Beautiful Jim Key

by Mim E. Rivas

  Bergh successfully lobbied for the passage of a law that made it illegal in the state of New York to inflict unjustifiable harm on any animal, by intentional violence or by neglect, whether it was a teamster brutally whipping a horse, a private citizen abandoning a sick or dying horse, a rag boy kicking and throttling the enslaved dog that pulled his overloaded rag cart, beef importers who stacked bound live calves in piles on the docks, businesses that transported cattle in suffocating death cars, or butchers who bled live cows for eight hours to make for a whiter veal. One of the secrets for Henry Bergh’s 90 percent success rate in the cases that he and the ASPCA brought to court was the logical argument he presented time and again that cruelty to America’s eighty-five million nonhuman individuals came at an oppressive cost, financial and societal, to humankind. Cruelty to livestock, for example, destroyed dairy products; unsanitary horse stables and neglected equines spawned diseases that assumed epidemic proportions. At one point, as many as 70 percent of working horses in the city came down with a deadly respiratory disease that brought the transportation systems to a standstill, forcing New Yorkers to travel on foot on already dangerously overcrowded streets and sidewalks.

  A tireless crusader, Henry Bergh was not afraid to take on high-society sportsmen who engaged in live pigeon shoots, or the gambling clubs that gathered to bet on a fight to the death between a bulldog and a black bear, or the Bowery Boys, who for entertainment set terriers on rats in gaming pits, or any of the other cockfights, dogfights, or instances of animal exploitation that he could uncover. He also became a newspaper regular, sometimes as the object of satiric renderings, but always punching back with vivid and heart-wrenching descriptions of animal cruelty that bent the sensibilities of the public toward his cause. Although he had tussled with Professor Louis Agassiz over feeding live rodents and rabbits to the boa constrictor at P. T. Barnum’s museum, Bergh earned the assistance of Agassiz in another campaign, albeit an unsuccessful one. This was Bergh’s attempt to halt the torture of imported green turtles used for the delicate flavor of turtle soup. They were brought in alive and made to lay on their backs for weeks without food, strung together through hand-punctured holes in their flippers. Agassiz confirmed that the turtles could feel the pain and deprivation, but it was not enough to stop this practice.

  P. T. Barnum, that great impresario and master of humbuggery, took Henry Bergh’s constant criticism on the chin. The two adversaries eventually gained a mutual respect. In one instance, Bergh defended Barnum from another group’s attack on his allegedly inhumane elephant-training practices. Barnum replied by contributing handsomely to the ASPCA as well as to the SPCA in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he resided in his later years. Upon his death in 1891, he left money to Bridgeport to erect a monument to none other than Henry Bergh.

  Those newspapers and critics charging that the leaders of the various fledgling humane organizations were misanthropes who cared more about animals than about humans were silenced for the moment when Bergh became involved in exposing a horrific case of child exploitation. With published artist’s renderings of the girl known as “Little Mary Ellen”—emaciated, in rags, with bruises and scars as evidence of chronic beatings—the public became enraged. Henry Bergh seized on the opportunity to send his message that all cruelty ought to be intolerable, thus extending the work of the humane movement to include the protection of children, as well as animals. He also helped to establish a new organization specifically devoted to protecting minors from abuse, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Though not the first child welfare group to be founded, it was one of the more powerful to date.

  After Henry Bergh died in 1888, even though the animal welfare movement continued to grow as more and more local organizations cropped up in towns and regions across the country, the loss of one of its guiding lights certainly diminished the energy that had brought the issue of cruelty to animals to national prominence. Several factors, which Albert Rogers was just beginning to grasp in November 1897, hindered the efforts of other humane groups from rekindling that energy. Because most of the organizers of the charitable organizations were wealthy, there was a sense that animal protection was a luxury to be enjoyed mainly by the upper classes. There was also scrutiny of some founders of these groups as to their true motivations, with more than a few being accused of self-serving intentions, perhaps for financial or political gains, or just for the aggrandizement of their egos. Most problematic, as much then as later, were the conflicting messages, priorities, and approaches of the different groups. Infighting resulted over the most thorny of questions, such as the pros and cons of animal testing for medical research and especially live vivisection; the debate between activists for the humane treatment of animals waiting to be eaten or killed for their fur and skin and total vegetarianism; and the argument over whether or not the movement should embrace those who didn’t believe nonhuman species were entitled to civil rights but generally loved and cared for their companion animals.

