Part 9

My mistress brought my chain, and said “Come along with me while it shined, and I could finish after.” But she kept me so long in the London Library and other places, that I had to miss the post. An old gentleman in the omnibus took such notice of me! He looked at me a long time, and then turned to my mistress, and said, “Sharp, isn’t he?” And my mistress was so good as to say “O, yes!” And then the old gentleman said again, “I knew it! Easy to see that!” And he put his hand in his hind pocket, and took out a whole biscuit, a sweet one, and gave it me in bits. I was quite sorry to part with him, he was such a good judge of dogs.... No more at present from your

Obedient little dog, NERO.

Poor Nero was run over by a butcher’s cart, in October, 1859, and, though not killed outright, was never well again. His mistress nursed and petted him--his master could not do enough; but neither care nor love could avail. Four months later he died, and was buried in the garden, with a small headstone to mark his blameless dust. “I could not have believed,” said Carlyle, “my grief, then and since, would have been the twentieth part of what it was.” And “nobody but myself,” said Nero’s mistress, “can have any idea of what that little creature has been in my life; my inseparable companion during eleven years, ever doing his little best to keep me from feeling sad and lonely. Docile, affectionate, loyal, up to his last hour.”

I happened once to pass the closed house in Chelsea, where the Carlyles lived so long. Just a little way from it, is a bronze statue of Carlyle, with kind, melancholy face--a fit memorial, in fitting place, to one who, whatever his faults, is yet among the greatest spirits of our age. Not long before he was walking this very path; now we passed from the voiceless statue to the desolate house, as from silence unto silence. The windows were closed, like eyes with sealed lids; the hospitable door was grimly shut, and the knocker, as we tried it, sent a hollow echo through the hall within.

But the noonday sunlight fell hot and cheery on the doorstep, where, comfortably ensconced in a corner, lay a black-and-white cat. It blinked lazily at us, but was too well off, and I am sure too secure, also, of our friendliness, to move.

So the house which Mrs. Carlyle’s friends used jestingly to call “a refuge for stray dogs and cats,” still offered them some slight shelter--although master and mistress, and little Nero, all were gone!

III.

PETS IN LITERARY LIFE.

III.

PETS IN LITERARY LIFE.

The pets and authors of the past may be briefly glanced at on our way to those of to-day. We may begin with the learned Justus Lipsius, erstwhile professor at Louvain. This worthy went daily to his lecture-room with a retinue of dogs, whose portraits, each with a commemorative description, adorned the walls of his study. Three have been individualized for posterity as Mopsikins, Mopsy and Sapphire.

Tarot, Franza, Balassa, Ciccone, Musa, Mademoiselle and Monsieur, were, in their long-vanished life-time, companions to Agrippa, the astrologer and scholar. The knowing little Monsieur was permitted, as special favorite, to sleep upon his master’s bed, eat from his plate, and lie upon the table beside his papers, while he wrote. He may even have suggested to Goethe the black poodle in Faust, since, like Rupert’s hound Boy, and Claver’s battle-horse, he was commonly supposed to be a fiend.

The creator of Faust’s demon-poodle could not endure dogs in real life, and was always scolding about their “ungeheure Ton.” As to their character, he even committed himself in this very unpleasant epigram:

“Wundern kannes mich nicht dass Menschen die Hunde so lieben; Denn ein erbärmlicher Schuffist, wie Der Mensch, so der Hund,”

which has been rendered:

“It cannot surprise me that men love dogs so much, For dog, like man, is a pitiful, sneaking rogue.”

Such a disagreeable sentiment as this--one so unworthy both of man and author--requires an antidote. We find one in these lines of Herrick to his spaniel Tracy:

“Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see For shape and service spaniel like to thee. This shall my love doe, give thy sad fate one Teare, that deserves of me a million.”

This is all we know of Tracy, but it suffices enough. A faithful dog, a fond master--in these words his story is told.

Bounce--named most suggestive--belonged to Alexander Pope; Bean, to the gentler poet, Cowper. Goldsmith had a dog, of course, and equally of course it was a poodle. No creature less comic would serve his turn. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells a story of the pair which reads like a fragment from the Vicar of Wakefield: how one morning he called on the improvident author, rather expecting to find him in low spirits, and found him, instead, at his table, alternately writing a few words, and looking over at the poodle which he had made stand on its hind legs in a corner of the room.

In this fashion the impecunious one was amusing himself; and the great artist looked on, no less amused in truth, and pleasantly sympathetic. If only he had painted the scene, one wishes.

Very different in temperament was Lord Byron. Practically, he agreed with Mme. de Staël in liking dogs the better, the more he knew of men. He seems to have had as friendly a feeling for the animal world as his contemporary, Scott, although showing it in a more whimsical fashion. Scott would never have traveled with a private menagerie, but Byron carried with him from England to Italy, “ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow and a falcon.”

Dogs were his favorites; they were friends whose affection could be trusted, and whose criticism he had not to fear. Boatswain is almost as widely known as his master. No one visits Newstead without seeing his picture in the dining-room, and in the grounds his grave, with the famous epitaph:

NEAR THIS SPOT ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF ONE WHO POSSESSED BEAUTY WITHOUT VANITY, STRENGTH WITHOUT INSOLENCE, COURAGE WITHOUT FEROCITY, AND ALL THE VIRTUES OF MAN WITHOUT HIS VICES. THIS PRAISE, WHICH WOULD BE UNMEANING FLATTERY IF INSCRIBED OVER HUMAN ASHES, IS BUT A JUST TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF BOATSWAIN, A DOG, WHO WAS BORN AT NEWFOUNDLAND, MAY, 1803, AND DIED AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY, NOV. 18, 1808.

As this dog was the friend of his youth, so Lion was the companion of his later days in Greece. Major Parry says that “riding, or walking, or sitting, or standing,” they were never apart. “His most usual phrase was, ‘Lyon, you are no rogue, Lyon,’ or ‘Lyon,’ his lordship would say, ‘thou art an honest fellow, Lyon.’ The dog’s eyes sparkled, and his tail swept the floor as he sat with his haunches on the ground. ‘Thou art more faithful than men, Lyon; I trust thee more.’ Lyon sprang up and barked, and bounded round his master, as much as to say, ‘You may trust me.’”

Faithful to the last, he watched over Byron’s death-bed, and then went to England, where he lived and died, an honored pensioner, in the house of Mrs. Leigh.

Mrs. Radcliffe, whose novels delighted and terrorized our grandmothers, had two dogs, called Fan and Dash. Fan had been a mangy, poverty-stricken beast, condemned by its rustic owner to be hung. In a lucky hour the novelist happened by, purchased the guiltless criminal for half a crown; and Fan, cured of the mange, grown plump and silky, became so beautiful a dog that Queen Charlotte, when out walking with her brood of young princesses, would stop to notice her. On one of these occasions Fan and one of the royal spaniels caught simultaneously the ends of a long bone; and for some distance this foundling of the people and the pet of royalty pranced on amicably together, holding the bone between them!

Dash was a poor street dog whose leg had been run over and broken. He was taken in a coach to the doctor’s, the leg was set, health and strength returned, and Dash was more than himself again, for now he was “Mrs. Radcliffe’s dog.”