King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry

First published: 1948; illustrated

Type of work: Adventure tale

Themes: Animals and travel

Time of work: The twentieth century and the seventeenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: In the present, Kenilworth Park, Windsor, Ontario; in the past, Morocco, France, and England

Principal Characters:

• Agba, a mute horseboy who is sent with his favorite horse, Sham, first to France and later to England
• Sham, an Arabian horse
• Signor Achmet, the head groom in the service of the Sultan of Morocco
• Cook, at the French Royal Palace, who is jealous of Agba and sells Sham in Paris
• The Carter, an abusive man who purchases Sham
• Jethro Coke, a Quaker from England, who buys Sham from Carter
• Mistress Cockburn, Jethro Coke’s housekeeper and cook
• Roger Williams, the kindly keeper of the Red Lion Inn
• Mistress Williams, Roger’s coarse wife
• Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who visits prisoners at Newgate Gaol and discovers Agba there
• Earl of Godolphin, the son-in-law of the duchess
• Titus Twickerham, the head groom of the earl’s stables

The Story

King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian is not the usual maudlin animal story. By opening her story in the twentieth century and then moving into a lengthy flashback reverting to a time two hundred years earlier, Marguerite Henry gives her work a historical scope. Also, in the narrative’s movement from North America to Africa to Europe, the setting achieves an international panorama.

The two stories of the plot are inseparable—the story of Sham, who is to become the great Godolphin Arabian, the progenitor of many of the world’s greatest racing horses, and that of the mute horseboy Agba, who never wavers in his love and devotion for Sham. From the birth of Sham, named for the sun, in the royal stables in Morocco, until Sham’s death in England years later, the two are practically inseparable. The two, a frail human and a spirited horse, journey from one country to another, experiencing many hardships and few joys, but always supported by their mutual affection.

That this story will contain both pain and success is foretold by the emblems Agba discovers on the newborn foal—the white spot on the hind heel, which stands for swiftness, and the wheat ear on the chest, which stands for evil days ahead. Ill luck does haunt them on their journey. The captain of the vessel, who is taking the six purest-bred stallions in the Kingdom of Morocco as a gift to the young King of France, Louis XV, pockets the money he has been sent to buy corn and barley for the horses. The prize horses arrive at the royal palace gaunt and starving and are ridiculed because of their small stature. To the humiliation of the Moroccans, these noble creatures are assigned as workhorses to transport supplies for the French Army or, in the case of Sham, to drive the royal cook to the market.

After Sham’s return to vigor, he shows his resentment toward the cook by capricious behavior. Seeking his revenge, the cook takes Sham to the Horse Fair in Paris and sells him to a mean carter of wood. Agba searches for Sham, comes upon the carter beating a horse, and senses that it is Sham. Agba offers to work for the carter at night without pay so he can groom and care for Sham; during the day Agba works at the market to earn money for food for the animal. One day the carter is cruelly forcing Sham to pull an oversize load of wood up an icy hill, Sham’s good-luck omen, the white spot, comes into play. A stately Englishman, Jethro Coke, steps forward and offers to buy the abused horse; within a week Sham and Agba are settled in England. The power of the wheat ear seems to be effaced.

For a time Agba and Sham enjoy Coke’s kindness and that of his housekeeper, Mistress Cockburn, who, besides providing Agba with good food, teaches him English. Unfortunately, Coke’s daughter is married to a stupid young man, Benjamin Biggle. Sham throws Biggle when he tries to ride, and Coke’s daughter insists that the horse must go. To keep peace in the family, Coke sells the horse to Roger Williams, keeper of the Red Lion Inn, who he thinks will be kind to Agba and Sham.

