Trix and Over the Moon
Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York & London, 1908, illus F Walter Taylor, 164
pp.
Reprinted numerous times.
Trix runs the farm: she is convinced she can do pretty well anything she turns her
mind to,
and she is determined to prove that Over the Moon can be a fine horse. Colts
from that
breeding are notorious for their bolshiness however, and in the end, tragedy
results.
Amélie Rives' Trix and Over-the-Moon is a very early American horse book, written
in 1908. It's not a story told by a horse, like Black Beauty; what it is in fact
is a horse story with what came to be a traditional plot: girl (or woman in this
case) buys tricky horse; tries to school horse; aims at showing horse successfully.
Amélie Rives, the author, was a god-daughter of Robert E Lee, and was born in 1863.
She spent most of her life in America's South, on her family's estate near Charlottesville.
She was married to, and divorced the wealthy John Armstrong Chanler, and then married
Prince Pierre Troubetskoy, a Russian. Her first book, The Quick or the Dead, scandalised
America with its portrayal of a young widow pondering re-marriage shortly after the
death of her husband. Whether Trix and Over-the-Moon caused any scandal, I do not
know. It would certainly pull any modern reader up short.
Trix is Mrs Beatrix Bruce, married to Sidney Bruce. They live in Virginia, where
Trix achieves epics of organisation running the farm - and I mean epics. I really
don't know how she does it. This is a description of her morning routine: and it's
not even the whole morning:
"It was early in the morning, and yet Trix had set out three other shrubs, superintended
the planting of half a dozen trees, seen to the strawberry bed, overhauled the stable
and dairy and written about 50 checks. The day was yet before her, she felt, and
the day would be full..... Later there would be Tim and his spelling-lesson, her
new habit-skirt, the colts, the farm, that man from Barboursville to see about the
contract for timber in Hickroy Mountain, her runabout to varnish - above all, the
sick mare to see after."
The amazing Trix is of course an accomplished horsewoman, and horses are her main
love. She buys a colt decended from the stallion Orion, whom she eventually calls
Over-the-Moon. The Orion colts are known for their suspect temper, and everyone save
Trix sees something bad in the colt, though his outrages against discipline are relatively
minor. The training does not go to plan however, and those about Trix soon come
to believe she is in mortal danger. This leads to the death of her beloved horse.
Finding the book: certainly findable reasonably cheaply, and can also be got as
a print-on-demand.
Sources and links:
Susanna Haswell Rowson on Amelie Rives
My review of Trix and Over the Moon
