Looking a Gift Horse Book in the Mouth: Tom Mix and W. K. Kellogg, December 1927

There's an old expression, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth." You can estimate the age of a horse by looking at its teeth, so to "look it (a gift horse) in the mouth" would be to scrutinize and criticize the gift. 

As I've noted some of in my previous blog posts, the combination of Arabian horses and Hollywood film stars of the 1920s often led to some dubious and/or exaggerated claims about Arabians in the press. 

Now we're going to look a gift horse BOOK in the mouth, so to speak, and try to identify a particular horse book that has quite a backstory. And we can do that without guilt, because the book was not given as a gift to us. It was a present from one very famous man to another. 

A colleague recently asked me to look into newspaper articles published between late 1927 and mid-1928, that said that cowboy actor Tom Mix had given a very special horse book to cereal magnate and Arabian horse breeder W. K. Kellogg. 

Let's pause for some context before we explore the book itself.  Kellogg used the might of his cereal company's advertising agency, N. W. Ayer & Son, as well as members of the ranch's staff and publicist Earl H. "Spide" Rathbun (1886-1961) (who had Hollywood connections) to tell the tale of the Kellogg Arabians. The Kellogg Arabians had a special mystique; the Kellogg Ranch's proximity to, and connection with, Hollywood was a very important part of this public image.

Tom Mix and his (not Arabian) horse, Tony.

The first newspaper article that tells the tale of Tom Mix's gift was in the December 14, 1927, edition of the Pomona Progress-Bulletin.  

The paper published a long and rather flowery story quoting Spide Rathbun about a variety of activities at the new Kellogg Arabian Horse Ranch in Pomona. Several well-known pilots had recently flown their biplane to an alfalfa patch at the Kellogg Ranch, saying it would make a good place for "a first-class landing field." Future tourists, Rathbun said, would be able to drive or fly directly to the Ranch. (The landing strip operated from 1928 to 1932.)

The Kellogg Ranch, the article continued, was a "True 'Show Place,' a mecca for sightseers, situated in a little valley of its own surrounding [sic] by gentle, undalating [sic] hills." --

Here we see the first of the Hollywood name-drops: silent film heartthrob Rudolph Valentino and the Kellogg Arabian stallion Jadaan. 

Their costumes from the film "The Son of the Sheik," which Kellogg purchased after Valentino's untimely death, were on display in "a large glass cage at the palatial Arabian horse stables." It was, Rathbun noted, "only one of the historical departments that are being developed...to give the visitor to the ranch something unusual to look at while he was there."

W. K. Kellogg, the Arabian colt Pep, and cowboy star Tom Mix, at the Kellogg Ranch, about 1928.

Now the article cuts to the chase, as far as the book is concerned: 

"Tom Mix, famous movie star, has recently presented Mr. Kellogg with a valuable book, printed in 1737, which contains so much interesting matter about Arabian horses and  their ancestry that it is considered an 'Arabian horse bible.' The book is on display as a feature for the visitor to the ranch."

Note the publication date: 1737. This is an important clue about the real nature of the unidentified book.

The publicity blitz for the Kellogg Ranch continued a couple of weeks later, with a large photo spread and some articles in the Progress-Bulletin's December 31, 1927 edition. 

The photographs, by the Frasher studio, showed humorist Will Rogers on the stallion Letan, starlet Laura LaPlante with Mr. Kellogg and the stallion Antez; Mr. Kellogg with his dog Rinson, a son of canine film star Rin-Tin-Tin, and more. 

A sidebar article expands on the nature of the book given to Mr. Kellogg by Tom Mix.

"As a result of a visit by Tom Mix, the well known cowboy of the silver screen, has presented Mr. Kellogg with a valuable book published in France in 1727 which contains one of the most complete histories of early Arabian horses in the world. The book is 28 inches long and 16 inches wide and three inches thick. It is full of interesting reading matter about Arabians in French, the full translation of which has not been completed. [As we will shortly see, there already was an English translation, but presumably Rathbun didn't know that.] A marvelous collection of wood cuts and engravings of Arabian horses are numerous in the book. It it one of the feature exhibits shown visitors to the ranch." 

Note that the stated publication date of the book has been pushed back from 1737 to 1727. 

A rewritten version of the article appeared in the March 16, 1928 edition of the Battle Creek, Michigan Moon-Journal. (Battle Creek was the home of Kellogg's cereal empire.) It noted that the book was 200 years old, and dropped a number of celebrity names at the end, including Valentino, humorist and horseman Will Rogers, and others.

To summarize, the newspaper articles don't tell us the name of the book nor that of its author.  We know that it was quite large, written in French, published in either 1727 or 1737, and on display at the time at the Kellogg Ranch.

