The educated horses which are now drawin’ crowds to see ‘em, and the horse show which has attracted attention in New York this last week reminds me of the great interest that was excited years ago by the horse show (or show of man’s power over the horse) given by Rarey, the celebrated horse tamer.
Rarey had a peculiar method with horses, which hasn’t been generally understood. Some say he was real cruel. He wasn’t. Some say he was all kindness; which is simply nonsense. “All kindness” never accomplished anythin’ yet. He was half and half, only he tried to make the hard part of his treatment as hard and as short as possible, and always preferred the soft part to the hard where it would do.
By the by, this is just the way, and the only way to manage human bein’s–especially women. People have often tried to imitate Rarey system, but have never quite succeeded. He was a genius in his line.
He went over to England for a while, where the greatest interest is taken in all horse matters, and was put to a big test. A nobleman had a horse named Cruiser who had been raisin’ the deuce with his stable and his grooms for years. Nobody could manage him. He would allow no one to come near him. He kicked and bit terribly. As for ridin’ him, his owner would as lief have thought of ridin’ a royal Bengal tiger. He was kept in irons all the time, like a criminal in a torture chamber.
Well, the owner of Cruiser, who didn’t believe in Rarey, proposed Cruiser as a test of his system, and Rarey at once accepted it, on the make or break principle. He went to “interview” Cruiser in his stall one mornin’. Cruiser gave a wild yell of rage, and then came within an ace of kickin’ Rarey into the next world. But a miss is as good as a mile, and after Cruiser had vented his wrath in fits and kicks and yells and bites and springs, Rarey got a chance to get his fine work in and to let his system have a chance.
Within less than four hours from the commencement of this “interview” “the kicker” was completely tamed. Rarey was seen by the nobleman who owned the horse, and others, to pat Cruiser, then to saddle him, then to mount and ride him—ridin’ a comet–and there never was a better horse than Cruiser after that.
This settled Rarey’s fate and made him a great man. All England went wild over him, and Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and all the royal family sent for him to visit ‘em like one of the family himself. Then some foreign kings and queens took a fancy to him, and between ‘em all Rarey’s list of princes must have been as large as Grant’s without his havin’ anything to do with politics either.
But a New York man, a showman, subjected Rarey to a test harder than Cruiser even. It pretty nearly stumped Rarey. It was a zebra. The showman dared Rarey to tame a zebra. This beat any wild horse tamin’ on record, just as the zebra beat any wild horse ever heard of in sheer cussedness. Why, the beast used to hang himself up on his head to the beams of his stall and then kick, and kick hard, with all his four legs at once, worse than a team of mules.
“You say you believe in moral suasion,” said the owner of this contrary animal to Rarey. “Well, if you get my zebra to believe in it, too, you may have him,” so confident was the showman that Rarey’s system was n. g. with his animal.
Rarey undertook the job and called upon the zebra. The zebra didn’t like Rarey for a cent, and went for him in the regular—or, rather, the irregular–zebra fashion. For a while the zebra had the best of it, and Mr. Rarey had to dodge and run around very lively. It made everybody laugh, and for the first half hour all the bets were on the zebra.
But before very long the zebra was disgusted, while Rarey hadn’t begun yet. In an hour Mr. Zebra and Mr. Rarey were about even, and in two hours zebra stock was down. It never recovered, and the zebra never was himself again. He had to yield to Rarey and his system, and before the end of the four hour interview there was somethin’ seen that the showman said nobody had ever seen before, for Rarey rode the zebra.
He “called” the zebra and went one better. He didn’t demand the zebra, however. It had been the very best advertisement he had ever had already.
There was an old woman who went around the country wherever Rarey gave an exhibition, watchin’ him curiously. People got to notice the old woman and to talk about her. It was at first supposed that she was one of the morbid people–“cranks” as they would call ‘em now–who hang around exhibitions to which there is any danger attached, expectin’ sooner or later to see the performer come to grief. But she wasn’t of that sort at all. On the contrary, she was a rather timid old maid, who had been offered marriage by a man whose money she had no objection to, but whom she was kind of afraid she wouldn’t know how to manage after she married him. So as she had heard that this Rarey had the secret for tamin’ all sorts of animals, and as she had heard her minister or doctor say, I suppose, that man is an animal, she attended all Rarey’s performances, hopin’ to catch his secret and apply it where it would do the most good–to her.
Talkin’ of the secret of tamin’, there was a man around New York years ago, who had a system for tamin’ females just as Rarey had for tamin’ horses. I allude to the man who was best known as the Chevalier Wykoff. He boasted that no woman could resist him, and a good many feminine facts seem to be in favor of his theory.
