OF DOGS
Throughout these very discursive annals I have tried to keep in
remembrance a lesson that I learnt a few years ago from a very
interesting book of Mr. Seton Thompson’s called, I think, “In the Arctic
Prairies.” In it he began by saying that travellers’ accounts of their
sufferings from mosquitoes were liable to degenerate into a weariness to
the reader; therefore he determined to mass all he had suffered into one
chapter. Thenceforward, when the remembrance of the mosquitoes became
too poignant for endurance, a pause came in the narrative, and a
footnote said (with an audible groan), “See Chapter So and So.” Thus it
has been with me and dogs. This is Chapter So and So, and I honourably
invite the Skip of Defiance already several times advocated.
M. Maeterlinck has written of dogs with deep discernment, yet not, I
think, in quite the right spirit. No dogs, save perhaps hounds, should
speak of “Master,” or “Mistress.” The relationship should be as that of
a parent; at farthest, that of a fond governess. R. L. Stevenson’s
essay, “The Character of Dogs,” treats of dogs with all his enchanting
perception and subtlety, and contains the matchless phrase “That mass of
carneying affectations, the female dog”; yet memorable as the phrase
is, I would venture to protest against the assumption that is implicit
in it, namely, that affectation is a thing to be reprobated. Martin’s
and my opinion has ever been that it is one of the most bewitching of
qualities. I believe I rather enjoy it in young ladies; I adore it in
“the female dog.” But it must be genuine affectation. The hauteur of a
fox terrier lady with a stranger cad-dog is made infinitely more
precious by the certainty that when the Parent’s eye is removed, it will
immediately become transmuted into the most unbridled familiarity.
I recall a sunny summer morning when, on the lawn tennis ground at
Drishane, Martin and I received a visit from the then parson of the
parish, and from his large black retriever. Candy and Sheila, my fox
terriers, ladies both, received it also, but in their case, with a
dignity that we could not hope to emulate. Shortly after the interview
opened, chancing to look round, I beheld two motionless round white
mounds, hedgehog in attitude, super-hedgehog in sentiment, buried in
profoundest slumber. Round the mounds, with faint yelps, in brief
rushes, panting with adoration, with long pink tongue flapping, and
white teeth flashing, fore-legs wide apart and flung flat on the grass,
went the parson’s retriever. With sealed eyes the ladies slept on. Yet,
when Martin and the parson and I had strayed on into the flower garden,
I cannot conceal the fact that both the Clara Vere de Veres abandoned
themselves to a Maenad activity that took the amazed and deeply
gratified retriever as its focal point, and might have given effective
hints to any impersonator of Salome dancing before King Herod.
I have ever been faithful to two breeds, foxhounds, and fox terriers,
and, as I look back over a long series of _Grandes Passions_, I see
Ranger and Rachel and Science, with their faithful, beautiful
hound-faces, waving their sterns to me through the mists of memory, and
The Puppet, and Dot, and, paramount among them all, the little
“Head-dog,” Candy, all waiting in the past, to be remembered and
praised, and petted. Mention has already been made of The Puppet’s brief
but brilliant life. Martin has summed him up as “an engaging but
ill-mannered little thing,” but this dispassionate assessment did not
interfere with her affection for him. Some time after his early and
tragic death, she sent me a little MS. book entitled “Passages in the
Life of a Puppet, By its Mother, Being some Extracts from Her
Correspondence.” These, with her comments, elucidatory and otherwise, I
still preserve, and they are often both entertaining and instructive.
They are, on the whole, of too esoteric a nature for these pages, but I
may offer one extract that may be regarded as not unsuitable by that
influential person, “the general reader.” This treats of The Puppet in
the capacity of parent, and is endorsed by Martin, “The Puppet in his
own Home Circle is unamiable, and is much disliked by his wife.”
“His attitude is one of curiosity and suspicion. When I go to see Dot
and the puppies, he creeps after me, walking with the most exaggerated
caution on three legs, one being held high in air, in the pose of one
who says ‘Hark!’ or ‘Hist!’ Sometimes he forgets, and says it with a
hind-leg, but there are never more than three paws on the ground.
Meantime, the Mamma, with meek, beaming eyes fixed on me, keeps up a low
and thunderous growl. At other times, he scrutinises the family from a
distance, severely, sitting erect, like one of Landseer’s lions (but the
pose is grander), with ears inside out, as cleared for action. I
dither----” The extract ends thus, with some abruptness, and recognising
the truth of the final statement, I will leave the Puppet and his
Passages, with an apology for having alluded to them. We have,
sometimes, thought of writing a dog-novel (being attracted by the
thought of calling it “Kennel-worth”), but we were forced to recognise
that society is not yet ripe for it.
