Part 6

This became so hopeless, and I was so anxious to try to rear little canaries, that a friend promised me another hen. She, however, forgot what our circumstances were, and sent us a pair, who were promptly named Jock and Mummy. I would not have Jack defrauded of his wife after all, so Mummy was taken away from Jock and given to Jack instead. There is not much to tell about poor Jock. He was a middle-aged gentleman, subject to chronic asthma, and could never in that state of health have undertaken the cares and responsibility of a young family. His cage was always hung up near the fire, and when he was worse than usual I gave him a tiny drop of sal-volatile in his water. He was a contented, cheerful bird, and lived as long as with his age and asthma one could expect.

Mummy was a crested bird, pale yellow with a green crest, rather pretty, but in mind utterly vulgar. Of course she was far more effective than the refined Thyrsis had ever been. She knew all about nest building, and began at once; while the cynical and gentlemanly Jack looked on. The pair always reminded one of an aristocratic philosopher who had married his cook.

But one must give Mummy the whole credit of the nest; she put the moss and hair and wool into it, she squatted herself down in it, turned round, fluffed herself out to make it hard and round and compact; and at intervals went to keep up her strength by taking her “dishing-up beer” in the shape of hempseed.

Then she laid eggs quite satisfactorily, and they came out quite satisfactorily, and one by one all the nestlings died--not satisfactorily. On examining the little corpses, we found that they had died of starvation. Jack was found guilty at the inquest, for a first principle of domestic life among canaries is that the father feeds the birds while they are very young. What was the reason, then, that he had so disgracefully neglected his duty of feeding them, while his devoted wife sat on the nest to keep them warm? There must be something more than grandeur and cynicism to make a gentleman allow his children to die of starvation.

At last we found out the reason--Jack was flirting with his first love! Thyrsis’ cage was hung in Jack’s sight, and instead of feeding his infant children, or attending to them in any way, he clung to the corner of his cage all day and serenaded Thyrsis. We put Thyrsis out of his sight; Mummy laid a second set of eggs, and Jack attended to them as if he had done it all his life. It is true that he threw the eldest out of the nest on to the floor of the cage, but there is great excuse for that; a gentleman of refined and fastidious feelings must have had a dreadful shock when he first saw an unfledged canary and realised that that repulsive creature was his progeny. With all his cynicism, he could never have imagined that anything so loathsome existed. I don’t see what else he could have done,--I should have done it myself in his place. From whatever point you look at them, unfledged canaries are altogether and absolutely hideous; their brownish-pink skin is scantily covered with hairs, little bits of flesh wave helplessly about where their wings and legs are going to be, they have two large dark swellings where their eyes are going to be, and the only thing that is defined about them is a huge mouth which is almost always open and yelling. I had to pick the canary up from the bottom of the cage, and I still owe Jack a grudge for it, though I cannot in justice blame him.

Little canaries, when they are fledged, are as pretty as before they are frightful. These three little birds, when they were fledged, were all different and all beautiful. One was like her mother, yellow and green and crested; one like his father, all yellow; and one a sort of mixture, green and yellow and without a crest. Now a curious thing happened: the father chiefly devoted himself to feeding the little hen, who was like her mother; the mother (who begins to feed the birds when they are getting fledged and do not need warmth so much) fed the little cock like the father; and I have sometimes seen these two of their superfluity feeding their neglected brother. He throve well on the little attention he got.

I brought up several nests-ful. We had Tweedledum and Tweedledee,--Tweedledee’s name was subsequently changed to “Jewel” by a little cousin to whom I gave it, and who considered it a priceless treasure,--and Daffodil, the neglected nondescript, and Vicary, and Roumenik, called after the Wallachian country-place of some friends of ours; and others whose names I forget. Roumenik was the only one I kept, he was the last hatched, and was called “the Baby” until he died at the mature age of eight years.

There was one wonderful chicken who did not live to have a name. He was very precocious, and died young. This was how it happened: the misguided Mummy laid an egg in January, and in consequence, as I have always believed, of the weather being so much too cold when it was hatched, the bird could never get fledged; when it had already begun to be active and of a roving disposition, it still had no feathers on. Even sprouting wing-feathers might have broken its fall a little, on the many occasions when it tried to get out of the nest and fell on its back on the bottom of the cage. One day it had a fall more serious than usual, and till evening it sat on the edge of its waterglass with its head hanging down and its neck apparently dislocated. In the morning I found it dead in the waterglass. So I do not know to this day which accident it died of.

But meanwhile a sudden stirring of domestic instincts came to Thyrsis, and she was stimulated to rival Mummy’s nest-building. I gave her a little basket and materials for a nest, and she set to work and built a very good nest, and sat in it for six weeks, till her claws grew long and her legs grew weak, and there was of course no sign of an egg. Then I took it away from her, for I was afraid she would be ill with sitting, and it would never be the least use. Poor Thyrsis! under other circumstances she might have proved herself, if less vulgar, quite as effective as Mummy in building and breeding. When I had had her about seven or eight years she died quite suddenly. Was it of a broken heart? Had Jack’s too late attentions stirred in her the emotion of love, as he clung to the corner of his cage, singing to her and leaving his babies to starve?

