Hares

Hares are presented in Black Beauty chiefly as wild animals pursued for sport, not as characters with sustained individual histories. Their most consequential appearance is in a hunt witnessed by the young Black Beauty: one hare’s flight through the meadow becomes the immediate occasion for the deaths of a horse and a rider. The scene gives the hunted animal little control over what happens, but makes its pursuit the center of a pointed contrast between the hunters’ excitement and the damage left in their wake.

Identity and Setting

The first hare is not named or described as an individual beyond being frightened and fleeing. Duchess, Black Beauty’s mother, tells the colts that the hounds have found a hare and that, if the hunt comes their way, they will see it. When Black Beauty asks which hare, the old riding horse explains that it may be one of the local hares from the woods; to the dogs and riders, any hare they find will serve as quarry. That observation establishes how the animal is treated in the episode: its particular identity matters less to the hunt than the pursuit itself.

The scene takes place in early spring, after a slight overnight frost, with mist still hanging over the woods and meadows. The young horses are feeding at the lower end of their field when they hear the hounds. They move to the upper part of the field, where they can watch across the hedge, while Duchess and the old riding horse recognize what the distant noise means. The hare belongs to this landscape of fields, woods, and hedges, but the hunt carries human riders and dogs across those boundaries and into the animals’ pasture.

The Pursuit

The hounds first race through a neighboring field of young wheat. When they lose the scent, they spread out and search the ground; the old horse suggests that the hare may escape. The dogs soon take up the chase again and run back toward the meadow, heading for the high bank and hedge above the brook. Black Beauty’s account follows the pursuit from the colts’ vantage point, where the sounds and speed of the hunt first seem exciting: the young horses want to gallop after the riders.

The hare, wild with fear, passes the horses and makes for the woods. The hounds follow over the bank and across the stream, with several riders jumping their horses after them. The hare tries to pass through the fence, cannot get through, and turns toward the road; the pursuing dogs catch it before it can escape. A huntsman calls them off. The action is brief, and the hare’s attempt to flee gives way to the riders’ successful pursuit. The narrative does not give the animal a voice or a later fate beyond its death, but its movement determines the route that leads the hunt over the brook.

The Cost of the Hunt

While the young Black Beauty is absorbed in the pursuit, two horses have fallen near the brook. One is struggling in the water and the other lies on the grass. One rider gets out of the stream; the other, young George Gordon, remains still. His identity and the outcome are learned after the immediate scene: he is the only son of Squire Gordon, and is carried to the house. The hare’s death is thus set beside a human death and the serious consequences for the horses that have jumped after the hounds.

The black horse is Rob Roy, whom Duchess has known for years and considers a good horse without vice. A farrier finds that one of his legs is broken, and the horse is shot. The narrator does not know what happened to Rob Roy until that moment, and Duchess is deeply troubled; she never again goes to that part of the field. The later funeral procession for young Gordon, with a succession of black coaches and black horses beneath the tolling church bell, confirms that he too has died. The aftermath makes clear that the hunt did not end when the hounds were called off: its consequences continue in the loss of both horse and rider.

Narrative Significance

Duchess does not join the colts in saying the fallen rider deserved his fate. Instead, she objects to turning an animal’s pursuit into sport when it often injures people and horses, damages fields, and is undertaken for a hare, fox, or stag that could be obtained more easily by other means. Her response shifts the scene from spectacle to judgment. The hare is not blamed for fleeing, and the young Black Beauty’s initial eagerness to follow the hunt is set against his mother’s wider understanding of what the chase costs.

The episode also shows what the animal-autobiographical form makes visible. Black Beauty observes the hunt from a horse’s position and reports what the human participants’ excitement overlooks: the frightened quarry, the horses’ falls, and the grief that follows. The hare is not developed into an individual character, and the account does not claim knowledge of its thoughts. Instead, the narration makes its flight consequential while keeping its vulnerability in view. By ending the sequence with the funeral and the narrator’s reflection that all this happened for one hare, the book turns the animal from disposable quarry into the measure of a disproportionate loss.