CHARACTER
Horse: A Novelby Geraldine Brooks

Richard Ten Broeck

Richard Ten Broeck

Quick Facts

A northern-born racing impresario and gambler, Richard Ten Broeck owns the Metairie Race Course in New Orleans and becomes the controlling force in the lives of Jarret Lewis and the colt he renames Lexington. First appears at the Meadows dinner where he engineers the purchase of both horse and boy. Key relationships: Jarret (enslaved trainer he exploits), Lexington (his supreme asset), Willa Viley (ally-turned-rival). His every move exposes the transactional logic of a society built on Race, Slavery, and Systemic Racism.

Who They Are

A polished capitalist with a gambler’s nerve, Ten Broeck is the novel’s cool-blooded strategist who turns horses, races, and people into instruments of reputation and profit. He spots the colt Darley’s potential, rebrands him “Lexington,” and acquires Jarret to safeguard the investment. Ten Broeck’s gentlemanly surface—steady, courteous, unflappable—conceals a ruthless clarity: worth equals utility. Rather than “develop,” he is slowly revealed, his civility functioning as a sheath for a blade: charm masking the commodification of everything, including the boy whose talent he prizes.

Personality & Traits

Ten Broeck blends genteel polish with predatory calculation. He knows how to read a room, a race, and a ledger—and he never lets sentiment interfere with leverage.

  • Strategic ambition: He conceives national-scale events like the Great State Post Stakes to elevate himself and Metairie, and he turns Lexington into a brand to cement his legacy.
  • Cunning and manipulative: At the Meadows dinner, he and Willa Viley corner Dr. Warfield by invoking racetrack bylaws to force a sale—proof that he wields rules as weapons rather than guardrails.
  • Pragmatic opportunism: A self-professed “free labor man” who buys Jarret anyway, he treats the boy as risk management for Lexington; he will even consider betting against his own horse if it improves the return.
  • Polite control: He invites Jarret into his carriage and calls him “deputy trainer,” but uses courtesy to keep a firm grip on his “asset,” reminding Jarret of ownership precisely when kindness might be mistaken for consent.
  • Complex morality: He provides a tutor and opportunities, yet punctures any illusion of mutuality by calling Jarret “my slave,” aligning benevolence with bondage.
  • Appearance as strategy: As Thomas J. Scott notes, he looks “more in the style of a classics professor than a prince of hazard”—“cool, quiet,” slim, immaculate—an image that reassures marks and rivals alike while disguising his appetite for risk.

Character Journey

Ten Broeck arrives as a suave mystery and leaves as a clarified force: the embodiment of market logic. Early on, his attention flatters Jarret; compared with life at Woodburn, the Metairie world seems to offer mobility, education, and respect for skill. Step by step, however, his decisions reveal the cost. He runs an unfit Lexington in a high-stakes rematch and coolly contemplates profiting from a loss. When Lexington goes blind, his response is instantaneous and transactional: sell the horse—and Jarret with him. The illusion of mentorship collapses into the fact of ownership. In the afterword, he dies “forsaken and alone, but with no taint of dishonor upon his name,” a final irony that indicts a code of “honor” built to sanctify profit and conceal harm.

Key Relationships

  • Jarret Lewis: Ten Broeck sees Jarret’s genius with Lexington and acquires him as an extension of the horse. He offers proximity, a tutor, and the title of “deputy trainer,” but punctuates every privilege with reminders of property—most starkly in moments of crisis, when “my slave” reasserts hierarchy. For Jarret, Ten Broeck is a gilded cage: advancement without autonomy.

  • Lexington (Darley): Ten Broeck renames the colt to craft an American legend and to fix ownership through language. He will risk Lexington’s body for spectacle, money, and rivalry, even wagering against him when the odds point that way. When blindness ends the horse’s racing career, Ten Broeck converts legacy back into cash, proving that affection never outweighs utility.

  • Willa Viley: Their alliance fractures over ethics of the turf. Viley invokes an old Southern honor code, calling Ten Broeck a “blackleg” for betting against his own horse. Ten Broeck’s modern capitalism—profit over honor—wins the argument in practice, even as it costs him allies.

Defining Moments

Ten Broeck’s pivotal acts are master classes in power exercised through manners, money, and rules.

  • Renaming Darley to Lexington

    • What happens: He rechristens the colt to craft a distinctly American identity.
    • Why it matters: Naming is ownership; he brands the horse (and by extension Jarret’s labor) as marketable legend, tying identity to profit.

  • The Meadows dinner acquisition

    • What happens: He weaponizes racetrack bylaws to pressure Dr. Warfield into selling the horse—and, soon after, Jarret.
    • Why it matters: He shows how institutions coded as “gentlemanly” can be manipulated to enforce bondage and extract value.

  • Intercepting Jarret’s escape

    • What happens: He halts Jarret and reframes capture as kindness, folding the boy back into his enterprise.
    • Why it matters: Benevolence is revealed as a method of control—emotional leverage used to secure property.
    • Quote:

      "I do not intend, as you say, to ‘let him go.’ I intend to have him come, with me, to continue to care for and train that horse he loves so much as to risk his life. I will buy him from Warfield."

  • The Lecompte rematch

    • What happens: He runs an unfit Lexington and considers profiting from a loss.
    • Why it matters: His calculus subordinates honor and animal welfare to the market; Jarret’s trust fractures.
    • Quote:

      "One need not win in order to profit, after all."

  • The sale of Lexington—and Jarret

    • What happens: Upon discovering the horse’s blindness, he sells both for a record sum.
    • Why it matters: The final stripping of illusion: mentorship, partnership, and even affection collapse into the ledger line.
    • Quote:

      "I have sold you... I have sold my horse. For fifteen thousand dollars. Which is, I am pleased to note, the highest price ever paid for a thoroughbred in this country. A happy sum."

Essential Quotes

"You call him just what you like, but the world will hear of him as Lexington. And soon enough too." Renaming is power. Ten Broeck asserts control over narrative and identity, transforming a talented colt into a marketable myth—and signaling that legacy, to him, is a crafted commodity.

"I do not intend, as you say, to ‘let him go.’ I intend to have him come, with me, to continue to care for and train that horse he loves so much as to risk his life. I will buy him from Warfield." The language of care cloaks coercion. Ten Broeck translates Jarret’s love for the horse into leverage, converting devotion into ownership and binding personal feeling to financial interest.

"One need not win in order to profit, after all." A credo of the gambler-capitalist. Victory, honor, even the horse’s health are secondary to the balance sheet, revealing how Ten Broeck’s ethics bend to advantage.

"My slave." A chilling compression of his worldview: any courtesy or opportunity he grants sits beneath this possessive. The phrase resets the hierarchy whenever Jarret’s competence might be mistaken for freedom.

"I value your candor. Nevertheless, the horse will race." Civility as a weapon. He acknowledges dissent while neutralizing it, using polished manners to press ahead with decisions that endanger Lexington and betray Jarret’s trust.