Of Cats, Cornflakes, and Crabbet Arabian Horses: The Improbable Lives of Hamilton and “Lady” Betty Bassett, breeder of ALILATT AHR 632

Tobi Lopez Taylor

This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on the Arabian Stallion Karonek, Penny Chenery and Secretariat, Hank the Cowdog, Man O’ War’s son By Hisself, Major-General Jonathan Burton, Fred Almy (the Cowboy Millionaire), and Doc Pardee. 

Many Arabian horse fanciers are familiar with the stallion *Raseyn, bred by England’s Crabbet Stud and imported to the United States in 1926 for breakfast cereal magnate W. K. Kellogg. *Raseyn became a noted sire of champions, and several mid-twentieth-century breeders based their programs on his bloodlines. These included Daniel Gainey, whose Gainey Fountainhead Arabians was spearheaded by the stallion Ferzon, a great-grandson of *Raseyn; John Rogers, whose *Raseyn daughters nicked spectacularly well with his senior sire *Serafix; and Sheila Varian, whose foundation sire Bay-Abi was a grandson of *Raseyn. 

*Raseyn with Arabian horse historian and author Gladys Brown Edwards. 

*Raseyn was not the only notable member of that 1926 Kellogg importation, whose members were selected by well-known horseman Carl Raswan (born Carl Schmidt). Arabian horse historian Gladys Brown Edwards has described this group as one of the most important importations of that era. However, one man who saw these horses—who called himself Hamilton “Horse” Bassett and was referred to as the “western representative” of the Horse Association of America—wrote to Kellogg’s son that this group of horses was an “ill judged” selection that “would be considered a joke if it was not so pitiable. You have been made ridiculous and the story of Kellogg’s Arabs will go down in history as an example of the greatest horse swindle of all time.” (Kudos to researcher Teresa Rogers for uncovering this information in the archives of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona.)

Ironically, it was Bassett who proved to be—if not an outright swindler—a serial fabricator of lies big and small. For starters, although Hamilton Bassett claimed at various times to be a native of New York, he was actually born Harry Dwight Bassett in Cincinnati, Ohio. Various sources describe him as a onetime newspaperman and an insurance agent. It is known that he participated in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Around 1904, when he was in his late 20s, Bassett made the acquaintance of the well-known Belgian opera singer Blanche Arral in Singapore, when both happened to be staying at the Raffles Hotel. 

Despite having no experience in the theatre business, Bassett convinced Arral that he should become her manager. (He also began billing himself as “Hérold Bassett.”) As she recalled, “Bassett mapped out an ambitious tour. He was full of confidence.” Arral then rented a villa outside Singapore and purchased a riding horse. She “went riding on the bridle paths and avenues around the villa. Bassett, who was a fine horseman, often joined me on these canters, full of talk about the projected tour and big ideas for launching me into the musical life of Asia and Australia.” (Blanche Arral, The Extraordinary Operatic Adventures of Blanche Arral, p. 266) Over the next few years they toured the Dutch East Indies, Australia, Tasmania, Fiji, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast.

The tour that Bassett laid out was indeed successful, and the two business partners became romantic partners as well. It’s unknown whether Bassett and Arral ever married—though numerous press reports referred to him as her husband. However, over the years, Arral’s romantic and professional relationship with Bassett deteriorated. She recalled that although “Bassett was my manager, he was young [about a decade younger than she], and sometimes our relations were more like those of mother and child.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 283) She also observed, “Though I had a manager, I felt that at the last I was really responsible for the whole company. One never can tell what men will do! Naïve and charming as children, they are off when most needed and usually return with some beautiful tale.”

By 1908, the relationship between Arral and Bassett appears to have become strictly business. During a stop in Fiji that year, they met a well-known author. Arral recalled that Bassett “was delighted at the acquaintance, for the man was Jack London, then at the pinnacle of his fame and the beau ideal of many young Americans. He and his wife were equally charming.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 287)  Arral claimed that London, author of The Call of the Wild, wanted to write the story of her life. That never happened, but a character named “Lucille Arral” makes a brief appearance in London’s book Smoke Bellew. Although Arral and London met only once, Bassett and London would cross paths again years later. 