In fact, the position of dogs requires readjustment. It is marked by
immoderation. To declaim that dogs should be kept in their Proper Place,
is merely to invite to battle. One thing I will say as touching the case
of dogs whose “proper place” has been, as with myself, the bosoms of
their respective owners. There comes to those owners something
catastrophic, a death or a disaster, or even some such household throe
as a wedding or a ball. The dogs are forgotten. The belief that has been
fostered in them of their own importance remains unshaken. Their
intelligent consciousness of individual life is as intense as ever. Even
if the amazing stories of dog-intelligence, that were heard a few years
ago, were untrue, it is impossible to deny to dogs whose minds have been
humanised a share of comprehension that is practically human. Yet, when
the Big Moment comes in the life of the house, the dogs are brushed
aside and ignored. One is sometimes dimly, remotely aware, through one’s
own misery or pre-occupation, of the lonely, bewildered little
fellow-being who has suddenly become insignificant, but that is all. One
gives him to eat and drink, but one has withdrawn one’s soul from him,
and he knows it, and wonders why, and suffers. It is inevitable, but,
like many an inevitable thing, it is not fair.
After Dot, in the succession of fox terriers, came Musk, who was unto
Dot as a daughter, so much so, indeed, that I find it said in my diary
that Dot, like the Abbess in the Ballad of the Nun,
“---- loved her more and more,
And as a mark of perfect trust
Made her the Keeper of the Ashpit.”
Musk belonged, strictly speaking, to my sister; her name, through
modifications that might interest an etymologist, but no one else,
became more usually, Muck, or Pucket. As the Pucket she reigned for many
years jointly with her eldest daughter, Candy, and with a later
daughter, Sheila, on the steps of the throne. The Pucket had a singular
fear of anyone who approached her without speaking. If, on a return
after the briefest absence, the friend, or even the Mother, received her
welcoming barks in silence, yet continued to advance towards her--about
which there may be conceded to be something fateful--the Pucket’s voice
would falter, she would retreat with ever increasing speed, and I have
seen her, when further retirement was impossible, plunge herself into a
bush and thence cry for help. One of her daughters will sometimes act in
this way, and I have known other dogs to behave similarly. On what,
then, does their apprehension of their friends rely? Not sight, nor
smell; not voice, as a deaf dog recognises his friends? I can only
suppose that the unwonted lack of response suggests a mental overthrow,
and that Musk felt that nothing less than the failure of their reason
would silence her Mother or her Aunt.
On another occasion, and a more legitimate one, I have seen Musk’s
self-control overthrown. An elderly lady-guest, now dead, whose name and
demeanour equally suggested the sobriquet of “The Bedlamite,” undertook
one evening to sing for us. Musk, in common with all our dogs, was
inured to, practically, any form of music, but when the Bedlamite
advanced with a concertina to the middle of the drawing-room, and, with
Nautch-like wavings of the instrument, began to shriek--there is no
other word--Salaman’s entirely beautiful setting of “I arise from dreams
of thee,” to the sole accompaniment of the concertina’s shrill
wheezings, the Pucket, after some cautious and horrified attention,
retired stealthily under the table, and uttered low and windy howls.
But there are so many points in connection with which, as it must seem
to dogs, our behaviour is inscrutable. One may take the case of baths,
which must daily mystify them. As I put forth to the bath-room, I can
nearly always recognise in my dogs some artificiality of manner, an
assumption of indifference, that they are far from feeling. They regard
me with bright, wary eyes, and remain in their baskets, still as birds
on eggs. “She goes,” they say, “to that revolting and unnecessary
torture, known as Washy-washy. Why she inflicts it upon herself is known
to Heaven alone. For our part, let us keep perfectly quiet, nor tempt
the incalculable impulses that rule her in these matters.”
I have never been addicted to dachshunds, but I must make mention of
one, Koko; incomparable as a lady of fashion, as a fag at lawn tennis,
and as a thief. She also had a gift, not without its uses, of biting
beggars. Her owner, my cousin Doctor Violet Coghill, who was in Koko’s
time a medical student, had a practice in dogbites more extended than
even her enthusiasm desired. Once, when a patient came to be dressed and
compensated, Koko was collared, chained, and, to make assurance doubly
sure, tucked under the doctor’s left arm. Thence, during the inspection
of the wound, she stretched a neck like a snake, and bit the patient
again. No dinner-table was safe from her depredations. “Koko is around
the coasts!” parlourmaids have been heard to cry, flying to their
dining-rooms, as merchant-brigs might fly to harbour upon a rumour of
Paul Jones. She and another, my sister’s Max, were the first dachshunds
in Carbery. I have heard Max discussed by little boys in Skibbereen.
