33.
THE WIDOW’S ROSE
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN,
NEW YORK, 1950
On October 3, 1950, eight men wearing brown double-breasted jackets, buckskin riding breeches, and bicorne hats gathered at a New York pier as the American Importer docked. Standing a bit apart from the other riders, his lined face lit up with anticipation, was fifty-two-year-old Alois Podhajsky, who had arrived in the city a few days earlier on his first transatlantic flight. The weather was mild and the sky was bright blue. A few scattered clouds floated high above the New York skyline, which glittered at their backs. Behind the waiting riders, a throng of reporters and photographers clustered to photograph this moment: The famed white Lipizzaner stallions had come to America.
Soon the first stallion appeared on the gangplank, the polished brass of his leather halter jingling as his hooves thumped on the ramp. He raised his head, flicked his ears, and trumpeted his pink-and-black-speckled nostrils, taking in the clanging hubbub of the pier: belching steamships, noisy tugboats, and shouting dockworkers. Picking a familiar face out of the crowd, he lowered his head and let out a warm whinny. At the sight of his beloved Africa, Alois Podhajsky hurried to the horse’s side, whispering a word of greeting, then passing him a sugar lump and kissing him on the nose. Soon all fourteen of the stallions stood in a line, their coats gleaming in the bright afternoon sunshine. Around them, flashbulbs popped and reporters called out questions, but Podhajsky paid them little mind until he had finished his series of greetings. The friendly and intelligent stallions were pricking up their ears and looking around, seeming to mug for the cameras, while the uniformed riders, posing with the horses, tried to maintain dignified demeanors as the gaggle of the cameramen yelled out, “Smile!”
Dressed in a dark business suit and a gray fedora, the president of the American Horse Show Association, Brigadier General Alfred G. “Tubby” Tuckerman, was there to greet the visitors. He stopped to pose for a photograph with Africa, grasping the halter as Podhajsky offered the horse a carrot. Africa’s expression looked as if he were so amused by the whole scene that Podhajsky couldn’t help but break into a rare smile. Soon, the horses were loaded into vans and transported to the Kenilworth Riding School in nearby Rye, a suburb in Westchester County, to stretch their legs and warm up for their big American debut.
The next morning, more than fifty photographers showed up to watch the first schooling session. Riders put their horses through their paces while members of the press swarmed around, snapping pictures from all angles and calling out questions. By the end of the week, photos and rapturous articles had appeared across the nation, describing the dancing white stallions; a newsreel of the Lipizzaner demonstrating the airs above the ground sped around the world, the narration translated into twenty-eight different languages.
Since moving the horses to Wels in 1946, Podhajsky had painstakingly worked to gain fans for them, taking them to perform exhibitions in Switzerland and Ireland, even giving a demonstration ride in Wembley Stadium during the London Summer Olympics in 1948. Podhajsky had learned that the graceful magic woven by the white horses could win friends and influence faster than any human could ever hope to. Let them piaffe, passage, and pirouette. Let them courbette and capriole; the horses’ eloquent silent language turned out to be universal. This was Podhajsky’s strategy to keep the school alive.
FOUR WEEKS AFTER ARRIVING in New York, on November 6, 1950, Alois Podhajsky stood in a receiving line in the sweeping Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, one of the city’s most elegant establishments, as the guest of honor at the National Horse Show Ball. The ornate hall bubbled with a brilliant collection of military officers, international riders, and members of New York society who crowded the wide expanse of polished floor and the two levels of balustrades. Women bedecked in couture evening dresses and men sporting scarlet riding jackets with hunt club pins on their lapels lined up to express their best wishes to Colonel Podhajsky.
The colonel, solemn and courtly, gave no hint that his mind was elsewhere: in the basement stables of Madison Square Garden, where the white stallions were being readied for tonight’s dress rehearsal. Podhajsky had been instructed to include all of the airs above the ground in rapid succession, followed by the school quadrille, in the truncated space of twenty-five minutes; he worried about the technical difficulty of achieving this in an unfamiliar arena under the flash of spotlights. He longed to be with the horses right now, walking among them, attuning himself to their humors, instead of making chitchat with this seemingly endless line of guests. The scheduling inside Madison Square Garden was so tight that they had to wait until after the ice had melted from a figure-skating performance before the arena was ready for dress rehearsal. Determined to give his stallions a chance to become acquainted with the arena, he was going to bow out of dinner and make a mad dash across town to hurriedly mount up.
