“A tribute to a courageous woman who worked to reduce suffering. Dorothy Brooke had to be both compassionate and brave to go to faraway places to help horses.”
—TEMPLE GRANDIN, author of Animals Make Us Human
“The legacy of Dorothy Brooke is extraordinary. Her work was inspired in part by another wonderful woman, the founder of World Horse Welfare, Ada Cole. Together they inspired the transformation of the lives of so many animals for the better. This is a story that is truly worthy of being told.”
—ROLY OWERS, chief executive of World Horse Welfare
“A story of deep connection, compassion, empathy, and love. Thanks to the author for making Dorothy Brooke visible, and for taking the time to tell us about a most amazing and compassionate woman.”
—MARC BEKOFF, author of The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age
“For more than six thousand years, horses have given their flesh, their strength, their patience, and above all their spirit to the human enterprise. But beyond facilities needed to further exploit these gifts, humans have given surprisingly little back. Grant Hayter-Menzies movingly recovers the life of a determined and resourceful woman who dedicated herself to the rescue of horses.…Dorothy Brooke paid a bit back, changing the lives of many thousands of worthy horses, donkeys, and mules then and since.”
—DR. PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY, coauthor of The Earth and Its Peoples
“This lovingly researched, evocative biography of Dorothy Brooke proves her a heroine not just to the battered and beaten old war horses she saved in 1930s Cairo but to those who continue her legacy today.”
—SUSANNA FORREST, author of If Wishes Were Horses: A Memoir of Equine Obsession
“A galloping tale of the intertwined histories of the last days of the British Empire in Egypt, the politics of human-animal relationships, and an organization whose work continues to this day.”
—ALAN MIKHAIL, professor of history at Yale University and author of The Animal in Ottoman Egypt
“This book is a superb tribute to Dorothy Brooke and to her belief that such a charitable venture would form ‘a fitting part of a War Memorial.’…Utterly compelling.”
—JOANNA LUMLEY, actress and advocate for human rights and animal welfare
In honor of Cupid and of all the horses, mules, and donkeys whose heroism never faltered in battles they did nothing to cause
In defense of all the animals who still today find themselves caught in the unending crossfire of human discord
In memory of my parents
To Rudi, with love
Forty percent of the author’s royalties will be donated to the Brooke Hospital for Animals
A Soldier’s Kiss
Only a dying horse! Pull off the gear,
And slip the needless bit from frothing jaws,
Drag it aside there, leaving the roadway clear,
The battery thunders on with scarce a pause.
Prone by the shell-swept highway there it lies
With quivering limbs, as fast the life-tide fails,
Dark films are closing o’er the faithful eyes
That mutely plead for aid where none avails.
Onward the battery rolls, but one there speeds
Heedless of comrade’s voice or bursting shell,
Back to the wounded friend who lonely bleeds
Beside the stony highway where he fell.
Only a dying horse! He swiftly kneels,
Lifts the limp head and hears the shivering sigh
Kisses his friend, while down his cheek there steals
Sweet pity’s tear, “Goodbye old man, goodbye.”
No honours wait him, medal, badge or star,
Though scarce could war a kindlier deed unfold;
He bears within his breast, more precious far
Beyond the gift of kings, a heart of gold.
—HENRY CHAPPELL
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Prologue: Dorothy
Part 1. Dawn Raiders
1. Cupid
2. Old Bill
3. Old War Horse Fund
4. Black Friday
Part 2. Adventure
5. An End and a Beginning
6. Street of the English Lady
7. Going Home
8. World War
9. Their Portion Is Gardens
Epilogue: Brooke
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Picture section
Copyright
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following page 78
1. Portrait of Dorothy Brooke
2. Riccarton House in Edinburgh
3. Dorothy Searight and son Rodney
4. Geoffrey Francis Heremon Brooke
5. Geoffrey Brooke and Combined Training
6. Dorothy Brooke on board a ship
7. Felucca on the Nile River
8. The Mokattam Hills
9. Dr. Alfred Branch and Dorothy Brooke at the buying table
10. Two elderly patients at the Brooke Hospital
11. A pair of working horses at the Brooke Hospital
12. Injured former war horse
13. Ransomed, watercolor by Pamela Searight
14. Stalls in the Brooke Hospital
15. Dorothy Brooke with one of her patients
16. Dorothy Brooke’s deep compassion is on full view
17. A section of Old Cairo
18. Dorothy Brooke with Egyptian members of the buying committee
19. A view from the buying committee’s perspective
20. Jordan
21. Dorothy Brooke in later years
22. Dorothy Brooke and chief veterinarian Dr. Murad Raghib
23. Geoffrey and Dorothy Brooke in Salisbury
24. Dorothy Brooke with granddaughter Sarah Searight Lush
25. Dorothy Brooke’s grave
26. A view to the Brooke Hospital today
FOREWORD
Anyone who knows my work with and love for equines also knows my core principle—to leave the world a better place, not only for animals but for people, too. Because without our care, the animals who delight us, who serve us, cannot be healthy or happy.
