Mourn, all ye Loves and Graces! mourn,
Ye wits, ye gallants, and ye gay!
Death from my fair her bird has torn—
Her much-loved sparrows snatched away.
Her very eyes she prized not so,
For he was fond, and knew my fair
Well as young girls their mothers know,
And sought her breast and nestled there.
Once, fluttering round from place to place,
He gaily chirped to her alone;
But now that gloomy path must trace
Whence Fate permits none to return.
Accursèd shades o’er hell that lower,
Oh, be my curses on you heard!
Ye, that all pretty things devour,
Have torn from me my pretty bird.
Oh, evil deed! Oh, sparrow dead!
Oh, what a wretch, if thou canst see
My fair one’s eyes with weeping red,
And know how much she grieves for thee.
James I, of England, whom Dickens designates as “His Sowship,” to
express his detestation of his character, had a variety of dumb
favourites. Although a remorseless destroyer of animals in the chase, he
had an intense pleasure in seeing them around him happy and well cared
for in a state of domesticity. In 1623 John Bannat obtained a grant of
the king’s interest in the leases of two gardens and a tenement in the
Nuriones, on the condition of building and maintaining a house wherein
to keep and rear his Majesty’s newly imported silkworms. Sir Thomas
Dale, one of the settlers of the then newly formed colony of Virginia,
returning to Europe on leave, brought with him many living specimens of
American zoölogy, among them some flying squirrels. This coming to his
Majesty’s ears, he was seized with a boyish impatience to add them to
the private menageries in St. James’s Park. At the council table and in
the circle of his courtiers he recurs again and again to the subject,
wondering why Sir Thomas had not given him “the first pick” of his cargo
of curiosities. He reminded them how the recently arrived Muscovite
ambassador had brought him live sables, and, what he loved even better,
splendid white gyrfalcons of Iceland; and when Buckingham suggested that
in the whole of her reign Queen Elizabeth had never received live sables
from the Czar, James made special inquiries if such were really the
case. Some one of his loving subjects, desirous of ministering to his
favourite hobby, had presented him with a cream-coloured fawn. A nurse
was immediately hired for it, and the Earl of Shrewsbury commissioned to
write as follows to Miles Whytakers, signifying the royal pleasure as to
future procedure: “The king’s Majesty hath commissioned me to send this
rare beast, a white hind calf, unto you, together with a woman, his
nurse, that hath kept it and bred it up. His Majesty would have you see
it be kept in every respect as this good woman doth desire, and that the
woman be lodged and boarded by you until his Majesty come to Theobald’s
on Monday next, and then you shall know further of his pleasure. What
account his Majesty maketh of this fine beast you may guess, and no man
can suppose it to be more rare than it is; therefore I know that your
care of it will be accordingly. So in haste I bid you my hearty
farewell. At Whitehall, this 6th of November, 1611.”
About 1629 the King of Spain effected an important diversion in his own
favour by sending the king—priceless gift—an elephant and five camels.
Going through London after midnight, says a state paper, they could not
pass unseen, and the clamour and outcry raised by some street loiterers
at sight of their ponderous bulk and ungainly step, roused the sleepers
from their beds in every street through which they passed. News of this
unlooked-for addition to the Zoölogical Garden is conveyed to Theobald’s
as speedily as horseflesh, whip and spur, could do their work. Then
arose an interchange of missives to and fro betwixt the king, my lord
treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Connay, grave, earnest, deliberate, as
though involving the settlement or refusal of some treaty of peace. In
muttered sentences, not loud but deep, the thrifty lord treasurer shows
“how little he is in love with royal presents, which cost his master as
much to maintain as could a garrison.” No matter. Warrants are issued to
the officers of the Mews and to Buckingham, master of the horse, that
the elephant is to be daily well dressed and fed, but that he should not
be led forth to water, nor any admitted to see him without directions
from his keeper. The camels are to be daily grazed in the park, but
brought back at night with all possible precautions to secure them from
the vulgar gaze. The elephant had two Spaniards and two Englishmen to
take care of him, and the royal quadruped had royal fare. His keepers
affirm that from the month of September till April he must drink not
water but wyne; and from April to September “he must have a gallon of
wyne the day.” His winter allowance was six bottles per diem, but
perhaps his keepers relieved him occasionally of a portion of the
tempting beverage which they probably thought too good to waste on an
animal even if it be a royal elephant.
