Martha Doyle

PERMIT me, Muse, to sing the praises of Martha Doyle, a great lady in her own right and the noblest hunter I have ever seen or known. If I ever did see a better, I would not admit it, for that would be disloyalty to Martha’s memory, and I am the High Priest of her cult. Many admired her, a certain few revered her greatness, but I adored her. She had my heart, and perhaps, in a grudging, spinsterish, slightly contemptuous way, I had hers. You give your heart, I believe, to only one woman, one countryside, one horse, and one dog. Mr. Kipling, who, though no scientist, was an accurate observer, once wrote, about a countryside: —

I may have philandered with hundreds of horses, gone — as it were — from blonde to brunette and back again, but if the Mayo Brothers were to open my heart to-morrow they would see graved, in the horse section of it, the words ‘Martha Doyle.’ However prodigal in his emotions, however wastrel in his amours, every horseman has one separate and holy place where stands, with candles burning constantly before it, the shrine of the one horse that he loved.

The sons and daughters and grandchildren of Man o’ War might win more races and more money than their famous progenitor, but they could never replace him in the heart of Mr. Riddle. When he was leading in War Admiral after winning the 1937 Belmont, following his victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, someone congratulated Mr. Riddle on his great horse. It is reported that he answered sadly, ‘Yes, but he’s not as great a horse as Man o’ War.’ He could n’t be, to Mr. Riddle. In my much humbler sphere, I too have measured all the hunters I ever rode or saw by one standard — were they or were they not the equal of Martha Doyle? And none of them, to me, ever was.

She was a brown mare about sixteentwo, with a white streak on her face and two white stockings behind. A Canadian filly, she was sired by a thoroughbred named Martin Doyle, of whose antecedents or performances I am entirely ignorant. I never even knew the name of her dam, and, although I was frequently assured that Martha was ‘in the book,’ no papers were shown to prove it. I do not believe that she was clean bred, but the ‘nick’ which produced Martha Doyle from a little-known sire and an unknown dam is one of those mysteries which make horse breeding and racing so fascinating.

Peter Roche, of Leominster, Massachusetts, picked her out and bought her, a shaggy, rough young thing hardly halter-broken. She had a deceptive mouth, and even so great a horseman as Peter rated her a three-year-old when, as we afterwards discovered, she was just two. Peter clipped her and cleaned her up, bitted and backed her in his big stable and indoor ring at Leominster, schooled her once or twice, and then entered her in the show at Worcester. This was in the days just after the war when the Worcester Show brought out some excellent competition, particularly in the hunter division.

I cannot remember what, if anything, Martha Doyle did in other classes, but I do know that she won the High Jump at six feet four with a wild, ‘sprangling’ jump, landing all abroad, but triumphant, on the ground. My wife was so impressed with the gallantry and the looks of the young mare that she promptly bought her and brought her home to Groton. I must have shown by the yearning in my eyes that I coveted my wife’s horse, for on my next birthday morning I found, under my pillow, a sheet of note paper with the two words on it: ‘Martha Doyle’; and a nobler gift or a more unselfish giver I have never known.

As a three-year-old we hunted her in the drags at the Norfolk Hunt Club, thinking her a year older. Both of us tried to ride her, but with only a qualified success. The sight of hounds filled her with a fine, careless rapture. Hunting was her destiny and her delight. All she wanted on earth was to be, not up with hounds, but up with the leading hound, or a trifle ahead of him. Consequently our performances in the field were an alternation of riding on the heels of the Master and Whippers-In and, when the opportunity served, of turning her in a great circle which gave us another chance to ride from the tail to the head of the hunt. In narrow places or wood roads our exploits were particularly noteworthy, and soon Martha Doyle, with either Mr. or Mrs. Danielson on her, became just about as popular at Norfolk as a first-rate case of Asiatic cholera.