But we do know what some of the book's pages looked like! The W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona (on the old Kellogg Ranch property) collection contains two photographs of interest, which were recently on display at the library. (Thus the glare from the display case in the picture I took.)

One 8x10" print shows a two-page spread (one image that covers two adjacent pages) from the book Tom Mix gave to Mr. Kellogg. The second photo shows the glass "cage" that housed the Valentino and Jadaan costumes, other costumes and tack, and (in the lower left corner) the rare book given to Mr. Kellogg by Tom Mix. The book is open to a different two-page spread.

Mary Jane Parkinson reprinted the second image in her classic book The Romance of the Kellogg Ranch. 

Here's a closeup of the book. 

Both of these images were indeed published in the same book, but it wasn't about Arabian horses. 

The inscription in the upper left corner in the first photograph tells us that the rider is "Charles Second, Roy de la Grande Bretagne" -- Charles II, King of Great Britain. The notes at the bottom tell us he is surrounded by the gods Cupid, Mars, and Mercury. 

And the building in the background of the second photograph, thank you Internet search engines, is Bolsover Castle (with the tiny word "Bolsouer" inscribed to its right) in Derbyshire. It was owned by the highly influential horseman William Cavendish, the first Duke of Newcastle (1592 - 1676).

And now we can find the name of the large book, written in French, published in 1737, that Tom Mix gave to W. K. Kellogg in 1927. Both of these images are in Cavendish's monumental book La Methode et Invention nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux (Method and New Way to Train Horses), first published in French, around 1657-1658. 

The National Sporting Library and Museum in Virginia owns a copy. They summarize it thus:

The volume, written by William Cavendish (1592-1676), the first duke of Newcastle, was published in 1657 in Antwerp, where the Royalist general lived in political exile during the Commonwealth period.

According to a bibliography by Richard von Hunersdorff, the folio-sized volume, published in French from an English manuscript, is illustrated with 42 double-page engravings by Abraham van Diepenbeeck, a Dutch painter of the Flemish school who was a student and assistant of Peter Paul Rubens. The engravings depict a variety of scenes: hunting scenes set at [Cavendish's] estates at Welbeck and Bolsover Castle, his stud farm, and figurative scenes showing the duke worshiped by his horses with the gods of Olympus watching in amazement. 

To be fair, the National Sporting Library & Museum blog continues, William Cavendish’s self-confidence was warranted: he trained in Naples and was the only English master of the High School of Riding. In addition, he taught the young Charles Stuart and his cousin, Prince Rupert and trained them to be accomplished horsemen. Cavendish returned to England, where King Charles II awarded the general a dukedom for his loyalty.

(I'll let you look up this period in British history on your own.)

Importantly, Cavendish's book was reprinted in 1667, 1737, and 1743. So now we have the publication date, the name of the book, the author, and the illustrator!

But was this, as the newspaper articles stated, a book about Arabian horses? Not really.

However, it does have at least a dotted line connection to Arabian horses. Sources tell us that Cavendish established a riding school in Antwerp with several "Barbary horses" he bought in Paris, and that he very much liked his Barbs. "Barb" refers to a breed of riding horses with historic roots in North Africa, similar to Arabians but with some different physical characteristics. 

The Methode book briefly mentions Barbs and Arabians. The 1743 posthumous English translation, for example, includes Cavendish's observation that the "beft [best] Race in England comes from the Barbary and Arabian Horfes [horses]; and thefe [these] are certainly the fineft [finest] Creatures in the World for the Saddle, if they are not fpoiled [spoiled] when young."

One of the illustrations shows a horse called "Paragon un Barbe," with what appears to be an African handler, at Cavendish's Welbeck Abbey property.  (I wonder if the white patches on Paragon's coat are roan or rabicano markings?) 

Paragon, with his white markings, seems to be the horse on the right on the title page of the book, too:

So I believe that, contrary to published reports, the book in the glass case at the old Kellogg Ranch, given to Mr. Kellogg by Tom Mix, was not really a "bible" of Arabian horse information. 

Rather, it appears to have been a copy of the 1737 edition of William Cavendish's classic treatise on horsemanship, Methode et Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux. 

But why was the book, given to W. K. Kellogg by Tom Mix, described as being an "Arabian horse bible," and "one of the most complete histories of early Arabian horses in the world"? 

I don't know. It's possible that publicist Rathbun and/or someone else at the Kellogg Ranch assumed the book was about Arabians and didn't read French well enough to double-check. Perhaps they leafed carefully through the book, saw the words "Barbe" and "Arabe," and assumed the entire volume was about Arabians? 

Or perhaps it just made a really good newspaper story that enhanced the mystique of the Kellogg Ranch? 

Regardless of the motivation behind the news reports, Cavendish's important work does contain a few observations by an Englishman (albeit originally published in French) in the mid-1600s about Arabian horses, Barbs, Turkish horses, and other breeds.

