Chapter 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.”

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.