Peggy

Peggy is a strong, sweet-tempered mare whose awkward gait reflects not a lack of willingness but the demands placed on a horse built for a shorter stride. In her account to Black Beauty, a good first home gives way to a farmer’s insistence on speed, and repeated whipping alters her way of going. Her later life with two women who want a safe horse offers a pointed contrast: in the right work, she can move steadily and appear content.

Identity and Introduction

After another horse is disabled, Peggy is often put in the carriage with Black Beauty. She stands in the next stall and is described as strong and well made, with a bright dun coat, fine dappling, and a dark-brown mane and tail. She is not highly bred, but she is pretty, remarkably willing, and gentle-tempered. An anxious look in her eye, however, suggests that something troubles her.

On their first outing together, Black Beauty notices that her pace is irregular: she alternates between a trot and a canter for several strides, then makes a small forward bound. The movement unsettles the horse pulling beside her. When Black Beauty asks about it, Peggy explains that she knows her pace is poor but does not consider it a choice. Although she stands nearly as tall as he does, her legs above the knee are about three inches shorter, limiting the length of her stride. She wishes she could change her build, locating the source of her difficulties in her own body.

Work, Pace, and the Making of Her Gait

Peggy’s history complicates that self-blame. With her first master, a young country clergyman with two churches some distance apart, she went at a regular trot. He had plenty of work to do, but did not scold or whip her for failing to go faster. She remembers him as kind and fond of her. When he had to leave for a large town, she was sold to a farmer, and the conditions of her work changed.

The farmer cared more about speed than good horses or good driving. Peggy tried to go as fast as she could, but he continued to whip her. Under that pressure, she developed the shuffling pace that Black Beauty finds so uncomfortable. On market nights, the farmer stayed late at an inn and then drove home at a gallop. One dark night, a wheel struck a heavy object in the road and overturned the gig. The farmer was thrown out and injured; Peggy’s account marks the accident as the end of her time with him, a separation she does not regret.

Her experience makes the cause of her altered gait social as well as physical. Peggy describes short legs as the source of her troubles, but Black Beauty recognizes the broader pattern: slow-paced horses are made to work beside faster ones, and the whip falls on those unable to match the demanded speed. The same mare who once kept a regular trot becomes an awkward mover under a pace imposed on her. Her story therefore distinguishes her willing character from the movement that other people treat as a fault.

Relationship with Black Beauty

Peggy’s conversation with Black Beauty is an exchange between working horses about the bodily consequences of human expectations. She explains her own history directly, while Black Beauty responds with sympathy because he understands how difficult it is for slower horses to be paired with faster ones. He cannot offer a remedy for her past, but he recognizes that her conduct has been shaped by circumstances rather than by unwillingness. Her anxious expression and her account of being whipped give the irregular gait a history that an observer might otherwise mistake for mere bad performance.

The episode also extends Black Beauty’s role as a witness. He first experiences Peggy’s pace as an inconvenience to a horse pulling beside her; after hearing her story, he can read it as evidence of pressure and mistreatment. The shift does not erase the practical difficulty of travelling with her. Instead, it supplies the missing context and turns a visible difference into testimony about the conditions that produced it.

Later Life and Significance

Peggy is often used in a phaeton, and some of the ladies like her for her gentleness. Later she is sold to two women who drive themselves and want a safe, good horse. Black Beauty subsequently sees her several times in the country, travelling at a steady pace and looking as contented as a horse could be. The change is specific: she has not become a different animal, but her work now suits her better.

Peggy’s return in the narrative answers, in practical terms, the trouble she described. The book does not say that her legs grew longer or that her earlier treatment was undone; it shows her moving steadily when she is no longer being forced to keep up with faster horses. Her good temper and safety, valued by her later owners, were present alongside the awkward gait that had brought her distress. Through Peggy, Black Beauty’s account stresses that a horse’s ability cannot be judged apart from the pace, handling, and work humans demand of it.