W. K. Kellogg wanted his horse ranch to become an important repository of Arabian horse history. And indeed, the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona is now one of the world's largest publicly available collections on the Arabian horse. (Based on my perusal of the Cal Poly Pomona online library catalog, the 1737 book is not now at the Kellogg Arabian Horse Library or in the collection of the larger University Library, more's the pity.)

I'll keep looking for more information!

____

Bless their hearts, the NSLM digitized their copy of Cavendish's book; it's available on the Internet Archive website, and is in the public domain. You'll need a free account to see it:

https://archive.org/details/methode-et-invention-nouvelle-de-dresser-les-chevavx-1658/mode/2up

You can also find digitized public domain copies there of the two volume 1743 English translation of the book, under the title A General System of Horsemanship in All It's [sic] Branches.

Volume I: https://archive.org/details/a-general-system-of-horsemanship-1743/mode/2up

Volume II: https://archive.org/details/a-general-system-of-horsemanship-in-all-its-branches-v2/mode/2up

Here is the NSLM blog post about the original edition:

https://nslmblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/deep-dive-methode-et-invention-nouvelle-de-dresser-les-chevaux-1657/

The British Royal Collection Trust owns a copy of the 1737 edition: https://www.rct.uk/collection/1070974/methode-et-invention-nouvelle-de-dresser-les-chevaux-par-le-tregraves-noble-haut

Paragon the Barb appears in this list of Thoroughbred Foundation Sires:

https://tbheritage.com/HistoricSires/FoundationSires/FoundSiresChron.html

The English Heritage website describes Bolsover Castle as "the creation of a horse-mad Cavalier playboy." Here's a drone video; perhaps Bolsover would be a good addition to your next horse-themed Road Trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_cYfPjxTxA&t=13s

And here's Welbeck Abbey: https://www.welbeck.co.uk/the-welbeck-estate/about-us/our-heritage/

Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCn3jyZ4wM

 

Doris Lindner and the American Horses

Doris Lindner (1896-1979), in the August 27, 1977 Birmingham (UK)
Evening Mail newspaper. 

Since my horse history research sometimes (okay, often) overlaps into the world of model horse figurines, I thought I would share some photos of the real American horses that inspired the work of the incomparable English sculptress Doris Lindner (1896-1979). One of the horses lived in California!

First, for context, some information on the artist herself. This comes from the Museum of Royal Worcester website:

Doris Lindner was born in Llanyre in Radnorshire, South Wales in 1896. She studied sculpture at St Martin’s School of Art in London, the British Academy in Rome and at Calderon’s Animal School in London. Both her Abstract Sculpture and her Art Deco models were exhibited in Heals store in London in the 1920s, where Joseph Gimson, Managing Director of Royal Worcester, saw them.

The Company were taking on many freelance modellers and Mr. Gimson asked Miss Lindner to do some trial models. In 1931, an exhibition was held at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London, to advertise the new lines being introduced by Royal Worcester. This included some of Frederick Gertner’s historical figures and the work of several female freelance modellers, such as Gwendoline Parnell, Stella Crofts, Freda Doughty, Ethelwyn Baker and Doris Lindner.

Doris Lindner’s first models for Royal Worcester were of dogs, other small animals and Art Deco figure studies, followed by a series of zoo babies. In 1935 she started a number of horse group models that proved very successful including ‘At the Meet’ and ‘Huntsman and Hounds’, which were made over a number of years. 

South Wales Evening Post, February 1, 1949

In 1948, Doris Lindner modelled Princess Elizabeth on Tommy, which was issued as the  very first equestrian Limited Edition, establishing her reputation. The plaster maquette (or model) was commissioned for the Coronation in 1953 by Selfridges of London, who erected the full size model over their main door during the celebrations. During the next decade, she modelled many animals and figures for general production, including some birds and animal studies.

In the 1960s, Doris Lindner modelled a fantastic series of horses, equestrian studies and bulls, all studied from life. She travelled widely to gather information about her subjects. She consulted breeding societies and journeyed to America to study champion cattle in Texas. 

Miss Lindner worked in plasticine; she cut her models into sections before bringing them to the factory and always asked for her materials back in order to re-use them. The Limited Editions designed and modelled by Miss Lindner reached the height of popularity in the 1960s and she worked untiringly until she was over 80 years old. Doris Lindner died in 1979.

Here are the American horses sculpted by Doris Lindner in the 1960s through early 1970s.

RW3733 American Quarter Horse "Poco Stampede," 1962, Limited Edition of 500

Lindner went to Texas in 1961 to design a bull, as well as a Quarter Horse. Lindner's sculpture of the King Ranch's Santa Gertrudis bull "Prince" was unveiled at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas on October 11, 1961. 

