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| *Raffles & Alice Payne |
Shortly after the death of Alice Payne, on January 27, 1969, Bill and Mae Munson wrote a memorial, which was published in the February 1969 issue of Arabian Horse News. Within the piece, I found the following, which captured my interest,
"Alice was a true breeder, one who demanded perfection. She picked a type, a bloodline and stuck to them. She had no time for the run-of-the-mill breeder, who vacillated from day to day."
In everything I have read and understood about Alice Payne, *Raffles, was the horse she not only chose; using his genetic influence exclusively, she founded a dynamically unique breeding program (she called it precision pedigrees). Her son, Bob, said that she looked to *Raffles as "the embodiment of animate perfection" and that in her eyes, "*Raffles fit together perfectly, balanced and he was biologically able to reproduce this." So, why *Raffles? What was it about the horse that motivated her so? Was there another horse that could have garnered the same level of esteem that she felt for *Raffles? Had she met the Egyptian stallion Nazeer, would she have felt similarly? Initially, she purchased a *Raseyn daughter, Rasrah, in foal to Abu Farwa. When Rasrah foaled her Abu Farwa filly (Alice's 1st registered foal), Alice consulted with Herb Reese, the manager of Kellogg Arabians, who recommended that she breed Rasrah to Alla Amarward but Alice soon realized that this match was not going to produce the type of horse that excited her, that created a desire to breed Arabian horses. I think that right here, within the Alice Payne timeline, was the single, most pivotal crossroad Alice ever faced in her whole equine life. It was here that she courageously realized that none of the horses that she had seen and purchased up to this point, fit the mental picture of the horse she imagined. None. It was at this point, she became open enough to try something new, which led her to discover Carl Raswan and all that he was about, because it was through him, that she learned of *Raffles, a paternal sibling of *Raseyn, the only horse she had liked at Kellogg's. As soon as she saw *Raffles in person, at Selby Stud, she immediately realized that he was EXACTLY the unique horse that she had been looking for and it would be through him that she would finally breed the type of horse she envisioned. She was that sure of it. 100%. This is the moment, when the "true breeder" broke out of the shell, paving the way for the almost 200 horses she would eventually breed, including the mare Celeste, who carried nearly 87.5% of *Raffles' blood and, a daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter, in one individual! Jimmie Dean once said that if Alice could have cloned *Raffles, she would have! 56 years since Alice Payne's life came to an end, we still remember her and we are grateful for all the horses we have come to know and love because of the choices she made so long ago, when she stood at the crossroads of her life.
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