“‘Tis a daag!”
“‘Tis not!”
“‘Tis!”
“‘Tis not! ’Tis a Sarpint!”
Another and more sophisticated critic decided that it was “a little
running sofa.” But this was intentionally facetious; the serpent theory
expressed a genuine conviction.
It was at one time said of my family, generally, that we were kept by a
few dogs for their convenience and entertainment, and later there was a
period when amongst ourselves and our cousins we could muster about
fourteen, in variety, mainly small dogs. We decided to have a drag-hunt,
and in order to ensure some measure of success--(I ask all serious
Hound-men to turn away their eyes from beholding iniquity)--I desired my
huntsman, an orderly-minded Englishman, to bring Rachel and Admiral to
run the drag.
“Oh, Master, you wouldn’t ask them pore ’ounds to do such a thing?” said
G.
I said I would; that they were old, and steady; in short, I apologised,
but was firm.
G. asked coldly if a couple would be enough.
I said quite enough, adding that all the ladies’ and gentlemen’s dogs
were coming.
G. said, “Oh, them cur-dogs----”
He then asked, with resignation, the hour of “the meet,” and retired.
At the appointed time he was there, with Rachel and Admiral, and two
other couples, his principles having succumbed to the temptation of a
hunt in June. The fourteen cur-dogs, ranging from griffons, through fox
terriers and spaniels, to a deerhound, were there too, with a suitable
number of proprietors, and the hare having been given a fair start, the
pack was laid on. The run began badly, as the smallest dogs, believing
the time had come to indulge their long-nourished detestation of the
hounds, flung themselves upon the blameless Rachel and her party, who,
for some distance, conscientiously ran the line, with cur-dogs hanging
like earrings from their ears. Neither was the hare immune from
difficulties. His course had been plotted to pass that old graveyard at
Castle Haven whereof mention has been made, and when he arrived at it he
found a funeral in progress. He lifted the drag, and tried to conceal
his true character. In vain. When he had passed, and he ventured to
become once more a hare, he found that there was not a man of the
funeral who was not hanging over the graveyard wall, absorbed in the
progress of the chase. This had been arranged to conclude at the
kennels, and Candy and I, having been skirters throughout, waited at a
suitable point to see the finish. First came the hare, very purple in
the face, but still uncaught and undefeated, the paraffined remains of
the rabbit still bouncing zealously after him. Then I heard the single,
recurring note of a hound, and presently Rachel came into view at a
leisurely trot; as she passed me, she smiled apologetically--she had a
pretty smile that showed her front teeth--and waved her stern. I
understood her to say that it was all rot, but she was going through
with it. After Rachel, nothing. I was high on the hill-side above the
kennels, and I heard a vague row on the road below, from which I
gathered that the game had palled on the rest of the pursuers, and they
were going home for tea.
I have loved many dogs. All of them have had “bits of my heart to tear,”
and have torn it, but of them all, Candy comes first, and will remain
so. “Wee Candy is just _fear_fully neat!” as her faithful friend, Madge
Robertson, used to say, with the whole-hearted enthusiasm of a
Highlander. Candy was a very small smooth fox terrier, eldest daughter
of Muck, with a forehead as high and as full as that of the Chinese God
of Wisdom, and eyes that had a more profound and burning soul in them
than I have seen in the eyes of any other living thing. I pass over her
nose in silence. Her figure was perfection, and her complexion, snow,
with one autumn leaf veiling her right eye.
She danced at tea-parties, whirling in a gauze frock, and an Early
Victorian straw bonnet trimmed with rosebuds. In this attire she would
walk, or rather trip, elegantly, from end to end of a table, appraising
what was thereon, and deciding by which cake to take up her position. To
see her say her grace, with her little bonneted head in her paws, on her
Mother’s knee, had power to make right-minded persons weep (even as one
of my sisters-in-law has been seen to shed tears, when, from the top of
an omnibus, she chanced to behold her eldest son, walking in boredom,
yet in unflawed goodness, with his nurse).