Yet too many working horses, mules, and donkeys around the world are neither. That’s why I support the work of Brooke, as a Global Ambassador and as a man who loves horses.
I feel a synergy with Brooke, which works to ease the suffering of working equines through education of owners as well as through free expert veterinary care for animals.
I also feel a kinship with Mrs. Dorothy Brooke, the organization’s founder. Mrs. Brooke saw suffering and did not look the other way. She rolled her sleeves up and got to work.
Brooke still does this, every day, in countries around the globe. As you read Grant Hayter-Menzies’s moving account of how an English general’s wife saved the lost war horses of Cairo, I know you will be as inspired as I am to follow her example and help make the world a kinder, healthier place for the animals who serve us and love us. As Mrs. Brooke well knew, compassion is the key.
Monty Roberts
PREFACE
When I was about seven years old, and out shopping with my mother, I convinced her to take me into a pet store located in a central California town near where we lived. Those were the days when we didn’t know everything we do now about these happily named places of unhappy business.
I remember going into this particular store, holding my mother’s hand, and walking down a corridor lined with wire boxes. Animals were livi
ng in them—a charitable word, living—and most seemed to be nervously eating or hiding or both. I stopped at one cage. In it was a fluffy ginger guinea pig. She was smaller than the others hopping and chortling around her. Her gaze seemed lusterless as she sat there, looking out from the cage; she seemed fragile as the larger, more vigorous guinea pigs raced around her. I asked my mother if I might have her. The store owner told me she was a bad choice because she was ill and wouldn’t live long. That made me persist. And I began to cry. I knew the little ginger guinea pig was indeed what the man called “the runt of the litter.” Her dim eyes didn’t shine like those of the others. She seemed just to want to go to sleep and never wake up. But I couldn’t bear to let that happen. I had to try to save her.
My mother gave in.
Making Rosie happy became the sole reason for my existence. I put her in a cage, for which my father had made her a little wooden house to hide in. I gave her special treats—lettuce, fortified biscuits we’d bought from the pet store, fresh water every day. I took her out and held her in the sunshine, which made her red fur look strangely pale. I was so sure that my love could help her get better that when I came home from school and saw the look on my mother’s face, I refused to believe that Rosie was dead. “I found her that way this morning,” my mother explained. We looked at the little ginger body lying still. I’d written “ROSIE” over the door of her house, but she had died outside it, as if she wanted death to come and claim her with the least amount of trouble. “At least she knew you loved her,” said my mother.
I was touched, therefore, to find that Dorothy Brooke, whose rescue of elderly and abused former war horses and army mules forms the subject of this book, was also drawn to what her chief veterinarian Dr. Murad Raghib called “the destruction cases”—the animals purchased from their owners at Dorothy’s Cairo hospital with the express purpose of giving them a few days of rest, feed, water, and treats, before sending them off to what Dorothy hoped was the leafy green meadow of equine heaven. She knew, to quote Anatole France, that “until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” And that until one has reached out to help an animal in need, the purpose of that love seems wasted.
Dorothy Brooke’s soul was awakened one fall day in 1930 Cairo, when she first glimpsed sick and starving cab horses at the city’s main train station, English horses with the arrow brand of the British Army still visible on their flanks. A woman of privileged background, who was only in Egypt because her officer husband was posted there, Dorothy looked at these animals’ ravaged bodies and into their lifeless eyes, and she knew that something needed to be done, and that she was the one to do it. She would spend the next quarter-century of her life working to help ease the sufferings of these betrayed warriors. Once she had rescued all of the war horses that she could find, she turned to the sufferings of native horses, mules, and donkeys. And she developed a philosophy for their human owners, caught in the same wheel of pain as their working animals. Blame poverty, Dorothy said, not the men degraded by it. Strike the problem at its root—the need for education of owners in proper, regular care for their animals—and you will have improved the life not just of animals but of owners, of families, perhaps even of society as a whole.
The beauty of Dorothy Brooke’s holistic vision is not just that it was put into practice long before such thinking was a normal ingredient for a healthy animal welfare program, or that it proved to be such a success, not merely for the animals and their owners but for the survival of Dorothy’s hospital in Sayyida Zeinab district, where it remains busy today. It is that Dorothy’s vision proved to have a life of its own.
Spawned by her hospital in Cairo, Brooke, one of the world’s largest animal welfare charities, now works in eleven developing nations, addressing veterinary care and education for children and adults, which together have helped desperate animals in the thousands. And, I like to think, it has helped push humanity closer to an understanding of what we owe the animals who help us prosper, whom we love and who love us in return.
INTRODUCTION
When my mother died, I found a small, well-thumbed book by her bedside. The book was For Love of Horses, Glenda Spooner’s compilation of the diaries of Dorothy Brooke, founder of the Brooke Hospital for Animals in Cairo, Egypt.
It was an early edition, and I just put it in my bookshelves and thought little more about it, until one day somebody mentioned the Brooke charity and the story that started it all, and I vaguely remembered I had seen a copy somewhere. In due course I found it and was fascinated by what I read.