  So the question that became clear to Key, Key, and Rogers was not only how to find the right group or groups with which to align, but more important, what message they wanted to send into this noisy, message-crowded place in time. Was it simply what President McKinley had said, that Jim Key served as a grand object lesson of what could be accomplished through kindness and patience? Or was it something more?

  As Rogers reviewed everything Dr. Key had said about the manner in which a horse of above-average intelligence had been educated, he recalled how the Doc believed that Jim understood everything his teacher said to him. Bill Key’s attitude seemed to be that every species had its own way of experiencing feeling and thought, along with its own form of language. In the Doc’s view, the only barrier between humans and nonhumans was this language gap, one that he and Jim had bridged together. Doc Key could understand and communicate in Jim’s language—which is what the term horse whisperer had come to mean—while the Arabian-Hambletonian could understand and communicate in his teacher’s language. The message in that, Albert Rogers concluded, was living proof to the world that animals were sentient creatures, capable of feeling and thought different from but akin to our own, which was why kindness and patience toward our nonhuman relatives was important, urgently so.

  Upon the return of Beautiful Jim Key and his entourage to Glenmere from Ohio, Albert presented his idea for moving forward with the newly focused humane message, which received complete approval from Key and Key.

  There was, however, a problem. The Tennesseans needed to return to Shelbyville, if not for the remainder of the winter, then for as long as could be agreed upon. Apparently when Bill, Jim, and Albert had formed their partnership, they had not discussed a timetable. Rogers argued strenuously against doing anything to interrupt their incredible momentum, but Dr. Key insisted that Jim was homesick and needed to see the hills of Bedford County. Besides, the demanding hours that Jim was working, in addition to traveling among different winter climates, could pose a health risk to their star. That was all the Doc had to say to remind Rogers that it would be self-defeating to exploit one animal in the name of preventing the exploitation of others. Resolving to use his time productively, Rogers agreed that they would resume their adventure in March. From then on, he offered, they would try to exhibit only during the warmer months.

  Shortly before Dr. Key, Stanley, and Jim were scheduled to depart Glenmere to return to Tennessee, Rogers was contacted by E. J. Nugent, a popular vaudevillian, who wanted to bring The Scholar and a Model Office Boy to Broadway during the week before Christmas; producer R. M. Gulick was backing a bill of novelty and comedy at the Star Theatre and suggested Beautiful Jim Key as a headliner. Before turning down the offer, Rogers took it to the Doc, who was keen to do it, even though it was not, they each understood, a stepping-stone into the more serious New York humane circles.

  Still, Dr. Key contended, providing amusement and laughter was one of the most effective ways of opening minds. Not to mention that bein
g able to brag that he’d taken a step or two across the Broadway boards would make for fine conversation back in Tennessee. He came up with a compromise. He, Jim, and Stanley would leave as planned for Shelbyville but return to New York after two weeks and remain through the end of December, then go back home for January and February. He would be willing to do that, Doc Key said, if Rogers would be willing for a production of The Scholar and a Model Office Boy to be held at the Opera House in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

  The plan was mutually approved, and as soon as the Tennesseeans had left, Rogers hurried back to the city to begin writing a blizzard of letters to every humane group that he could, giving himself until the end of the year to obtain sponsorship from an influential organization.