When Voltaire was living near Geneva he owned a large monkey which used
to attack and even bite both friends and enemies. This repulsive pet one
day gave his master three wounds in the leg, obliging him for some time
to hobble on crutches. He had named the creature Luc, and in
conversation with intimate friends he also gave the King of Prussia the
same name, because, said he, “Frederick is like my monkey, who bites
those who caress him.” As a contrast, remember how the hermit, Thoreau,
used to cultivate the acquaintance of a little mouse until it became
really tame and would play a game of bopeep with his eccentric friend.
Nothing seems too odd or disagreeable to be regarded with affection.
Lord Erskine, who always expressed a great interest in animals, had at
one time two leeches for favourites. Taken dangerously ill at
Portsmouth, he fancied that they had saved his life. Every day he gave
them fresh water and formed a friendship with them. He said he was sure
that both knew him, and were grateful for his attentions. He named them
Home and Cline, for two celebrated surgeons, and he affirmed that their
dispositions were quite different; in fact, he thought he distinguished
individuality in these black squirmers from the mire.
Even pigs have had the good fortune to interest persons of genius.
Robert Herrick had a pet pig which he fed daily with milk from a silver
tankard, and Miss Martineau had the same odd fancy. She, too, had a pet
pig which she had washed and scrubbed daily. When too ill to superintend
the operation she would listen at her window for piggie’s squeal,
advertising that the operation had commenced.
John Wilson, better known as Christopher North, loved many pets, and was
as unique in his methods with them as in all other things. His intense
fondness for animals and birds was often a trial to the rest of the
family, as when his daughter found he had made a nest for some young
gamecocks in her trunk of party dresses which was stored in the attic.
On his library table, where “fishing rods found company with Ben Jonson
and Jeremy Taylor reposed near a box of barley-sugar,” a tame sparrow he
had befriended hopped blithely about, master of the situation. This tiny
pet imagined itself the most important occupant of the room. It would
nestle in his waistcoat, hop upon his shoulder, and seemed influenced by
constant association with a giant, for it grew in stature until it was
alleged that the sparrow was gradually becoming an eagle.
The Rev. Gilbert White, who wrote the Natural History of Selborne,
speaks of a tortoise which he petted, saying, “I was much taken with its
sagacity in discerning those that show it kind offices, for as soon as
the good old lady comes in sight who has waited on it for more than
thirty years, it hobbles toward its benefactress with awkward alacrity,
but remains inattentive to strangers.” Thus not only “the ox knoweth his
owner and the ass his master’s crib,” but the most abject reptile and
torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched
with the feelings of gratitude. Think of Jeremy Bentham growing a sort
of vetch in his garden to cram his pockets with to feed the deer in
Kensington Gardens! “I remember,” says his friend who tells the story,
“his pointing it out to me and telling me the virtuous deer were fond of
it, and ate it out of his hand.” Like Byron, he once kept a pet bear,
but he was in Russia at the time, and the wolves got into the poor
creature’s box on a terrible night and carried off a part of his face, a
depredation which the philosopher never forgot nor forgave to his dying
day. He always kept a supply of stale bread in a drawer of his dining
table for the “mousies.”
The Brownings had many pets, among them an owl, which after death was
stuffed and given an honoured position in the poet’s library. Sydney
Smith professed not to care for pets, especially disliking dogs; but he
named his four oxen Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, and dosed them when he
fancied they needed medicine. Miss Martineau relates that a phrenologist
examining Sydney’s head announced, “This gentleman is a naturalist,
always happy among his collections of birds and fishes.” “Sir,” said
Sydney, turning upon him solemnly with wide-open eyes—“sir, I don’t know
a fish from a bird.” But this ignorance and indifference were all
assumed. His daughter, writing of his daily home life, says: “Dinner was
scarcely over ere he called for his hat and stick and sallied forth for
his evening stroll. Each cow and calf and horse and pig were in turn
visited and fed and patted, and all seemed to welcome him; he cared for
their comforts as he cared for the comforts of every living being around
him.” He used to say: “I am for all cheap luxuries, even for animals;
now, all animals have a passion for scratching their back bones; they
break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look, this is my
Universal Scratcher, a sharp-edged pole resting on a high and low post,
adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh
Reviewer can take his turn; you have no idea how popular it is.” Who
could resist repeating just here the wit’s impromptu epigram upon the
sarcastic, diminutive Jeffrey when the caustic critic was surprised
riding on the children’s pet donkey? “I still remember the joy-inspiring
laughter that burst from my father at this unexpected sight, as,
advancing toward his old friend, with a face beaming with delight, he
exclaimed:
Witty as Horatius Flaccus,
As great a Jacobin as Gracchus,
Short, though not as fat as Bacchus,
Riding on a little jackass.”