Much of my leisure time has been spent in the company of horses, whether hunting, playing polo, or trekking along old military campaign routes in scattered parts of the world. I have been lucky, too, that in the course of my career I have been required to ride in several ceremonial parades, a particularly pleasant duty. So all in all, I owe a lot to my “long faced” friend.
Once my working days were over, an opportunity rose to be chairman of Brooke, and with great good fortune I caught the selector’s eye. It is in that capacity that I write this introduction.
This book, beautifully written by Grant Hayter-Menzies, tells a story that has not been fully explained before, and it is good that those of us who admire the work of Dorothy Brooke will now know how the charity started and was able to develop to what it is today, a global charity that works in eleven countries around the world. Imagine how Dorothy would have felt seeing how her idea has developed since her death.
A few years ago I visited Dorothy’s grave in Cairo, and it was this that went through my mind. Her legacy is with us today, and it is admirable that Grant Hayter-Menzies wishes to tell the story and does this so well. Dorothy would have been delighted.
Maj. Gen. Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter
Prologue
Dorothy
Egypt, thou knew’st too well,
My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
If we were scanning the manifest for a particular ship sailing from England to Port Said, Egypt, in October 1930, we would notice nothing very much out of the ordinary.
Reading down the columns, scored in blue and red lines on paper of a pale official green, we would meet merchants and colonial officials on their way “out” east, teachers and remittance men and missionaries and what Max Rodenbeck terms “the Imperial Fishing Fleet…the flotilla of debutantes who set out from home each winter with the express aim of trauling for a husband in the British colonial service.”1
They came from Belfast and Glasgow, Fareham and Portsmouth, London and Edinburgh, like a lot of other people sailing east that season. And among them we would see the names of a couple who by all available information were pretty much like most other people on that sailing. They were Geoffrey Brooke, a British cavalry officer, and his wife, Dorothy. Both were in their late forties.
The Brookes were en route to Cairo. Though Egypt had become a sovereign state in 1922, British forces after the close of the Great War had kept a foot in the door, protective of Egypt and of the Suez Canal as gateway, among other things, to India. As such, they had left behind small occupying forces like the British Cavalry Brigade, which Geoffrey Brooke was coming out to Egypt’s capital city to command.
The Brookes were similar in appearance and personality, each tall, lanky, and lithe. Brought up riding ponies and horses since childhood, they seemed to take on equine characteristics themselves. With Geoffrey, a champion jumper in younger years, this was especially apparent; photographs of him on horseback give the impression of a man who was as much horse as human, so that it is difficult to see where one begins and the other ends. Despite being well into what was, in 1930, considered to be middle age, the couple shared a gracile stance characteristic of blooded horses, a relaxed ease often seen in upper-class people who amid privilege had been trained never to take anything for granted, to live a combined credo of the Golden Rule drill
ed into them in their nurseries, alongside unfailing noblesse oblige.
Had you seen them walking together on the deck of their ship, you might think the Brookes a pair who had been together for most of their lives—indeed, for so long that any individual idiosyncrasies long ago blended into equal halves of the same person. They were certainly soul mates who shared, among other things, a deep love of horses. But they had only been married four years earlier, after lives spent with others had broken up and sunk, like the old world of czars and sultans and country houses to which both had been bred, after the world-altering devastation of World War I.
We know that for Dorothy, it was love at first sight. And events were to bear evidence that, for Geoffrey, it was very much the same—love that kept its promise to stay firm through better or worse.
Both Brookes came from backgrounds deeply rooted in the British Isles.
Geoffrey Brooke, who could have been describing himself when he wrote, in his novel Horse Lovers, “he was decidedly slim in limb and body, punctiliously neat in dress,” was born June 14, 1884, in Dublin into the Protestant Anglo-Irish landowning class. His family connections brought him within reach of Continental aristocracy—one of his cousins was the peppery, exuberant, and brave Daisy Princess of Pless, English-born consort of a Prussian aristocrat, who wrote of Brooke in her diaries. Brooke’s trajectory took him farther afield than Central Europe, all the way to Russia, where in 1906 he was assigned to the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, serving with the Sixteenth Royal Lancers.2
Not long after he arrived, Brooke met a Russian noblewoman, Baroness Vera von Salza, a general’s daughter born in Tsarskoye Selo who was fourteen years his senior, and they were married in London on October 14, 1908. Already married and divorced—as her English marriage license manages to fit into the small box provided for “Condition,” she was “previously the wife of Stanislas Lucien Alfred Gabriel Mechin Baron Mechin to whom she was married in Russia and from whom she obtained a divorce in France”—Vera had grown up in wealth that was to be cancelled abruptly by the Russian Revolutions of 1917– 18.3 That future cataclysm was unimaginable to the young couple, as to most Russians, but the events that led to the demise of imperial Russia and a clutch of other kingdoms came quickly enough when the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo suddenly jerked the seal ribbons of dozens of international treaties.
The Lost War Horses of Cairo Page 1