Mister Williams is kind, but his wife becomes hysterical every time she sees Agba and insists her husband must get rid of him. Sham remains at the Williamses’, and the spirited horse is broken by a trainer. The homeless Agba wanders around the countryside, until one night he decides to visit Sham in the Williamses’ stable. He is discovered by the vicious Mistress Williams, who accuses him of being a horse thief and orders him sent to Newgate Gaol. Jail conditions are horrible, but a far greater tragedy is caused by the warder, who, in searching Agba, destroys the pedigree papers for Sham and steals the amulets that Agba has in a bag around his neck.

Weeks later, the kind Mistress Cockburn decides to visit Agba at the Red Lion; much to her dismay, she finds that he is in prison. In a chance encounter, she meets the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who visits and helps needy prisoners. They are able to intervene in Agba’s behalf, and the duchess’ son-in-law, the Earl of Godolphin, rescues the broken Sham and takes horse and boy to the Gog Magog stables.

Titus Twickerham, the head groom at Gog Magog, distresses Agba because he sees Sham’s future, not as a racehorse, but as a workhorse. The king of Gog Magog is a big stallion called Hobgoblin; he is treated royally because the earl hopes that he will breed the best line of horses in the world. The day a beautiful white mare, Lady Roxana, who is to be mated with Hobgoblin, arrives, Agba causes a crisis. When Hobgoblin is being brought out, Agba opens the door of Sham’s stall; in a battle between the two stallions, Sham emerges the victor, and Roxana and Sham mate. The earl banishes Agba and Sham to the dismal swampland of Wicken Fen.

After two years, Lath, the son of Sham and Roxana, who had been left to grow on his own without the benefit of training, jumps the fence and proves his worth by outrunning all the other stallions. The earl immediately orders that Sham be brought back to Gog Magog to sire other racers. Sham is given the honored stall of Hobgoblin, and the earl bestows on him his own name, the Godolphin Arabian.

Having experienced a financial setback, the earl enters three of Sham’s sons, Lath, Cade, and Regulus, in a race at Newmarket. All three win their respective races, the Earl of Godolphin is handsomely rewarded, and Sham and Agba are honored by Queen Caroline.

Context

Marguerite Henry won the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind in 1949. This book could and does stand on its own merits, but it is certainly enhanced by the superb illustrations of Wesley Dennis. The delicate and sensitive black-and-white ink wash and water-color illustrations tell the story through drawings and add to the reader’s enjoyment of the book.

Henry wrote so many horse and animal stories, and won so many awards for them, that she was almost her own greatest competitor. She won the Junior Scholastic Gold Seal Award of the Friends of Literature for Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1945), in 1948; the William Allen White Award for Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1953), in 1956; the Sequoyah Children’s Book Award for Black Gold (1957), in 1959; the Society of Midland Author’s Clara Ingram Judson Award for Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio (1960), in 1961; and the Western Heritage Award for Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West (1966), in 1967.

At the end of King of the Wind, Henry includes an impressive list of books and libraries consulted. She also has firsthand information about horses from her own colt named Misty, which she obtained in an unusual fashion. She had received a letter about a legend of Spanish ponies that had been washed into the sea, centuries ago, when a Spanish galleon was wrecked on a hidden reef. Today, the descendants of these ponies run wild on Assateague Island, off the coast of Virginia and Maryland. Once a year, on Pony Penning Day, oystermen and clamdiggers from nearby Chincoteague Island round up the wild ponies and drive them into the sea and to their own island, where they are sold at auction. Henry, with illustrator Dennis, went to the auction in search of a story. She returned with the seeds of the story Misty of Chincoteague (1947), and with a colt called Misty.

Besides her animal stories, Henry has written two books on the childhood of famous Americans, Robert Fulton: Bay Craftsman (1945) and Benjamin West and His Cat, Grimalkin (1947). At least two of Henry’s books have been made into films: In 1961 Misty of Chincoteague was made into a film, Misty, by Twentieth Century-Fox, and in 1966 Stephen F. Booth filmed Brighty of the Grand Canyon, in a film by the same title.

Henry’s special gift of language and storytelling has enabled her to create animal stories that are enjoyed by readers of all ages and that have established her as one of the outstanding writers of young adult literature.