He compromised several prominent women in this city and in Washington; was intimate with a good many actresses; and for a while had full swing with Fanny Ellsler, as her right hand man and business agent. Like Brignoli, at one time he held the reputation of many ladies at his mercy; and to his credit it should be stated that he didn’t abuse his advantages, either.
But there was one woman who proved too much for his system, and who completely got ahead of him and his fascinations. She was a New York woman and Wykoff had known her for some time, but had never cared particularly about her. But one day a relative died and left her all his property. Then Wykoff began to notice the lady more carefully, and soon discovered, what he had never found out before, that he loved her dearly.
But it was part of Wykoff’s system never to pluck fruit till the fruit was ripe. So, for fear of alarmin’ the lady and excitin’ suspicion, he didn’t change his course towards her at once, but still kept on bein’ her friend–only her friend–but getting’ all the time more and more friendly, hopin’ that such warm and true friendship might naturally be supposed to turn to love at last, and to excite love in return.
But it didn’t. The lady received his visits, took his advice, and treated him exactly as he pretended to wish, as an old family friend; which was exactly what he didn’t wish.
Finally she proposed to go off to Europe, and Wykoff, thinkin’ that while travelin’ together he would have a better chance to win her affections–and her dollars–than in New York, agreed to the idea, and offered to accompany her, of course the lady havin’ her female chaperone all regular and proper.
The lady didn’t care particularly about Wykoff’s company, but she was too polite to object, so for a while he formed a part of the lady’s travelin’ family, along with her aged female relative and duenna, her dog and her cat and her courier. The courier, by the by, was in Wykoff’s pay. It was part of his system always to secure the services of those around his female party.
At last, tired of travelin’ and thinkin’ the fruit ripe, he proposed–and was rejected. It was the first “no” he had ever had and he didn’t know what to do about it.
He waited a while and tried to worry the lady’s “no” into a “yes.” This was part of his system. He believed a woman could be worried into anythin’. He had great faith in the old Spanish proverb, “all things come to him that waits.” But the lady didn’t come to him, so he went again to her.
Again he proposed, again he was rejected. This second “no” made him madder than the first. He now recommended his worryin’ system In good earnest. He followed the lady all over the map of Europe. She went to London. He met her at the tower. She went to Paris. He came to her box at the Grand Opera. She went to Rome. He knelt with her beside the altar at St. Peter’s. The continent was all one Wykoff. There was but one man in Europe. Life became a burden to the too much loved and followed lady.
At last he tracked her into a lonely inn among the mountains. He rushed into the room where she was standin’–alone this time, her aged chaperone bein’ sick and left behind. He told her that the inn was full of his people–she must marry him.
It was a desperate step; but it was part of his system, after waitin’ long enough for a woman, to strike for her, and to strike hard–the more desperately the better. Women like to see men desperate, when they are the cause of the desperation.
The lady screamed and struggled a while, then she surrendered, or pretended to. She promised to marry him, and the triumphant woman-hunter rushed out to get a carriage to drive his last conquest to the nearest priest.
And here is just where he missed it. He was too trustful in the success of his luck. He left the woman alone. He gave her a chance of escape. While he was getting’ a carriage in front, she was getting’ out of a window behind. When Wykoff returned the lady was gone.
And he never saw her afterwards. But he had an interview with her agents, the police, whom she in her turn set on his track. He was put under bonds not to molest or follow the lady any more and was compelled to return to New York without her.
It never does, in any system, to leave a woman by herself a minute if you can help it. And it is evidently harder–Wykoff found it so–to tame a woman than a zebra.
[Editor’s notes: John S. Rarey (1826-1866) was an Ohio-based horse trainer who gained renown in England in the late 1850s. He as been called the first “horse whisperer,” using calming actions and light restraints to settle anxious and abused horses. Rarey brought Cruiser back to the United States with him, showed him in exhibitions, and kept him on his Ohio farm. Cruiser outlived Rarey by nine years.
Henry Wikoff (1812-1884) was a Philadelphia-born international diplomatic go-between and undercover foreign affairs reporter for the New York Herald. A confidant of Mary Todd Lincoln, Wikoff was rumored to have had many romances.
The romance events described in the above column took place in 1852, and the heiress was Jane Catherine Gamble (1783-1884), thirty years older than Wikoff. Wikoff was held by authorities in Genoa, Italy for over a year for his harassment of Gamble. To defend his reputation, on his return to the United States, Wikoff published a book, My Courtship and its Consequences, in which he accused Gamble of leading on his advances.]