The Royal Worcester Museum's website has a photograph of Lindner at work:

Source: 
https://www.museumofroyalworcester.org/discover-learn/archive/doris-linder-modelling/

The September 11, 1961 edition of the Greensboro, North Carolina News and Record newspaper gave details:

"Miss Lindner... is 64 years old, fearless with animals and likes to drive fast cars," the story recounted. "She took her air pilot's certificate in 1938." 

A couple of years later, in 1963, Lindner's portrait model of Poco Stampede was released by Neiman-Marcus. His owner, Mrs. G. F. Rhodes of Abilene, received the first one in the limited edition of 500. 

Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram, February 2, 1963.

Here are some newspaper clippings of the real Poco Stampede. 

Poco Stampede, in the July 5, 1955 edition of the Abilene, Texas Reporter-News

Poco Stampede, in the Abilene, Texas Reporter-Journal, August 27, 1961

After the presentation of the first portrait model, the Abilene Reporter newspaper ran this article and photograph:

The paper also ran a summary of the story in 1981.

Abilene, Texas Reporter-News, May 22, 1981

***

SIDEBAR: Model horse collectors might be interested to know that Poco Stampede was the half-brother of the Quarter Horse stallion Poco Deuce, who inspired Maureen Love's design for the California pottery Hagen-Renaker, Inc.'s Designers Workshop Quarter Horse stallion "Two Bits." The two stallions were sired by the legendary, prolific Poco Bueno; they also shared a common granddam, identified in their pedigrees as "Waggoner Mare."

Hagen-Renaker "Two Bits" Quarter Horse stallion, first issued in 1959. He was inspired by the real Quarter Horse stallion Poco Deuce, by Poco Bueno. Here's wordplay on a couple of levels; "two bits" was slang for a quarter of a dollar, and "deuce" is slang for "two."

Poco Deuce, by Poco Bueno, foaled in 1950.

(End sidebar.)

***

RW3869 Appaloosa "Imboden's Driftwood Bob," 1968, Limited Edition of 750

Royal Worcester Appaloosa, courtesy of Kirsten Wellman.

The Royal Worcester Appaloosa is a portrait model of the Appaloosa stallion Imboden's Driftwood Bob, foaled in 1960, owned by Elvin Lippke of Merrill, Iowa. 

The October 27, 1968 edition of the Sioux City, Iowa Journal shed some light on Lindner's process. Royal Worcester had contacted the Lippkes to ask permission for a figurine to be made of their Appaloosa stallion, Imboden's Driftwood Bob. Once permission had been granted, Lindner received photographs of the horse from which she created a plasticine model. She brought the model with her when she visited the Lippke's farm to meet the real horse and put the finishing touches on the piece. 

https://appaloosaterritory.com/Articles/tentative8301.html

RW3880 American Saddle Horse, 1971. Limited Edition of 500

A whiteware example of the Royal Worcester American Saddle Horse,
courtesy of Kirsten Wellman. 

I have not been able to find information about the origins of this figurine, or whether it was inspired by a real horse. No real horse name is listed for it in the reference books, and there are no newspaper articles detailing its story. But since he's an American Saddle Horse (Saddlebred), and came out the same year as the next horse, here are a couple of photos. 

RW3882 Palomino "Yellow Straw, 1971, Limited Edition of 750

Lindner's graceful Palomino was inspired by the Palomino stallion Yellow Straw, owned by Willard and Dorothy Beanland of Hidden Hills, in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles County, California.  The figurine was only available in the US. 

The only Palomino by that name I've been able to find a pedigree for (so far), is a Quarter Horse that doesn't have any ownership information available online. 

Yellow Straw, owned by Willard and Dorothy Beanland of Hidden Hills, California. Source: Internet Archive, The Complete Encyclopedia of Horses by M. Eugene Ensminger.

Willard Beanland was well-known as one of the founders of the Palomino Horse Association, along with Jim Fagan and Dick Halliday. Several of their best-known Palominos were registered American Saddlebreds. The Beanlands were famous for riding the Palominos with ornate silver-mounted tack in more than 30 Tournament of Roses Parades, as well as in other parades and horse shows in Southern California. 

Dorothy Beanland aboard Mare O'Gold and Willard Beanland on Harvest Sun,
in the July 15, 1946 edition of the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News.

It isn't difficult to imagine Doris Lindner creating her design for the Royal Worcester Palomino with a parade horse in mind! 

______

Here's a link to my previous blog post about Saltmarsh Silvercrest, the Percheron stallion from England that inspired another design by Doris Lindner: 

https://modelhorsehistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/royal-worcester-percheron-saltmarsh.html

Kirsten Wellman, who kindly loaned photos for this post, has an excellent blog: https://modelhorsecollectibility.blogspot.com/