“DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE.”
ONE of the most successful and popular of Sir Edward Landseer’s
delineations is the picture, “Dignity and Impudence.” It is even better
known and more widely prized than his exquisitely comical sick dog,
that is so sorry for itself, while the keeper is examining its paw; and
his deeply pathetic “Last Mourner,” in which the shepherd’s dog keeps
solitary watch by its master’s coffin.
The noble mastiff lies stately and serene, his vast bulk tempered by
his perfect proportions, and by a gait worthy of the king of dogs. His
well-opened hazel eyes look with honest straightforwardness full in
your face. His huge ears hang down quietly. His jaws are closed and
overlapped by his deep jowl. He is the _beau-ideal_ of strength in
restraint and repose, as he lies there with one paw, like that of a
lion’s cub, hanging idly over the framework of his couch, and the other
half-turned inwards, as if he were about to put it on his heart, in
token of the true gentleman he is.
From within the same pent-house, where he is freely tolerated as a
lively child companion, protrudes the small confident head—bristling
with hair, the knowing little ears erect, the tongue half-thrust out
at one side, equivalent to being stuck in the cheek—of the briskest,
most undaunted of terriers. I suppose it is because we all know many
versions—both human and canine—of this pair of friends, that we are so
fond of looking at them and admiring their union in diversity.
I can never see “Dignity and Impudence” without thinking of a couple
of dogs belonging to friends of mine, and that were said to bear a
striking and exact resemblance to the dogs in the picture. I had not
the good fortune to know this living “Dignity and Impudence,” though
I long looked forward to the pleasure; but I happened to hear a great
deal of them, and registered their traits with interest.
Wallace and Dick were north-country dogs, as is evidenced by the
name of the first—he would have been Bevis in England. They dwelt
within sight of a purple spur of the Grampians, known as the Braes
of Angus. Their home was a hospitable farm-house, among fresh breezy
uplands, with that element of breadth and freedom which belongs to
hill countries, where, side by side with the cultivated fields, lies
a wide moor and remnant of ancient forest, and where the ground is
broken—and now falls gradually in a sunny slope—now dips abruptly
into a shady dell, or den, as we call it in Scotland. The last is a
place of spreading beeches, feathery larches, waving birks, and a
great wealth of ferns and wild flowers in spring and early summer,
and with a never-failing wimpling burn threading its recesses. It
is quite distinct from a wild heathery glen. The neighbourhood to
which I allude has quaint old mansions, some of which existed in the
stirring times when the glens and dens served as passes for “John
Hielandman,” rustling in his plaid and kilt, and bristling with his
claymore and skene-dhu. He did not bring down cattle—long-horned
kylies—like the modern drover, but came, saw, and lifted what “nowt”
he fancied on lowland pastures, goading them up among the mountains to
the headquarters of the chief and his dhuinnewassels. An ancient town
with steep, narrow streets, having a feudal castle on a tree-crowned
rock above a brawling river, and the remains of an abbey, is the market
town of the district. On the road to this town one has a glimpse from a
distance of the silver shield of the German ocean, with a larger town
on its brink.
Wallace and Dick could not have been more highly favoured in the
matter of locality, though they had been lovers of the picturesque—not
the picturesque on a stage scale, but the quality which is large and
primitive—and though they had deliberately gratified their æsthetic
tastes by pitching their tents in this region, which is fresh on
the hottest summer day, and has a bracing keenness, not a chill
sluggishness, in its winter cold.
Wallace came first to the farm-house a tremendous puppy, for the most
part generous and docile in his conscious power, but not without
elements of savageness and danger in him, if he were suffered to grow
up undisciplined.
I have heard his master tell that, when Wallace was a young dog, one
winter night he took more than his own share of the hearthrug, on which
his master’s solitary chair was also drawn up. The man, desiring more
space to move in, gave the dog an unceremonious push, which roused in
him such lurking ill-humour as besets us all at times; only Wallace
was a mighty brute, unsupplied with the reins of reason and conscience
wherewith to check his passions, and furnished on the other hand with
the instinct of quick retaliation and fierce, disproportioned revenge.
