Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

HOUYHNHNMS  AND YAHOOS

My wife and I have never kept or owned horses. Among other things, we don’t have the money. Only in early childhood did either of us ride on horseback. We both remember being taken on fairground rides for little children, and doing a turn on some retired, placid old horse as it went at a slow clip-clop, led around by its owner. Quite an adventure when you are four or five, but not exactly a display of equestrian skills. Most of our children have had the same sort of fairground experience. But that is the extent of our acquaintance with horse-riding.

However, my wife has a curious habit. If we are going on a long car journey, she will always point out the handsome horses in fields. More than once, she has asked to stop because she wants to see, close-up, some sturdy dobbin with its nose poking through a fence. She admires the placidity of such animals, and so do I. Occasionally we have ventured to stroke a horse’s nose.

There is something very calming about a quiet, ruminating horse. Perhaps their long faces make them seem thoughtful and a little solemn. It is easy to imagine them as philosophical creatures who have, by accident, become beasts of burden. My recent re-reading of Gulliver’s Travels makes me at once think of them as Houyhnhnms. They are resigned to their role of being ridden or occasionally pulling a carriage, though their days of pulling ploughs or being everyday transport have long gone. Compared with their slow ruminative walk, we are the thoughtless, barbarous Yahoos, rushing about pointlessly.

Houyhnhnms came into my mind when we were visiting Prague in December 2018. We saw two tired, submissive and obviously over-worked horses harnessed to a carriage which took tourists on a short ride around one of the city’s main squares. Looking at them, I thought it was the daily sight of such patient working horses that probably inspired Jonathan Swift.

Later, in February 2019, I was on my own in Toulouse, and I visited the city’s natural history museum. Again, Houyhnhnms occurred to me. Displayed was the skeleton of a horse being ridden by the skeleton of a human being. What an impertience, I thought, for the little ape creature to be riding on the larger and more majestic Houyhnhnm.

Elsewhere in the museum was the skeleton of one of our simian cousins. That, I thought, is what we essentially are. Yahoos.

But I thought that only for a moment. Misanthropy is not for me, but I do get Jonathan Swift’s point about us and about horses.