We cut down her oats, worked her hard, and tried every bit known to the ferocity of man. It was possible to turn her in a big field, but, short of breaking her jaw, I knew of no way to stop her when hounds were running. The head groom at the Club stables, an optimistic man, submitted that he had the skill and the equipment to control any puller and begged to be allowed to hunt her. I consented graciously. He appeared at the meet, but I did not see him again for several hours. He turned up very wet and chagrined, with a broken curb chain and a strange tale of how the mare had run away with him and had not stopped until she ran into a lake, where, he said, ‘she swam around with me, like a seal.’ It is reasonable to suppose that on that day he had ‘no pleasure in the strength of an horse.’

Mind you, there was no vice in her — only an unconquerable determination to ‘ be first in the rush and come home with the brush.’ Keenness is a fine quality, but of course it can be exaggerated. In fact, the case looked almost hopeless until I thought of Peter Roche, and asked Henry Vaughan, the Master of Norfolk, if he would permit Peter to ride my mare on one of the Norfolk drags. He consented, and Peter turned up in due season. He rode Martha in a plain snaffle, and he rated her up and down the hunt, in front, in the middle, or with the stragglers. She was completely docile and apparently did not pull an ounce. I asked this superlative horseman how he did it. He laughed in the embarrassed way one laughs at a foolish question. ‘ I dunno, Mr. Danielson,’ he said; ‘I just tell ’em they got to do what they’re told.’ Apparently it’s just as simple and easy as that. The trouble is that I’ve never been able to tell them anything. I am no Houyhnhnm, and have great difficulty in speaking with horses.

That lesson taught Martha Doyle, to a certain extent, the sweet virtues of obedience, and with the help of a gag snaffle we were able to restrain her natural exuberance. The gag was discarded the next season, and from then to her retirement the only bit used with her was a simple Pelham and she never needed a martingale. I do not mean to imply that she exactly wanted to lag behind. On the contrary — very much on the contrary. But, until she was an old maid with ‘some relish of the saltiness of time’ and a mouth hardened by years and years of my rough, unskillful hands, she was never really a puller — so long as she was in her appointed place, out in front. In her last few seasons I developed muscles like iron bands and a ‘back’ trying to keep Martha from trampling on the drag boy or catching foxes with her teeth. But that was my fault.

Martha was a success in every department except that of a mother in Israel. When her honorable infirmities forced her to retire from the hunting field she was mated for three successive seasons to one of General Peabody’s good stallions, and, although in each instance her figure became distinctly matronly, her children were brain children only and not flesh and blood.

I could n’t begin to recount her exploits or tell you her virtues. Hunting folk will understand when I say that I hunted her, roughly, twice a week, for eleven years, with only two falls, neither of which was in any sense her fault. The first was in a drag at Norfolk. She was going very strong and eager, but, for a wonder, halfway back in the ruck. Someone ahead of me knocked a large round stone off a wall, and it was still rolling when Martha landed on it and turned a somersault. Le bon Dieu so willed that, when she rolled over me, only her neck and shoulders touched me and I was quite unhurt. I held on to the bridle, which broke, and she galloped on after the hounds, finally bogging down in a dismal swamp. She was extricated by the entire population of Dover, Medfield, South Natick, and Natick, all of whom were quite willing to accept a reward for their services. Altogether it made up into quite an expensive afternoon’s sport.

Incidentally, among the spectators who saw our fall was the late Percy Haughton, then coaching the Harvard football team. I met him at tea after the run and he asked me how I felt. I told him that I was perfectly well and had n’t even a bruise. He said, ‘To-morrow you will be the lamest man in Massachusetts.’ And I was, bent double, tied up in knots, unable to walk without a cane — although, in any specific sense, entirely uninjured. I have often wondered at his prescience.

The other fall was entirely my fault. I got the mare so completely wrong into a trappy post and rails that any other horse would have refused and walked home in disgust. Martha, however, tried to make the hopeless effort, and we crashed. I could number her refusals on one hand or one and a half. As a matter of fact, I recall only three. I have reread my hunting diary and find only one instance of a refusal in the field, which is not conclusive evidence. That particular incident I remember very well, because it involved an optical illusion. The diary reads: —

Swung to the right in Miss Minnie Coburn’s field, down a slope to a drop jump with a stiffish in and out at the foot of the hill. This was a bad-looking but perfectly practicable place — it must have looked bad to the riders and to the horses as well.