She was the little dog who set the fashion to all her fellows, and her
rules were of iron. Chief among these, was, as St. Paul might have said,
to abstain from affectionate licking. This, she held, was underbred, and
never done by the best dogs. She had a wounding way of carefully
sniffing the face or the fingers, and then turning aside; but on some
few and high occasions the ordinance has been infringed. Above and
beyond all others of her race she had the power of expressing herself.
It was she who organised and headed the Reception Committees that
welcomed my return after absence, and I have often been told how, when
my return was announced to her, she would assemble herself and her
comrades in a position that commanded the point of arrival, and would
lead the first public salutations and reproaches for past neglect; and,
these suitably and histrionically accomplished, no other little dog
could disclose so deep yet decorous an ecstasy, her face hidden in my
neck, while she uttered faint and tiny groans of love. Portraits, and,
still less, photographs, convey little or nothing to most dogs, but I
have seen Candy stiffen up and gaze fixedly at a snapshot of a
bull-terrier (very white on a dark background) that chanced to be on a
level with her eyes, uttering the while small and bead-like growls.
Her unusual brain power was paid for by overstrung nerves, and any loud
and sudden sound had power to terrify her. She nearly died from what
would now be called shock, after a few hours spent in the inferno of
Glasgow streets, in the course of a journey which she and I made to the
Highlands. We were going to the Island of Mull, and there we enjoyed
ourselves as, I think, only the guests of Highland hosts and hostesses
can. Candy, as was invariably the case, immediately took precedence of
all other beings.
“Jeanie,” said the Laird to his sister, “you’ve let the fire out.”
Jeanie, in whose lap Candy was embedded, replied, “I couldn’t help it,
Duncan. Candy dislikes so intensely the noise of putting on coal.”
The Laird admitted the explanation.
Much remains to be desired in travelling facilities on steamers, but in
nothing more than in provision
[Illustration: “CANDY.”
V. F. M.
]
[Illustration: E. Œ. S. AND A DILETTANTE.
V. F. M.
]
for dogs and children; a _crèche_ in which to immure children and those
doomed to attend them, a suitably arranged receptacle in each cabin for
the passenger’s dog. On a certain cross-Channel route, between Ireland
and England, I had, before the War, established myself and my dogs on a
sound basis. The dear Stewardess, with whom this was arranged, is now
dead, so without injury to her I can reveal the relations between us.
You must picture me as lurking, with two small white dogs in a leash, in
some obscure spot beneath the bridge. I have secured a cabin, and during
the confusion prior to getting under way I rush into it with the dogs. I
then establish them in a rug under a seat. The Stewardess enters--we
converse affably. (One of these many journeys took place on the same day
that Queen Victoria crossed the Irish Sea to pay her last visit to
Ireland. I mentioned the fact to the Stewardess. “Why, then, I hope
she’ll have a good crossing, the poor gerr’l!” replied the Stewardess,
benignantly.)
To return to the dogs. They, being well trained, have instantly composed
themselves for sleep. The Stewardess, equally well trained, ignores
them, only, when leaving the cabin, saying firmly, “Now, I don’t see
them dogs. I never seen them at all.”
Then she leaves. Later, the vessel having started, and I having retired
to my berth, the door is softly opened. In the darkness I hear the
Stewardess’s voice hiss, in the thinnest of whispers, “Have ye their
tickets?” I reply in equally gnat-like tones, “I have!” “I’ll take them,
so,” she replies. And all is well.
It was this same Stewardess, in the course of my first crossing with
her, of whom I wrote to Martin as follows. The subject is not strictly
within the scope of this chapter, but, as may have been observed, I
have absolved myself from limitations such as this.
E. Œ. S. to V. F. M. (May, 1890.)
“The Stewardess, in the course of much friendly converse, said,
‘Well, and I suppose ye’re coming back from school, now?’
“I concealed my deep gratification at the supposition, and said
‘No--that I was done with school for some time.’ ‘Well then, I
suppose you are too’--(clearly thinking I was offended at the
inference)--‘I suppose you’re too big now to be going to school!’
“Then I said I had never gone to school; whereat she put her helm
hard down, and began to abuse school-girls with much heartiness,
and said they gave more trouble than any other passengers.
“‘Indeed, they’re great imps,’ she said.
“I, clearly, am that woman whom you have so often and so
consistently abused, to whom Stewardesses talk--(all night, by the
light of a sickeningly swinging colza-oil lamp).”
A friend of mine once said to this admirable woman that she
proposed to bring her dog to England, and quoted the precedent of
my dogs as to cabin privileges.
“Is it Miss Somerville?” said the Stewardess, in a voice weary with
the satiety of a foregone conclusion. “Sure, she has nests of
them!”