New Year

New Year in Black Beauty is not a holiday for cabmen and their horses but a busy season that sharpens the contrast between public celebration and private labor. On New Year’s evening, Black Beauty and Jerry Barker wait for hours in cold, wet weather while passengers enjoy a card party; the delay ends with a difficult fare and hard-earned payment. Jerry’s cough and subsequent dangerous illness make the episode more than a complaint about bad manners: the holiday work presses upon the health of both driver and horse.

A Working Season, Not a Holiday

The account sets Christmas and New Year against the rhythms of cab work. Parties, balls, and places of amusement bring more business, but the increased demand means late hours and long waits. Drivers and horses may stand outside in rain or frost while people inside dance and enjoy their festivities. The cabman on his box and the horse at the shafts occupy the neglected side of the same seasonal scene: their waiting makes other people’s leisure possible.

Black Beauty is assigned most of the evening work because he is accustomed to standing, while Jerry is concerned that Hotspur might catch cold. The distinction shows how work is divided according to the horses’ conditions, even as neither horse nor driver is free of the season’s demands. During Christmas week the work runs late and Jerry’s cough is already bad. Polly Barker waits up for him and comes out with a lantern, anxious when he returns. Her repeated presence gives the festive period a domestic counterpart: while customers remain out at parties, someone at home is watching for the driver who must bring them back.

The broader cab economy helps explain why such waiting is not an isolated inconvenience. Black Beauty contrasts Jerry, who owns his horse and cab and has a direct interest in treating the horse well, with drivers whose horses belong to large cab owners. Those drivers must first earn the daily rental before they can provide for themselves. Seedy Sam describes a charge of eighteen shillings a day for a cab and two horses, with nine shillings to be earned from each horse before the driver makes anything for his household. He says he has worked fourteen or sixteen hours a day and gone ten or twelve weeks without a Sunday. New Year’s late work belongs to a system in which time, rest, and the animal’s strength are all under pressure.

The New Year’s Eve Wait

On New Year’s evening, Jerry takes two gentlemen to a house in one of the West End squares. They leave at nine and instruct him to return at eleven, warning that the card party might keep them a few minutes longer. Jerry is punctual and arrives as the clock strikes eleven. The quarters chime, then midnight strikes, but the door remains closed. The promised short delay has become an open-ended wait, with the driver and horse left outside and no shelter.

The weather worsens. Sharp, driving sleet comes with the wind, and the cold reaches both horse and driver. Jerry gets down from his box to pull one of Black Beauty’s cloths farther over his neck. He walks back and forth stamping his feet, then beats his arms for warmth; the effort brings on more coughing, so he sits at the bottom of the cab with his feet on the pavement, partly sheltered. The small acts of care and endurance unfold against the clock’s quarter-hour chimes. At half past twelve, after no one has appeared, Jerry rings and asks the servant whether he will still be needed. The answer is yes, and he is told to stay because the party will soon be over.

The door finally opens at a quarter past one. The two gentlemen get into the cab without apologizing for the delay and direct Jerry to drive them nearly two miles. Black Beauty’s legs are numb with cold, and he fears he may stumble. When the passengers complain about the fare, Jerry charges no more than he is owed and accepts no less: the two hours and a quarter of waiting must be paid for. The payment is earned under conditions that make its cost plain. The fare settles the account, but it does not return the time or warmth taken from horse and driver.

The Morning After

The work ends late, but Jerry’s care for Black Beauty continues when they get home. Though he can hardly breathe and speaks in a hoarse whisper, he rubs the horse down and goes up to the hayloft for extra straw. Polly brings a warm mash, and the stable is locked for the night. The contrast is telling: Jerry has been kept waiting by passengers who offer no apology, yet at home he still attends to the animal who has borne the journey with him.

It is late the next morning before anyone comes to the stable. Harry cleans and feeds the horses and sweeps the stalls, quietly restoring them as if it were Sunday. His silence and the unusual stillness signal that the household has changed. At noon he returns with Dolly, who is crying. From what they say, Black Beauty understands that Jerry is dangerously ill and that the doctor considers it a bad case. For two days the stable sees only Harry and sometimes Dolly; Polly remains with Jerry, who must be kept very quiet. Governor Grant visits to ask after him, choosing to speak with Harry rather than go into the house. The narrative carries the night’s exposure forward into its consequence without claiming more about Jerry’s illness than the household knows at this point.

Seasonal Contrast and Significance

New Year functions as a measure of whose time counts. The passengers can prolong their evening without attending to the people and animal waiting outside; Jerry and Black Beauty must absorb the delay, the cold, and the physical strain. Their punctual arrival at eleven is answered by hours of uncertainty, and the eventual payment cannot erase that imbalance. The scene makes the holiday’s hidden labor visible through concrete details: the clock striking midnight, the cloth drawn over the horse’s neck, Jerry’s cough, and the fare charged for waiting.

The episode also sits within a book that distinguishes better and worse conditions of cab work. Jerry’s ownership gives him reason to protect Black Beauty and Hotspur, and his concern appears in the cloth and warm mash. Yet even this comparatively considerate arrangement offers no exemption from late holiday work or illness. Elsewhere, drivers speak of low fares, daily rental charges, excessive hours, and the absence of regular rest; under Nicholas Skinner, Black Beauty later encounters a stable with no Sunday rest at all. These contrasts make New Year part of a larger account of how commercial schedules distribute hardship. The festive calendar promises leisure to passengers, while for those who carry them it can mean longer hours and colder waits.