The Covent Garden Zebra

The year was 1811 and the place was Covent Garden. A dapper man in country garb stood beside a wooden tent as he yelled as loud as a vendor at those milling around in Empire fashion. He tapped the side of wooden shed and smiled unctuously.

“Come see the striped horse!” he crowed. “Sixpence a look!”

A woman broke away from her gaggle and approached him shyly. She was probably not much older than eighteen and on a shopping excursion for the ball season that was rapidly coming up. The man in rural garb smiled broadly as she handed him a shiny coin that was newly minted; picking up her hem she pushed the grubby blue curtain aside.

“All the way from Africa! Come and see the stripy horse! Sixpence a peek!”

It was smelly inside the small stable; someone had put a good deal of effort into painting a forest frieze on each plank wall but it was obscured by the gloom. The man outside had failed to install a glass lamp; without one the young socialite was forced to peer at the animal beyond the metal fence.

His dirty white hide was what caught her eye as it alternated with black in a lined pattern. The small zebra was standing on thin straw that reeked of damp as he looked back at her with a resigned expression on his long face. She noted that he was rather thin and that the dung pile in the corner was detracting from his unusual appearance.

He did look like a horse though and the young lady supposed that he was the beast of choice in the hot country from which he came. He seemed to perfectly tame at any rate; his search for hay was fruitless as he drew his dark muzzle around on the floor.

She took a step closer and raised her lace kerchief to her nose so that the scent of lavender smothered the one of ammonia; with her free hand she reached out to touch the weary zebra.

He looked up; one ear went back and then the other as the woman in white brushed his neck with her gloved hand. She found that hair felt like the horse that pulled her gig to church every Sunday; coarse and stiff and with a sheen of sweat. He eyed her warily and sniffed her naked arm like a curious puppy; feeling brave, she lifted her hand higher to pet him.

“Is he real-?”

“What a beast!”

“Someone painted him, Bertha-”

The crowd swarmed in and the started creature backed away from her as the people pressed against his cage; they were gormless and dubious and they pointed rudely at the poor zebra. He cowered in the corner and they laughed at him; someone had a handful of something and the young man in their company threw the pebbles one by one. A small spaniel barked from the bosom that it was being held to and the din became so loud that a loud bray was needed to shock and silence everybody; there was a rush of feet and the socialite found herself jostled out of the wooden tent and back into the cobbled fray that Covent Garden.

“How did you find him, Jane?”

“Was he fierce?”

She shook her head at her wide-eyed mother and aunt as they waited avidly.

“The man must have printed a pattern on him.” Jane told them. “Just like a motif on dress; stripped horses are impossible.”

And with a sad sigh they walked into the throng that was the seething London mob.