The reason it looked so evil was that the angle of descent made the two stone walls of the lane look like one enormous wall, or, at best, two walls with only a few feet between them. I have never seen a more deceptive obstacle.

Martha surprised me by swerving at the in — as did every succeeding horse. Cracksman gave Fred Armstrong (my huntsman) a sharp refusal, shooting him high overhead so that he fell heavily on his back on the wall. He staggered across the lane, apparently badly hurt, and I was convinced that he had broken a majority of his ribs. I called to him to stay put and that I would send help, and went on with only Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Timmins. Most of the field got into the lane and milled about there for some time. I had hardly gathered hounds together at the check when Fred, on Cracksman, galloped up, and the courageous fellow told me that only his wind had been knocked out and no bones were broken. I was greatly relieved.

Martha’s greatness was not in the fact that she was a natural jumper, nor that she had foot enough to stay with any hounds in the world, but that she had a heart as big as the biggest barn. She never asked what was on the landing side. I think if you had headed her at a house and given her ‘the office,5 she would have tried to crash the secondstory windows and bull her way through to the other side. I rode her with complete and utter confidence, knowing that, barring accidents, she would carry me anywhere.

We understood one another almost too well. Once, at a meet, she felt peevish and kicked at a hound. I was shocked and surprised. ‘Martha!’ I said. ‘Shame, shame on you!5 She lowered her head, began quivering, and for the five or ten minutes before we moved off she stood perfectly still with no motion or change of position at all — except the trembling which was her act of contrition. Finally I slapped her shoulder and said, ‘All right, Martha, let5s go!5 and she came to life and moved off with hounds, with that strong, pushing, purposeful stride — impossible to describe, but meaning that a hunter is going to do its duty and more than its duty that day.

I have always felt a sense of guilt that I did n’t do right by Martha. Instead of being a local phenomenon, she could have been made into a national figure. She was a show hunter of indefinite potentialities. It so happens that I dislike horse shows and the showing of horses. And consequently I never took Martha to any but local affairs, when we wanted entries for our own — on the principle of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’

In the show ring Martha was an actress. Not only did she perform with an almost faultless precision, but she pranced and curvetted and put on all those acts which are so appealing in the case of a lovely mare and so very annoying when performed by a Roman-nosed gelding. She knew quite definitely the color of her ribbons, and if, as sometimes happened, she was awarded the red, her disgust was manifest. Mostly she won with monotonous regularity, being Champion Hunter at such shows as Worcester, Norfolk, Millwood, and several times at Groton.

I should have trained her and shown her at Bryn Mawr and Devon and the National. I should have turned her over to the Army as a candidate for the Olympic team. But I did n’t. I hoarded her as my priceless possession, more precious than rubies. I think she knew that I had kept her from the fame that was her due, hence her sense of disappointment and frustration. I felt it. In her later days she gave me to understand by baleful glances and gestures of impatience that she knew perfectly that she was entitled to see her name in electric lights on Broadway, and that I, for selfish reasons, had kept her out of the Big Time. She was right, and I am ashamed. This is my apology to her memory.

The end ? If she could have broken her neck in the hunting field, I would not mourn, as I do, the sad anticlimax of disease and disabilities which made it seem humane and proper to bestow oblivion. I do not know, for I have never asked, at whose hand or just when she was sent down ‘that short, dark passage to a future state.’

I do not know if we shall ever meet again, or if in the Elysian Fields her ears will prick forward once more to the cry of hounds. I know she is buried in the horse cemetery on our place in Groton on the banks of the Nashua River. On her gravestone are the two words ‘Martha Doyle,’ just that — as they were on the note paper under my birthday pillow. I could n’t inscribe that gallantry, that personality, that greatness, on stone. What more could I say? What more could I say?