He gave a low growl, like muttered thunder, and made a half-spring at
his master, who recognised on the instant that an unexpected crisis had
come, which was to settle whether he was to be the master of the beast
or the beast was to be his master, and which placed for the moment his
very life in danger. Acting on the impulse of self-preservation, rather
than on any deliberate design, he snatched up the poker, and dealt the
dog a blow which felled him, and left him stunned and motionless. Quick
remorse followed the deed, as the assailant asked himself, had he slain
his comrade outright on the spot, and that for the merest ebullition of
temper? If Wallace had betrayed some traces of the savage, who else had
been cruel in unsparing punishment?
But Wallace came to himself almost before his master could make the
compunctious reflection, rose and took himself off with lowered crest
and submissive head and tail, clearly acknowledging himself beaten,
and as clearly evincing the extreme of shame, for having been guilty
of provoking the unequal contest. Unlike man, the dog bore no malice
for his defeat; it simply called out in him that unswerving loyalty
which has no parallel. From that day to the hour of his death, in a
ripe old age, Wallace never again disputed his master’s sovereign will,
or disobeyed his direct command, but awarded him the most devoted
allegiance. The dog’s great strength, his solid sense for a dog, his
rare magnanimity, were, from the era of his conquest, laid, together
with his fervent attachment, at the feet of his conqueror—for the dog
is another St. Christopher.
Under the influence of this absolute submission[A] to his master,
rather than from any mere superficial cleverness, such as may be
readily found in mere trick-performing dogs, Wallace could be taught
a variety of acquirements, and was in the end so accomplished a dog
that I fear I cannot call to mind a tithe of his attainments. I believe
he could sit up in any attitude or assumption of character, or throw
down his body in any required posture, and remain so for a given time.
He could mimic swimming at the word of command. He could constitute
himself a pony for little children—indeed he was not less than some
Shetland ponies—and he would carry them decorously round the room or
the garden on his back. He could—and this was probably the hardest
task of all—at his master’s bidding, lie down in a meadow where a
herd of cattle fed, and permit the whole of the oxen to gather lowing
round him, and even to lick him with their rough tongues, without his
stirring or offering the smallest resistance.
Wallace was somewhat up in years before Dick came on the scene. He also
arrived at the farm-house a puppy, but it was not at first intended
that he should remain there. The master of the house had kindly
procured Dick with the intention of giving him to a friend when he
himself became so enamoured of the little dog’s briskness and pluck,
and at the same time so persuaded that these qualities would be wasted
in the quiet life of the woman for whom Dick had been originally got,
that he substituted another and more suitable dog, and kept the little
man for his own portion.
As I have been assured, there never was a blyther, bolder, more
irrepressible spirit than that which lodged in the body of the small
terrier. Like his friend Wallace, he needed to be tamed, and to the
last he could not stand teasing for any length of time without a strong
inclination to show his fine white teeth in a way which was not play.
The fact was, that on these occasions he got into a white heat of rage,
in which he was in danger of ceasing to be master of his actions.
Once, when Dick was a young dog, under some provocation he flew at and
slightly bit his mistress, who had no resource but to show him the
iniquity of the deed in a manner which, I believe, is effectual when
it is possible to practise it. According to strict injunctions as to
the conduct required in the circumstances, and in the stern necessity
of preventing a repetition of the offence, which might have cost the
life of the offender, she caught Dick by the refractory cuff of his
neck, carried him to the door of a room into which she could throw him
when the time came, and while holding him in the air—which is the great
secret of the effectiveness of the punishment, since the culprit feels
himself, during the infliction, absolutely powerless in the grasp of
the dispenser of justice—cuffed him soundly, and then flung him from
her into the open door at hand, closing it quickly after him, and so
preventing any possibility of a hostile attack from the dog while still
writhing and struggling under his penalty. The result was, that the
tender-hearted young mistress withdrew sick from giving the painful
lesson she had been imperatively called on to teach. But, as in the
case of Wallace, and as in that of the mastiff which Emily Brontë cowed
by one box in the ear, the lesson had been learned thoroughly; Dick
never again, unless in such an instance of wilful protracted teasing as
I have referred to, took to biting his friends.
His affection was as ardent as his temper was quick, and the
convulsions of delight, the ecstatic caresses he lavished on members
of the family when they returned from a temporary absence, were
demonstrations to see rather than to hear of.
Dick is said to have been the most entertaining companion in a walk,
always making amusing discoveries, full of the freshest zest and the
most unwearied energy. He had a passion for sport, of which I shall
have more to say hereafter; but, sport or no sport, he never failed to
find objects of interest on his way, and to impart the interest to his
fortunate companion.