There is just one more canary I must mention, for it had a curious name and history. It was called after one of my relations “Uncle Arthur”; that is to say, it was called so by myself and my brothers; for it was supposed to be called “Arthur” by my mother and “Mr. Sidgwick” by the outside world.

Uncle Arthur was Jack’s brother, but Jack had a monopoly of the intelligence of the family. Uncle Arthur had been half starved when he first came to me, and it had affected his intellect. Perhaps I had better mention that it was not from any supposed similarity in this respect that he was named after my uncle. He was idiotic in strange ways; for instance, I have known him try to bathe in a draught, from which he got inflammation of the lungs. For a long time, also, I found it was quite safe to take him out of doors without clipping his wings, for he was too foolish to know how to fly. One day, however, he astonished me by suddenly flying up into the top of a tree, which proved that his apparent powerlessness was the result of idiocy; for when he happened, as thus at intervals, to hit upon the right way of using his wings, he could fly quite well, though in a rather curious manner and with a pigeon-like noise. He never seemed to want to build nests, he never even serenaded any of the hen-birds of Jack’s family. He had a very happy, limited life. When he was already getting old I gave him away. I am sorry to say that his death was compassed accidentally by his new mistress; she was so much disgusted with him because he would not wash [he had probably forgotten how to], that she washed him one day herself with soap and flannel. Uncle Arthur died of it.

Jack outlived all the rest. Towards the end of Mummy’s life all illusion about her passed away; he got irritated and used to pull feathers out of her, though he tried to make up by much affection between times. But it was not Mummy’s fault. She was frankly vulgar from the beginning, and Jack, with his keen perception of character, ought to have known it.

VII

A REGULAR FLIRT

Gypsy was so called because he was bought off a gypsy-cart. A friend of mine was attracted by his wonderful voice, and gave a half-crown for him. Others were attracted by his voice too, with results more fatal.

He was in his first year when I had him, and it was not until the second year that his feathers and his fascination attained their full proportions. Gypsy was a mule, a cross between a goldfinch and canary. His back was dark green, he had a yellowish breast with dark splashes on it, black wing feathers, and two patches on his cheeks the colour of gooseberry fool; and he had a reddish golden crest, which he could raise a little when he was excited.

The next summer was beautiful weather at Oxford, and I took Gypsy there when I went to College, though I cannot say that he aided study. If I read, he got up a quarrel with the leaves of the book, and flew at them as I turned them over. If I wrote, he fell into a passion with my pen, and ran across the wet ink on my paper to peck it. And his love-affairs were very distracting.

Gypsy’s cage used to be put all day on the window-sill; and I began after a time to be aware that he was liable to be seized by sudden agitations, when he fluttered backwards and forwards in his cage, with a quick, excited note. A few days more and the cause of this agitation became apparent; for a little goldfinch, a hen goldfinch I suppose, came and sat upon the window-sill.

The intimacy rapidly improved; the goldfinch would come into the room and sit on Gypsy’s cage; it made friends with a siskin and a bullfinch in the next room, and would roost in an empty cage there at night.

Gypsy’s wing-feathers were clipped, so that I could let him walk about out of doors. When I took him into the garden he called to his friend, and the goldfinch dropped down by his side to take a walk with him. Other goldfinches came sometimes, but only one constantly and fearlessly when I was there. One day I remember Gypsy walking down the path in front of me accompanied by three friends.

But it was not long before there was a signal of danger. The house we were in was having some rooms added on to it, and there were workmen about. One day when I was sitting in my room and Gypsy was having an At Home, there was a little sound outside, and a limed stick was gently shoved towards my window-sill. Of course I remonstrated, and of course I was told by the workmen that they had done it entirely for my sake, because they thought that I should like to have the bird in a cage,--I could have caught the bird ten times over if I had wished it.

But this, I fear, must after all have been the end of the love-lorn bird; for it disappeared suddenly, and I never saw it again.

For a long time Gypsy had no society but mine and the canaries. He did not care for canaries, and he was mostly in a passion with me. But after some time a pair of goldfinches was given to us, much attached to each other and otherwise uninteresting. One day I put Gypsy in their cage to see what would happen. In three minutes a complete change had been worked in that happy home. Gypsy was sitting with the little lady on her perch, whispering sweet nothings into her ear, while her disconsolate spouse sat by himself on the perch below, meditating pistols for two and coffee for one.

I will do Gypsy the justice to say that he admired himself quite as much as anyone else admired him. When he was held to the looking-glass he did not fight his reflection as some animals do, he fell deeply in love with it, and whispered to it in a tiny, sweet, wooing voice, until it was obscured by a little circle of damp breath on the glass.

Some one may ask why, if Gypsy was so universally attractive and so extremely susceptible, I did not provide him with a wife to himself. Simply because it would have been no good; Gypsy was a mere flirt; he never would have had nests and eggs and brought up families like other birds; he was a mule-bird, and they cannot be domestic.

Gypsy had one last flickering of flirtation. I took his cage out one day into a London garden, and sat with him under a tree, and he sang loud; suddenly I heard a sound very unfamiliar in London, the voice of a bird which was hopping about on the tree above. I looked up, and through the leaves I could see that it was a little goldfinch; but it was shy and flew away.

These mule-birds die generally very suddenly; and Gypsy died without apparent sign of illness at about the age of ten years.

VIII