  As he typed away, compulsively using the carbon paper that he had in nearly limitless supply, thanks to the family business, letters of endorsement from Jim’s new fans in Cincinnati began to arrive by the bundles, like birds migrating en masse to 75 Maiden Lane. Clara and the boys helped Albert to organize and open the letters, but soon, as correspondence began to pile up in the appearance of snowdrifts around the study and elsewhere, a post office box was obtained. One of the letters, as it turned out, was a testimonial Rogers had requested when he was in Cincinnati. It was a kind letter of endorsement from the Ohio Humane Society, applauding Beautiful Jim Key and his trainer, along with a request to sponsor a benefit upon their next visit to Cincinnati. Perfect.

  Albert Rogers wrote one last time to the officers of the ASPCA. Not hearing back, he procured a letter of introduction from his uncle Mr. L. R. Rogers, a businessman like Hiram, who was friendly with one of the ASPCA board directors, Mr. Frank Connelly. With the letter in hand, Rogers went to call on Connelly at his townhome on 106th Street. This he did not once but several times, being politely turned away in each instance, until on November 23, when he sent a letter that took a different tack, simply inviting Connelly to come and see his horse, Beautiful Jim Key, just returned to the city:

  I give a private matinee for my friends and some of the press boys at the stables 155 East 25th Street at two o’clock Wednesday. If you find it convenient to come I would be very glad to have you do so, and when you do please introduce yourself to me…. I want to have your wife come down and see it, but the stables is not a very pleasant place to bring ladies.

  In the meantime, Albert wrote to the presidents of the American Humane Society, based in New York, and the American Humane Association, based in Boston, telling both of them that before he accepted the sponsorship of the ASPCA, he wanted to offer that opportunity to their respective organizations. He invited John Haynes of the AHS to attend a Saturday private showing that was being given for “a few of my little friends” and promised that Haynes would not be disappointed. Besides, confessed Rogers, “I brought him to New York practically for the purpose of exhibiting him to you.”

  Since he had gone that far, he also added that the competing Boston group was very interested in a sponsorship role, but he wanted, before accepting, to make sure that Haynes, “of all men,” met Beautiful Jim Key for himself. Rogers had not, of course, heard anything tangible from the American Humane Association, but he had a unique strategy for appealing to George Angell, president of that group. Knowing that the animal welfare pioneer was interested in the potential of education as a means of promoting humane values, Rogers highlighted the educational opportunities that an educated horse might offer to the movement:

  As the superintendent of the Ohio Humane Society said “…years of teaching in the schools with stories would never…leave as deep an impression upon a child’s memory as will one hour in watching an animal who really thinks.”…What I hold more interesting to myself, as one who is deeply interested in the children, the compositions that the children write in the schools after seeing the horse, in which as they often tersely put it “that now as they have seen a horse that really reads and writes and seems to know everything they will always be kinder to them.”

  Perhaps Albert’s most persuasive line in his letter to George Angell was one he had borrowed pretty much verbatim from Dr. Key: “I have always argued that if a mule in a cornfield can be taught what ‘gee’ and ‘haw’ means, that with patience and time that any animal can be taught a great deal more.”

  Unfortunately, the Ohio Humane group’s testimonial line that played down the impact of stories upon children’s humane education may have struck the wrong chord with Angell. Obviously, Rogers knew much more about Henry Bergh and the ASPCA than about George Thorndike Angell and the American Humane Association, except that it was an offshoot of the Massachusetts SPCA, which Angell had founded, and that a new organizational wing had been launched that was known as the American Humane Education Society. If Albert had been better informed about the amazing Mr. Angell, he would have most likely traveled at once to Boston and not left without meeting the seventy-four-year-old philanthropist. If Dr. Key had been consulted, he would have advised Rogers to forget the other groups and to pursue only George Angell.

  What made the self-made man of means from Massachusetts such a good match for Key and Key was that like the two Tennesseans, he did understand the power of story, having had a fascinating one of his own. The poor son of a Southbridge Baptist minister who had died young, George T. Angell had been raised briefly by his widowed mother, a schoolteacher, and then went to live with different relatives, mainly in rural settings. Throughout his youth he was exposed to many different kinds of animals to whom he had a close affinity. He witnessed both extremes of kindness and cruelty. As a child he was said to have drafted a will, long before SPCAs had come to America or he had taken up the cause, leaving his then imaginary estate for the care of uncared-for animals.