Like Wallace, Dick could be easily induced to go through a variety of
tricks—which, in my opinion, are slightly disparaging to very sensible
or bright dogs, seeing that these tricks are purely artificial,
entirely distinct from the dog’s natural sagacity and genuine feats,
and can be imparted, if proper pains be taken, to far inferior
dogs—I mean dogs that have merely the faculty of mimicry, apart from
intuition, steadfastness, and a power of love which makes wise. One of
Dick’s many tricks was to go through the form of sitting in his own
chair at table with the family when they were at meals (though his food
was taken elsewhere), and of speaking when he was told—that is, at a
certain word and sign, starting off in his own dog language of yelping
and whining, till he was requested to be quiet.
From his introduction to the farm as a puppy, Dick entertained an
immense admiration—rapidly progressing, in a dog of his frank,
confident character, into a trustful, rather encroaching affection—for
the veteran Wallace. The mastiff responded by testifying the most
amiable indulgence for his liliputian friend. The indulgence proved its
own reward, for there was no question that the eager, joyous little dog
brought some of its own eagerness and joy into what was becoming the
fading, failing life of his mighty ally.
A ludicrous position which the dogs often assumed has been described
to me. Wallace had the usual sterlingly honest dog’s aversion to
tramps and disreputable characters (in the dog’s eyes). Dick shared
this repugnance; but in spite of his constitutional audacity, he was
apt to mingle discretion with his valour here. When a particularly
ill-looking traveller approached the farm gate, where Wallace and Dick
were on sentry, Dick had a custom of nimbly insinuating himself between
Wallace’s fore paws and standing upright beneath the arch of the chest
without difficulty; from this vantage-ground he would issue his sharp
volley of barks as a rattling accompaniment to the bass cannon-like
boom of Wallace’s challenge.
When the two dogs lay down to sleep, Dick would take the most manifest
advantage of his friend’s neck, or shoulder, or side, nestling himself
within or against it, for the promotion of his own warmth and ease,
without sustaining the least rebuke from the gentle giant.
Sometimes when Dick wished a game of play, for which Wallace felt
himself quite too old, Dick would beset his friend like a little
pestering spoiled child, pawing and pulling, and making darts and dabs
at Wallace’s ears, which would have nearly covered Dick’s body, or
at the jaw, one shake from which would have dismissed the life from
the little dog in a twinkling. But Dick was comfortably persuaded that
he was entirely privileged, and he did not argue without his host,
though Wallace, after much endurance, could assert himself so far as to
send off his tormentor. Yet he was never known to do it, save in the
kindest, most friendly fashion. No paralysing stroke from his paw, no
crushing snap from his teeth, ever scared the fun and familiarity out
of little Dick. He received his _congé_ in the shape of a mild, if firm
refusal, which left him free to come sidling into his crony’s presence
again within the next five minutes.
I have mentioned Dick’s love of sport. Wallace had the same love
to a marked extent; indeed, it was the one temptation which proved
irresistible, and seduced him once and again from his adherence to his
master. It was not that the dog openly resisted or defied orders, but
that he showed craft in snatching an opportunity to evade them, in
slipping off unperceived, and conducting his hunts in an independent
style in the preserves and on the great moor at hand—coming home with
a dogged fidelity, and yet with the self-convicted air of a culprit,
after his lust for the pursuit of prey was satisfied, to the punishment
which he was perfectly aware remained in store for him. Of course,
for a dog like Wallace to roam abroad unattended, on such an errand,
was to expose both him and his master to certain penalties, and every
effort was made, for the dog’s own sake as well as for his master’s
credit, to break him of so dangerous a propensity. The attempt was not
altogether successful. The ruling passion was so strong in Wallace
that it rivalled even his conception of duty. But the consequences
of his escapades always fell short of the condign punishment at the
hands of incensed proprietors which his master dreaded for the dog, and
repentance, forgiveness, amendment followed till the next outbreak.