In 1909, The Cat Review published an article by “Harold Bassett” claiming that Blanche Arral was the first person to bring a Siamese cat to the U.S., after she had visited Thailand on a concert tour. In actuality, the first documented Siamese cat had come to the U.S. many years earlier, when President Rutherford B. Hayes received “Siam” from the American Consul in Bangkok. Furthermore, between 1900 and 1903, eight registered Siamese cats were known to be in the U.S., none of them belonging to Arral. It is unknown whether Bassett genuinely believed what he wrote or if it was simply for publicity’s sake. 

In 1911, an American newspaper reported that Arral “returned to her home in Brussels a few weeks ago, after a very pleasant visit with her husband here [in the U.S]. Mr. Bassett had planned to return with her [to Brussels], but at the last moment the call of the business in which he is engaged proved too formidable to overlook, and he remained. He may visit her in Europe later in the winter.” (Extraordinary Adventures, p. 322) A year later, Arral was living in Orange, New Jersey, in a home with a “remarkable collection of Siamese cats,” wrote a reporter. Hamilton Bassett was not mentioned. Arral last sang in public in 1918, and she died in 1945 at age 80.

Blanche Arral with one of her Siamese cats. 

Before we leave Blanche Arral behind, it should be noted that when she appeared in Herve’s operetta Mam’zell Nitouche for the final time, in the rooftop auditorium of New York’s Century Theatre, a 27-year-old Polish singer named Ganna Walska performed between the acts. Walska would later marry wealthy industrialist Harold Fowler McCormick, the father-in-law of Anne McCormick, who established a very successful Arabian breeding program in the 1950s and imported the well-known Russian Arabian stallion *Naborr in 1963. 

As for Hamilton Bassett, sometime before 1915 he met a young Englishwoman named Elizabeth Burrell Grice, who reportedly came to the U.S. in 1902. She was born in 1889 in Blackburn, Lancashire, to George Grice, who worked as a tailor and a sack merchant, among other occupations, and Martha Burrell Grice, a housewife. 

In August 1915, the following article appeared in the Republican-Gazette of Gove City, Kansas, in which Elizabeth Grice (perhaps with Bassett’s help) had transformed herself into Lady Betty Emerson of London:

Lady Betty Emerson of London under aegis of Captain Hamilton Bassett, enroute to San Francisco and the Fair, stopped in Gove City, Kansas, Saturday. They are riding their ponies, “Peanuts” and “Popcorn” from New York to Frisco, and have one pack pony.

Lady Betty is a daughter of Sir Joseph Grice-Emerson, and is a noted adventuress and explorer. She has penetrated almost inaccessible regions of Africa in search for big game, is an author of distinction and owner of valuable mining lands in British Honduras [now Belize].

Captain Hamilton Bassett of Cincinnati was the first man to penetrate into Thibet [Tibet], and spent two years there. The Captain has lived seven years in China, two years in the South Seas, three years in India, and has visited many other parts of the globe.

 

Similar articles about the pair appeared in small-town newspapers in Illinois, Utah, and California, with Betty Bassett also styling herself as “Lady Betty Grice Emerson Bassett” and claiming that she was the daughter and granddaughter of two Members of Parliament, the fictitious Lord Emerson and Lord Grice. One 1915 article, titled “Seeks Valley of the Moon,” in the Salt Lake Telegram, noted that “Lady Betty” had been inspired by Jack London’s 1913 novel of that name, about a couple named Billy and Saxon Roberts, who wanted to leave modern society and live off the land, or, as Lady Betty put it, to “live out in the open, like Jack London’s girl in his Valley of the Moon.” In the novel, Billy and Saxon move to an area that is thought to be Sonoma Valley, California, north of San Francisco. Hamilton and Betty would also take up residence in California.

