Part 10

Another Dash lived first with Thomas Hood, then with Charles Lamb; he made such a slave of the latter, that finally Miss Lamb wrote to Mr. Patmore, entreating him to remove the dog, “if only out of charity; for if we keep him much longer, he will be the death of Charles.”

The transfer took place, and the late victim’s spirits rose to high-water mark soon afterwards in this whimsical, charming letter:

DEAR PATMORE:

Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash?... Goes he muzzled or apesto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, off with him to St. Luke’s.... Try him with hot water: if he won’t lick it up, it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean, when he is pleased--for otherwise there is no judging. You can’t be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia.... You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as Bedlamite.... I send my love in a ---- to Dash.

C. LAMB.

A great contrast to this tyrant was Mouse, the loving, jealous little terrier of Douglas Jerrold. A source of much gentle mirth while her master was well and strong, she did her utmost to comfort his dying hours. Once more, as she nestled beside him, his thin hand rested on her head; once more, and for the last time, he called her faintly by name; then they removed her, and in a few hours Mouse was masterless.

Horace Walpole’s dogs furnished many an amusing item for his letters, and diverted his friends no less than himself. “Sense and fidelity,” said he, “are wonderful recommendations; when one meets with them ... I cannot think the two additional legs are any drawback.”

Tory, Patapan, Rosette, Touton and a host of others, were the living illustrations in his home of this belief.

Tory, the “prettiest, fattest, dearest” King Charles, might have been leaner with advantage to himself, for a wolf snapped him up as he was waddling behind his master’s carriage in the Alps.

Patapan is the little aristocrat whom you see beside Mr. Walpole in the picture. The whims of “His Patapanic Majesty” were all indulged, his tastes consulted; his master idolized, and royalty itself caressed him; finally his vanity, already large, was puffed out like a balloon, by Mr. Chute’s poem in his praise. Thus it sums up his perfections:

“Patá is frolicsome, and smart As Geoffrey once was--(oh! my heart), He’s purer than a turtle’s kiss, And gentler than a little miss; A jewel for a lady’s ear, And Mr. Walpole’s pretty dear.”

When the pretty dear was frisking through Strawberry Hill, he may very likely have brushed in his frolics against a great bowl of blue and white china occupying a place of honor in one of the rooms.

But the label would not have told him, as it does us, that this was the veritable “Tub of Gold Fishes” in which the favorite cat of Thomas Grey was drowned. “Demurest of the tabby kind”--Selima gazed at the fish, and longed; extended “a whisker first and then a claw;” and then--

“The slippery verge her feet beguiled, She tumbled headlong in.”

She may have found some comfort--since drown she must--in the vase being genuine old china; just as Clarence preferred drowning in Malmsey wine to water; but her best comfort--had she known it--was the poem to be written on her fate, the poem which still points her morals and adorns her tale.

No one, in this group of literary people, was so intimate with cats as Southey. He delighted in them, he admired them, he understood them, and he thought no house quite furnished unless it had a baby and a kitten!

It was to his little daughter Edith that this author dedicated his history of the cats of Greta Hall, which he intended to supplement by the Memoirs of Cats’ Eden. Unfortunately for us all, the last was never finished. The most delightful of philofelists--to use his own coinage--he tells the story of his cats con amore; from the fate untimely of Ovid, Virgil, and Othello, to the merited honors heaped upon Lord Nelson, a great carrot-colored cat promoted by him to the highest rank in the peerage, through all its degrees, under the titles of His Serene Highness, the Archduke Rumpelstilzchen, Marquis Mac-Bum, Earl Tomlemagne, Baron Raticide, Waswlher and Skaratchi. Felicitous titles, are they not?

But how the list lengthens! Only a word can be given to Emily Brontë with her faithful, sullen mastiff Keeper; to Charlotte Brontë, with her black-and-white curly-haired Flossy; to Bulwer, with his Newfoundland Terror, and his better loved Andalusian horse; to Mrs. Bulwer--herself a beautiful spoiled child--with her beautiful spoiled Blenheim, Fairy, described by Disraeli as “no bigger than a bird of paradise, and quite as brilliant”--a Fairy that had its own printed visiting cards, and paid fashionable calls with its mistress; to Charles Reade, of keen wit and large heart, who petted squirrels, hares, and deer, as well as dogs, who wept when the exigencies of Never too Late to Mend required him to kill Carlo, and who humorously advised Ouida to name one of her dogs Tonic, as he was “a mixture of steal and w(h)ine.”

Charles Kingsley’s pets, and those of Charles Dickens, have been so often and so fully described, that any further description seems superfluous. Timber, Turk and Linda, Mrs. Bouncer, Bumble and Sultan, were only a few of his many dogs; while Dick the canary--“best of birds”--a succession of kittens, an eagle, and various ravens, were among the pets that kept matters lively at Gadshill.

Of the ravens, the most famous was Grip, who sat for his portrait in Barnaby Rudge, and whose stuffed body still exists.

There are no brighter letters, no finer poems in literature, than those which “Flush, my Dog,” called out from Mrs. Browning--letters and verse so vivid, so delicately discriminative, that they amply supply the lack of other portraiture, and in them Flush still lives. Listen:

“Like a lady’s ringlets brown, Flow thine silken ears adown Either side demurely Of thy silver-suited breast, Shining out from all the rest Of thy body purely.

“Darkly brown thy body is Till the sunshine striking this, Alchemize its dullness; When the sleek curls manifold Flash all over into gold, With a burnished fullness.

“Leap! thy broad tail waves a light; Leap! thy slender feet are bright, Canopied in fringes. Leap! those tasseled ears of thine Flicker strangely fair and fine Down their golden inches.”

How clearly we see him with that gentlest mistress, bathed in the warm, sweet sunshine of the past! But there were other than sunny days--long, weary days in a sick-room, where--

“This dog only waited on, Knowing that when light is gone, Love remains for shining.

“Other dogs in thymy dew Tracked the hares, and followed through Sunny moor or meadow-- This dog only crept and crept Next a languid cheek that slept, Sharing in the shadow.”

What wonder that she returned his love with--