The next night, thirteen stallions assembled in the cramped schooling area in the basement of Madison Square Garden, their white coats glowing in the close, dusty air. One stallion, Africa, was missing from the lineup. Podhajsky’s favorite had contracted a fever. He would recover, but tonight he needed to rest. Instead, Podhajsky’s second mount, Pluto, would have to do double duty, taking on all of Africa’s roles as well as his own. Podhajsky flitted nervously among the horses, giving the grooms instructions for minor adjustments, offering a reminder or two to the riders and a reassuring whisper to each horse.
Seated in the arena above them, a crowd of more than twenty thousand people had gathered to watch the show. In the reserved boxes at ringside, men and women in evening dress chatted softly in expectation of the white stallions’ entrance, while up in the cheaper seats, crowds of spectators waited, completely unaware of what kind of show the Spanish Riding School of Vienna would perform. The disorganized sounds of the ringside string orchestra warming up added to the hubbub. During the previous night’s rehearsal, Verena Podhajsky had sat with the string orchestra, explaining to the musicians exactly how to time the music to the horses’ movements. In the center of the vast arena, jeeps circled hurriedly, deftly removing the fences used for the jumping classes, then running a harrow to smooth out the sandy surface. Finally, the ring crew set out tubs of flowers to mark a square for the stallions’ performance.
PODHAJSKY COULD FEEL PLUTO’S coiled nervous energy as he prepared to enter the large unfamiliar space, made spookier (for horses) by the uneven lighting that striped the ground with shadows. Podhajsky stroked the stallion on the neck to soothe him, tightened his fingers on the reins, and closed his lower legs around the horse’s barrel. This stallion had cowered under a hail of bombs in Vienna under siege; he had accepted reduced rations when food was scarce; he had put up with rattling across war-torn Austria in an unadorned boxcar and stood without panicking during the horror of an unsheltered air raid outside a train station. Through all of that, one man had stayed with him. One man had been there to reassure him, to watch over him, to ride him, and to communicate with him in his own silent language.
As the pair entered the enormous arena, the bright lights made the horse’s white coat glow as if lit from within. The babble of twenty thousand people was swiftly replaced by an expectant silence. Pluto tensed; he flicked a single ear back, intent upon his rider. From the orchestra at ringside came the familiar strains of a Viennese waltz, and the pair broke into a canter. Despite the strange surroundings, the unfamiliar sounds and sights and smells that greeted them at every turn, Pluto and Podhajsky listened only to each other. The pair seemed to float upon the air. At last, they halted in the dead center of the arena, and as the strains of music ended, a collective spellbound hush replaced it—until at last the quiet was broken by a thunderclap of applause. The rest of the program passed in a carefully choreographed blur as stallions and riders perfectly executed their complicated routines. The crowd watched in awe while the choreographed white stallions flew into the air or posed as still as porcelain statues.
At the end of the program, the announcer came on with a special piece of news. An honored guest had come to watch the horses perform.
Podhajsky and Pluto rode at the head of a single column of horses and riders, with each white stallion an even ten paces behind. When they reached the center of the arena, they pulled abreast and halted. The ring crew rolled a red carpet out onto the tanbark, then General Tuckerman emerged from the sidelines, escorting a small elderly woman whose graying hair was swept up in an elegant coif. She walked slowly toward the center of the arena, her hand resting on the general’s arm.
Podhajsky and Pluto rode toward her. Halfway across the arena, the colonel halted and dismounted, leaving Pluto unattended as he approached the honored guest on foot. Pluto followed his master for a few paces, stopped, and looked back at the horses, as if to say, “What am I supposed to do?” With twenty thousand pairs of eyes trained upon him, Pluto stood perfectly still, his reins looping loose, and waited. Suddenly, the horse all but disappeared. The entire arena was plunged into darkness as a single spotlight encircled the two people standing in the arena: Colonel Podhajsky and Bea Patton, the general’s widow.
In the dark, the crowd was utterly still.
“I am very happy to be able to show you the horses that General Patton, a great American soldier, saved for Austria,” Podhajsky said.
“I would give anything if only my husband could be standing here instead of me, for he loved the Lipizzaner so much,” Mrs. Patton replied.
As an explosion of photographers’ flashbulbs lit up around them, Mrs. Patton handed Podhajsky a single red rose.
BEA PATTON PRESENTS A SINGLE ROSE TO ALOIS PODHAJSKY AT THE NATIONAL HORSE SHOW AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, 1950.