As for Hamilton, he was clearly not the first white man to visit Tibet; Europeans have traveled there since the 1600s. His remark, however, raises another connection to Ganna Walska, the singer who  married Harold Fowler McCormick. Walska’s sixth and last husband, the self-proclaimed  White Lama, Theos Bernard—who, like Bassett, inflated many of his achievements—claimed to be “the first white man ever to live in the lamaseries [monasteries] and cities of Tibet” and went on the lecture circuit at the same time as Carl Raswan, the man who Bassett claimed had made the  “ill judged” purchase of Crabbet Arabians for Kellogg. (For more on Raswan and Bernard, see Paul G. Hackett, Theos Bernard, The White Lama, p. 289) 

Hamilton Bassett must have kept in touch with Jack London after their meeting back in 1908, as a December 1915 article in the Petaluma, California Argus-Courier noted that “Lady Betty” and “her guide, Capt. Hamilton Bassett,” had lunch at Jack and Charmian London’s ranch near Glen Ellen, California. Less than a year later, Jack London died at age 40. Among the works published after his death was a short story written in 1916 titled “The Red One,” which appeared in The Cosmopolitan in 1918. Curiously, the main character is a scientist named Bassett who is beheaded at the end of the story. Thus, both Blanche Arral and Hamilton Bassett found their way into Jack London’s fiction!

Around 1916, Hamilton and Betty Bassett settled near San Luis Obispo, California. As of 1919, the Bassetts owned a number of horses, cattle, and hogs, and Hamilton got involved in the area’s first livestock show. By 1920, Hamilton was calling himself Hamilton “Horse” Bassett and had become the West Coast representative of the newly incorporated Horse Association of America. Just as he had been incorrect about the quality of the Kellogg importation, Bassett was likewise wrong about the future of horses in farming. As he told the Ogden Standard-Examiner in December 1920, “Ranchers need not worry about the tractor, the truck and the automobile. They have their uses and will be used, but for every one in use there is just that much more need for good horses.” 

A June 1920 article in the Sacramento Bee observed that Bassett was “a well known California livestock man and owns the White Triangle Ranch, where purebred Clydesdale horses are bred….[Bassett] is a thoroughly practical horseman, has traveled all over the world, is thoroughly familiar with breeding, rearing, breaking and use of horses, and is a well known writer who has been contributing to agricultural papers for many years.” (No evidence of Bassett’s pre-1920 agricultural writing has been found.)

Sometime in 1925, Hamilton Bassett was contacted by Levi H. Manning, former mayor of Tucson, Arizona, who wanted some well-bred Arabian breeding stock to upgrade the working horses on his Canoa Ranch, which at its height encompassed hundreds of thousands of acres. Manning bought five horses via the Bassetts, who traveled to Tucson to deliver them. (It is unclear if the Bassetts owned the horses outright or simply facilitated the sale.) The horses’ previous owners were Samuel C. Thomson of San Francisco and Frederic E. Lewis II of the Diamond Bar Ranch outside Los Angeles. The purchase consisted of the mare Shiloh (Letan x Sedjur) and the stallions El Jafil (*Ibn Mahruss x Sheba), Jarad (Ziki x Tamarinsk), Kalub (Ziki x Hasiker), and Saraband (Harara x Sedjur). Of the five, the only horse whose price was made public was Saraband, a paternal half-brother of W. K. Kellogg’s champion stallion Antez. Manning paid $3,000 for Saraband (or $52,000 today). 

Advertisement from the Arizona Agriculturalist, June 1926.

Until Manning’s purchase of these five horses, there were no purebred registered Arabian horses in Arizona, aside from W. K. Kellogg’s stallion Jadaan, who was on location in Yuma, Arizona, for only a few weeks in early 1926 while portions of the film The Son of the Sheik were filmed. Jadaan served as Rudolph Valentino’s mount, and in some more dangerous sequences was reportedly ridden by the previously mentioned Carl Raswan. (The next purebred registered Arabian to take up residence in Arizona after the Manning horses was the U.S. Remount stallion Faris [*Rizvan x *Balkis II], who stood at Arizona Senator Bert J. Colter’s ranch in Springerville in 1927. Unlike the Manning Arabians, Faris had no recorded offspring.)

In addition to the Arabians, the Bassetts sold Manning a McKinney-bred Standardbred mare named Owywa and some draft horses, including the Clydesdale stallion Chief Guardsman, which Betty Bassett had paid a mere $50 for at a dispersal sale in San Luis Obispo. The arrival of the Bassetts and the new Manning horses generated a lot of copy for Tucson’s two rival newspapers. As usual, Hamilton embellished his résumé; he was said to have “gained experience as a breeder in China” and to have spent a couple of years riding across Australia and New Zealand. (How he would have done that while managing the career of Blanche Arral is unclear.)

