s trained to be brave.”
“That ain’t it. A cavalry horse will charge a cannon because he don’t know the cannonball can kill him. All he wants is to stay close to the rest of the herd. Army just learned to use that fear they have, of being left behind.”
“Well, boy, you know that this here is the Word of the Lord. We don’t got no business doubting what it says here. If the Lord say the horse is brave, he brave.”
…”If you want to get on and try to learn your letters, we gone have to go indoors to do it, and you can’t be saying nothing around the place about it, you understand?” Jarret nodded and followed Jack inside. Jack then set about showing him how each of the letters on the page had sounds and how when you grouped some of the letters together, those sounds changed in certain ways. Jarret found it confusing, but Jack reassured him. “It gone come clear to you,” he said. “You don’t eat a whole loaf of cornbread all in just one mouthful. You got to break off and chew it one bite at a time.” He gave Jarret a slate and pencil and made a list of simple words that he was to learn.”When you got these into your head, come back and I’ll give you more.”
Page 181, Jarret is riding Lexington down a country road, moving him from one place to another, and surprises two white men with a cart: “Jarret looked into the man’s pinched, rodent face. Soiled, threadbare clothing. A mule so thin you could count his ribs. Men with no one to look down upon except the enslaved. Men with nothing to lose. Men to fear.”
They threaten Jarret with a pistol and ask him for his darky pass. Jarret hands them a piece of paper, and the man says all looks in order but Jarret notices it is upside down. He outwits them.
Page 336, Jarret is now a paid trainer for Mr. Alexander. Thomas Scott, the painter, is in the Union Army and asks if Jarret would like to join the Union Army with him, which would guarantee his freedom after the war. Jarret responds: “Want to be free? Course I do. But a soldier ain’t free.” He thought about May’s husband his shattered arm, his uncertain future. “I respect the men who joined your army, I do. But I’ve been taking orders all my life, and now I’m giving them. I good as run this place, Mr. Scott. And I get paid to do it.” He saw the surprised look on Scott’s face. “Mr. Alexander commenced to pay us wages right after the president’s proclamation. What makes you think I’d give that up to take orders from some White officer, a stranger, who don’t care if I live or if I die? Just another massa, is all I see. We suffered enough on account of slavery already. I don’t plan on laying my life down to end it. You folk who made this mess, I reckon you owe us to clean it up.”
Page 337, she writes about Thomas Scott’s conversations with rebel soldiers, taken as prisoners: “In the beginning, he had spent much time with the prisoners. It was his duty, if they were wounded, to tend to them. At first, he was kindly disposed to these men, young as they were, skinny, sometimes shoeless rural boys, most from farms too poor to afford slaves. It had seemed to him an evil fate, a geographical accident, that had forced them to take up arms in what was, to him, a war to secure the rich man’s wealth. Beyond what was strictly required for their care, he would talk to them, to better know their minds. But after a time, he had stopped seeking such dialogue. They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard–denial–of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail–all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence. Scott had become convinced that a total obliteration of their rebellion was the only way forward. And since the drift of things was strong in that direction, he would see it through to the end.”
Page 377, Jarret is now a rich Canadian, come to purchase a painting of Lexington: “You express surprise that I see my future in Canada. Let me tell you: I saw it the day I first crossed the border. I could vote there, you see, when I was still counted three fifths of a man here. It’s been some few years I have come back to Kentucky only for the horse. So, now there is no further need.”
Page 392 in the Afterword: “As horse racing in America becomes increasingly scrutinized and controversial for its treatment of equines, it is important to appreciate its immense popularity in antebellum life. For the wealthy, both North and South, racehorse ownership was a matter of vast prestige. This thriving industry was built on the labor and skills of Black horsemen, many of whom were, or had been, enslaved. After Reconstruction, the racing industry became segregated and the Black horsemen were pushed aside. White jockeys conspired to put their Black competitors at grave risk during races. Some were forced to travel to Europe to continue their careers; others became destitute. As I began to research Lexington’s life, it became clear to me that this novel could not merely be about a racehorse; it would also need to be about race. Horse farms like the Meadows and Woodburn prospered on the plundered work and extraordinary talent of Black grooms, trainers, and jockeys. Only recently has their central role in the wealth creation of the antebellum thoroughbred industry begun to be researched and fully acknowledged.”
Theo and Jess have a tragic ending – Theo goes jogging at dark in the rain, with what looks like a hoodie on, but is just a raincoat. He stops to help a white woman who has slipped down an embankment and is lying there unconscious. The cops come upon him from a bridge above, shine a spotlight down on him, as Theo raises his cell phone to shield his eyes, a cop shoots him dead. His friends tell Jess later that he never should have stopped. They knew that and had warned him time and again but he was from Australia and England and just didn’t know not to stop and help a white woman. They said he should have just kept on jogging and gotten somewhere safe where he could have reported it anonymously.
Excellent book! I think it should have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction instead of Trust and Demon Copperfield.