  After putting himself through college and law school, he went on to a stellar legal career that made him wealthy enough to retire in 1868, at age forty-five, on Washington’s birthday to be precise, the same day he attended an event that changed his destiny and that of the humane movement. It was a forty-mile, harness trotting race between Empire State and Ivanhoe—for a purse of $1,000—from Brighton, a suburb of Boston, to Worcester, over rough wintry terrain, with each horse drawing two men at speeds as high as fifteen miles per hour. Ivanhoe was of known Hambletonian descent, while the unregistered Empire State probably was Hambletonian as well. Both Empire State, who was declared the winner, and Ivanhoe died by the race’s end. They had literally been raced to death.

  Angell’s letter the following day in the Boston Daily Advertiser expressed his outrage. Something had to be done to stop cruelty to animals in the Boston area, he stated, an effort already admirably begun in New York. “I for one,” he pledged, “am ready to contribute both time and money and if there is any society or person in Boston with whom I can unite, or who will unite with me in this matter, I shall be glad personally or by letter to be informed.”

  An outpouring of interest and money followed, allowing Angell to launch the Massachusetts SPCA with upward of 1,700 members, some of them from the oldest and most affluent Boston families, others from reigning literary and philosophical circles. Many early activists, whom George Angell credited with providing the spirit to the MSPCA as well as to the American Humane Association (formed in 1877 as a federation of all local humane groups across the country), were women. One of them was the woman he soon married, a widow named Eliza Martin, and another powerhouse was Mrs. Emily W. Appleton. As the wife of Nathan Appleton, a successful manufacturer, Emily contributed so significantly to the organization that many questioned why she didn’t have a board position. But in the Victorian era, Angell later explained, that would have been seen as exploiting “a lady’s name.” And still, as the MSPCA took on many of the same ills being battled by Bergh and his associates, the former lawyer—and former law partner of the ardent antislavery activist Samuel E. Sewell—was not afraid to share the spotlight with the many celebrated names that joined in his mission. Angell used the courts and the press to sway public opinion, though not to the sa
me extent as did Bergh and the ASPCA. Instead Angell found other ways to influence popular consciousness, sometimes more far-reaching ways.

  George Angell saw the big picture, the connections between all forms of social injustice, and was an outspoken advocate for peace and crime prevention. After a visit to a Massachusetts prison and a survey of inmates, for example, he observed that the overwhelming majority of individuals who committed crimes in adulthood had never owned pets in their youth. This in turn reinforced his beliefs that in order to change the public mind and public behavior, humane education was necessary at an early age. To capture the imagination and passion of children, who would grow up to shape the values of their generation, he employed one of the most consciousness-changing and enduring books ever written. He had stumbled across it while in England—where he had come to lecture to the RSPCA—in the form of a short, paperbound manuscript that told the first-person story of a spirited horse who was subjected to a range of abuse sadly common to the times. It was, of course, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty: Autobiography of a Horse, which Albert Rogers had in mind when he fantasized about the impact that his pamphlet could have. Published in England in 1877, only a year before the author’s death, it provided one of its most resonant lines as a touchstone for George Angell: “If we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”

  In England, Sewell’s work had a widespread impact, calling into question many abusive practices, including the use of the checkrein and the docking of horses’ tails, while fueling the reach of the RSPCA. In her story, Sewell dramatized the harm caused by the use of the checkrein or bearing rein—the short strap running from the bit to the harness that was tightened to prevent the horse from lowering the head, thus appearing fashionably lifted. She also bemoaned the practice of docking horses’ tails, another conceit of fashion, used to make the tail stand up as though to appear in the style of a military epaulet, but causing physical agony, humiliation, and discomfort to horses and depriving them of their defense to ward off flies.