These outbreaks would probably have decreased in number and died out as
Wallace’s spirit of enterprise abated with his advancing age;[B] but
I am sorry to say Dick proved an artful decoy and subtle tempter. The
two dogs did not venture on a forbidden expedition under the very eye
of their master; but the moment his back was turned to go from home,
I have been assured that the certainty and celerity with which the
conspirators detected his absence was something marvellous. Wallace
and Dick set off like the wind—or at least as like the wind as the old
dog’s lagging limbs would allow—to the nefarious indulgence of their
appetite. Nothing short of chaining up Wallace before his master left
could prevent the catastrophe. No efforts of his young mistress—of
whom, at the same time, he was exceedingly fond, and whose escort and
protector he was generally proud to be—were of the least avail to
detain him; she has told me how she would run out to intercept the dogs
on the first hint of their decamping, and try to hold them back by main
force, but Wallace would wrest himself from her grasp, and trot after
Dick, already scampering away in the distance.
Sometimes these hunts lasted as long as three or four days. Naturally,
the dogs were unwilling to come back to the disgrace which awaited
them, and they could subsist in the meantime on the spoil which they
caught and slew. The neighbourhood of the great wide moor and fragment
of forest—a broad brown and dark green tract stretching, with a
suggestion of wonder and mystery, along the whole expanse of cultivated
country—rendered it specially difficult to discover the direction
the dogs had taken, running as the birds flew, and making nothing of
hedges, ditches, and “dykes” in their progress, after they were fairly
out of sight. It was the solving of a puzzle to pursue and apprehend
them. Sometimes a wayfarer passed and recognised them, and brought the
tidings of their whereabouts to “the farm town.” Sometimes the dogs’
master, when he went to the weekly market in the quaint town I have
described, received information from a neighbour which enabled him
to track the fugitives. Oftenest they returned of their own accord,
spent and sated, brought back by some compulsion of law, some tie of
dependence and affection, which was in the end too powerful for their
desire to rove, so that they could not become wild dogs again, or
desert their aggrieved human friends for a permanence.
Knowing the district as I do, I have great sympathy with Wallace and
Dick. Had I possessed Wallace’s capacity of endurance, or Dick’s
youthful fleetness of foot and length of wind—had I shared their relish
for hares and rabbits, torn limb from limb, and their capacity of
thriving on the same—I too should have liked to wander for days among
these fresh fields, with their yellowing corn or rich pasture, on
which sturdy bullocks or skittish colts were having a pleasant time. I
could have dived with good-will into these tree-girdled quarries, and
roamed along these high roads, ample enough for two coaches-and-six
to drive abreast, and bordered with bands of yellow lady’s bedstraw
and azure veronica, and later in the season by miniature forests of
nodding harebells; or down these rough by-roads, with their patches of
yellow broom and trailing garlands of brambles, to the outlying heather
on the verge of the moor, about which great humble bees were always
humming. My heart would have hankered, like theirs, for that grand,
gaunt old moor of Mendrummond—or, as it is called in local parlance,
“Munrummon”—with its pale liverwort and white grass of Parnassus, its
bronze stemmed firs and stunted oaks, its lone green glades. One can
still feel that here, as among the mountains of old Scotland, there
linger vestiges of a virgin world.
As a human being and not a dog, I am not at all clear that I should
have returned so faithfully to cutting reproaches and a good beating as
Wallace and Dick had the courage to do.
The dogs used to display judiciousness in selecting the cover of night
for their reappearance, and they sometimes brought home a mutilated
hare or rabbit, as if it were intended for a propitiation. But Wallace
at least reported himself, in full view of the result, with manly
straightforwardness and resignation. He was accustomed to go beneath
his master’s window, and by a deep prolonged “bow-f-f” announce that
there he was ready to submit to whatever his master imposed on him.
I regret to own that Dick, on the contrary, stole round the house on
tiptoe, and, if he found an open window on the ground floor, crept in
and hid himself beneath a convenient sofa or bed, in a short-sighted,
childish notion that he might evade the righteous sentence he had
provoked.
On the last secret hunt in which the dog-friends engaged, Wallace was
so enfeebled by age that the exertion exhausted the little strength
left to him, and he was unable to return home. Dick had to face the
wrath of his master alone, while he was unable to account for his
missing comrade.
Happily the mastiff reached a neighbouring farm-house, where he
was recognised—for he was a well-known and valued dog—and where he
was hospitably entertained, till word could be sent to his master,
who despatched a cart for the disabled sportsman. But fancy the
mortification of poor Wallace, once so invulnerable at every point, so
renowned a warrior and hunter, to be brought home like a dead donkey,
stretched at the bottom of a cart!