The one Arabian horse that the Bassetts kept for themselves was the mare Leila, bred by Samuel C. Thomson. Leila was described by H. H. Reese, the Kellogg Ranch manager, in a letter to Kellogg as “a mighty fine type….She is over 15.1 in height and is a very strong, full made mare….She also has ample quality with an excellent type of Arabian head.” 

Leila (El Jafil x Narkeesa)

In the spring of 1926, the Bassetts bred their mare Leila to Saraband, resulting in Saraband’s only known purebred foal, Alilatt, who was born in March 1927. Betty Bassett (who appears to have ditched the “Lady” title by the 1920s) was credited as her breeder. By 1930, Betty Bassett was boarding Leila and Alilatt at the Kellogg Ranch. She approached Reese about selling Leila (now 13) and Alilatt (a 3-year-old) to Kellogg for the extremely high price at the time of $6,000 ($5,000 for Leila and $1,000 for Alilatt). Betty also dropped a bombshell: she told Reese that she and Hamilton were getting a divorce, the mares belonged to her, and she could provide “a good, clear title” to them. Reese wrote to Kellogg that Betty didn’t think she could get Hamilton to “sign a statement that the mares belong to her, as she had not given Bassett any idea that she is leaving him, and to bring the subject up might cause him to get mad and refuse to sign.” Ultimately, Kellogg bought the two mares for Betty’s asking price, and she never did divorce Hamilton. (Thank you to Teresa Rogers for uncovering this information in the archives of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library)

Alilatt, Leila’s first foal, was soon sold to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst for $2,000. Even though she was reportedly not nearly as lovely as her mother, she became an excellent producer and is primarily responsible for the survival of this bloodline. Among Alilatt’s many champion descendants are the stallion Karonek, about whom more can be read here; Hariry Al Shaqab, U.S. National Champion Senior Stallion; two Darley Horse of the Year racing champions; and two recent Tevis Cup endurance winners. 

Leila then produced two colts by Hanad—Lanad and Haneil. The former was sold to Mexico, where he died not long after his arrival, and the latter was purchased by the Colombian government.

Lanad (Hanad x Leila)

 In 1936, Leila, now 19, was sold to Fred Vanderhoof for $300—a far cry from her 1930 sale price. Leila was in foal to the Kellogg stallion Ralet, and a filly, Lalet, was born in 1937. (Lalet had no offspring.) In 1939, Leila produced the colt Leidaan, by Jadaan, for Vanderhoof. Researcher Teri Cox called Leidaan a “top ranch horse.” Leila’s last foal, El Kunut, a colt by El Kumait, was born in 1940; he was bred by Leila’s final owner, A. W. Bramhall. Teri Cox notes that El Kunut became a champion in halter and performance. 

In 1939, Hamilton Bassett died from injuries he received after a colt he was riding reared and fell on him. As usual, his obituary made a highly unlikely claim—that Bassett was “one of the last surviving members of the crew of Jack London’s vessel, The Snark.” (Oakland Post Enquirer, June 29, 1939.) A book about the voyages of The Snark penned by London’s wife makes no mention of Bassett among the crew; furthermore, he would have been accompanying Blanche Arral on tour during that time.

Betty Bassett survived her husband by 17 years. After retiring as the national president of the Spanish-American War women’s auxiliary, in the late 1940s she was ordained as a minister in the Church of Religious Science, a denomination founded by Ernest Holmes in 1926.

At the Religious Science church she established in Hayward, California, she preached regularly for many years on such topics as “Victorious Living,” “Thought Emancipation,” and “God and the Businessman.” 

When Reverend Betty Bassett died in 1956, her obituary made no mention of her earlier incarnation as “Lady Betty Emerson,” her supposed father “Lord Emerson,” or even her valuable mining lands in Belize. Ironically, the obituary writer for the Oakland Tribune appears to have mistaken Reverend Betty for another Betty Bassett, an actress who performed on Broadway (once with Jack Benny), toured with Bronco Billy Anderson, and was brought to Hollywood in the 1930s by MGM mogul Samuel Goldwyn. 

I suspect that Reverend Betty—and Hamilton—wouldn’t have minded that slight embellishment to her life story. After all, as the newspaper editor said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  The Bassetts, as we’ve seen, invariably chose the legend.