Wallace survived his last hunt some time, but the evidence of the decay
of his powers became always more unmistakeable. He was a mere bony
wreck of what he had been. He subsisted principally on great “diets” of
milk freely lavished on him to prolong his days. At last he fell into
a habit of stealing away and secreting himself in some solitary spot
of the garden or grounds, an ominous inclination which superstitious
servants called “looking for his grave,” and that was in reality
prompted by the curious pathetic instinct which causes every stricken
animal to draw away from the herd, and hide itself from its kind.
But Wallace was not to die apart from human hands and the friends he
had loved. No one saw him die; but a servant, preparing to sweep out
the dining-room early one morning, found the old dog stretched stark
and cold on his master’s sofa—“like a Christian,” as she protested,
half awed, half scandalised. And what gave the last touch to the
situation was that little lively Dick—always fond of establishing
himself by his friend—was discovered lying trembling, with that
consciousness of death of which a dog is supposed to be unconscious,
behind Wallace, that he had not dared to disturb—the first time Wallace
had frightened Dick.
I think Wallace’s master, by his own choice, helped to dig the dog’s
grave; I know that the spot selected was one which had been long chosen
for his last resting-place. Care was taken that Dick should not know
the place, or be tempted to disturb it, when it was little thought
that the terrier would soon lie by his comrade’s side. Not that Dick
died of his mourning; I never heard of a dog pining to death for a
fellow-dog—only for his master. I am not even aware that Dick gave
great signs of missing his companion after the first few days, for dogs
will be dogs after all; and undoubtedly Dick recovered the full flow of
his constitutionally high spirits within a short period.
Merry Dick’s death was so much the more tragical that it was not in
the course of nature; it was the result of an accident—the product of
such carelessness as it is hard to forgive. The offices belonging to
Dick’s master’s farm were infested with rats to such an extent that
even a terrier was insufficient to keep the vermin down, and poison was
employed for their destruction. A portion of strychnine passed into the
keeping of a kitchen maid, who was to sprinkle it on bread and butter,
to be exposed, with due precaution, near the rats’ holes. The plate
of bread and butter, with the fatal powder invisible on it, was left
heedlessly on a kitchen table, where it was only by the good providence
of God that some man or woman—ignorant of anything unusual in the
innocent-looking slices—did not eat what was intended for the rats, and
perish by a horrible death.
Only poor Dick was destined to be the victim. Attending on the
footsteps of his mistress as usual, he came into the kitchen, and,
spying the attractive luncheon, sprang up and seized a half-slice.
“It is the poisoned bread,” cried the rash servant, observing what had
happened, and thinking she had done enough when she had given the tardy
warning.
Dick’s mistress snatched the perilous morsel from between his teeth
and flung it in the fire. So instantaneous was the whole occurrence,
that even she—never doubting that she had rescued the dog from all evil
consequences—forgot the circumstances in the occupation she was engaged
in.
Dick, in his usual excellent health and enjoyment of life, accompanied
his mistress in a walk, with all his ordinary pleasure in the
privilege. It was not till some hours later, in the bustle of guests
assembling for dinner, that Dick’s master suddenly summoned his
mistress from her toilet with the grievous news that Dick was dying.
The little dog had been discovered rigid in a fit. So entirely was
the result of what had taken place in the morning unapprehended, that
it was not till various remedies had been tried in vain that Dick’s
mistress suddenly recalled the episode of the poisoned bread. A clever
young veterinary surgeon who was within reach came and administered
antidotes, which poor little Dick, in the intervals between his
paroxysms, was induced to take from the mistress who was so bitterly
distressed by his fate; but all was of no avail, the dog succumbed
speedily to the deadly poison, and died before the dinner guests had
met.
So Dick and Wallace rest together, like true comrades, in what was once
their pleasant playground.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] In addition to the instinct of obedience which in itself rendered
Wallace tractable, the great dog had a little weakness, of which I
have heard his master say he made use in conducting his four-footed
retainer’s education. “Wallace wight” “would have gone round the world”
for a bit of sugar—the usual reward of a _fait accompli_.
[B] However, I have heard of an old terrier who had lived many years
leading an entirely domestic life in a large town, and who, on being
taken by its owners to country quarters—which happened, unfortunately,
to be in a game country—ran off the very night of his arrival, hunted
the whole summer night through, and turned up the next morning, after
his friends had resigned all hope of recovering him. He was dead tired,
and in a few hours was crying out under paroxysms of rheumatism, which
his unwonted exposure, together with his weight of years, brought upon
him.
[Illustration]