Before saying good-bye to the donkey I must give the appeal of Mr.
Evarts’s little daughter at their summer home in Windsor, Vermont, to
her learned and judicial father; so naïve and irresistible:
“DEAR PAPA: Do come home soon. The donkey is so lonesome without
you!”
I once heard Mr. Evarts lamenting to Chief-Justice Chase that he had
been badly beaten at a game of High Low Jack by Ben, the learned pig. “I
know now,” said he, “why two pipes are called a hog’s head. It is on
account of their great capacity!”
One would fancy that a busy lawyer would have no time to give to pets,
but this is far from true. Burnet, in his life of Sir Matthew Hale, the
most eminent lawyer in the time of Charles I and Cromwell, says of him,
that “his mercifulness extended even to his beasts, for when the horses
that he had kept long grew old, he would not suffer them to be sold or
much wrought, but ordered his man to turn them loose on his grounds and
put them only to easy work, such as going to market and the like. He
used old dogs also with the same care; his shepherd having one that was
blind with age, he intended to have killed or lost him, but the judge
coming to hear of it made one of his servants bring him home and feed
him till he died. And he was scarce ever seen more angry than with one
of his servants for neglecting a bird that he kept so that it died for
want of food.”
Daniel Webster’s fondness for animals is well known. When his friends
visited him at Marshfield the first excursion they must take would be to
his barns and pastures, where he would point out the beauties of an
Alderney, and mention the number of quarts she gave daily, with all a
farmer’s pride, adding, “I know, for I measured it myself.” Choate used
to tell a story _à propos_ of this. Once, when spending the Sabbath at
Marshfield, he went to his room after breakfast to read. Soon there came
an authoritative knock at the door, and Mr. Webster shouted, “What are
you doing, Choate?” He replied, “I’m reading.” “Oh,” said Webster, “come
down and see the pigs.”
He would often rout up his son Fletcher at a provokingly early hour to
go out and hold a lantern while he fed the oxen with nubs of corn; and,
noticing a decided lack of enthusiasm in Fletcher, would say: “You do
not enjoy this society, my son; it’s better than I find in the Senate.”
It was a touching scene when on the last day, when he sat in his loved
library, he longed to look once more into the kindly faces of his honest
oxen, and had them driven up to the window to say good-bye. Speaking of
Choate recalls a comical story about his finding in his path, during a
summer morning’s walk, a dozen or more dorbeetles sprawling on their
backs in the highway enjoying the warm sunshine. With great care he
tipped them all over into a normal position, when a friend coming along
asked curiously, “What are you doing, Mr. Choate?” “Why, these poor
creatures got overturned, and I am helping them to take a fresh start.”
“But,” said the other, “they do that on purpose; they are sunning
themselves, and will go right back as they were.” This was a new idea to
the puzzled pleader, but with one of those rare smiles which lit up his
sad, dark face so wonderfully, he said: “Never mind, I’ve put them
right; if they go back, it is at their own risk.” And an interesting
anecdote is told in his biography of his touch of human sympathy for
inanimate objects: “When as a boy he drove his father’s cows, he says,
more than once when he had thrown away his switch, he has returned to
find it, and has carried it back and thrown it under the tree from which
he took it, for he thought, ‘Perhaps there is, after all, some yearning
of Nature between them still.’”
There are enough anecdotes about birds as pets to fill another big book.
One of Dickens’s most delightful characters was ponderous, impetuous
Lawrence Boythorn, with his pet bird lovingly circling about him. In
Washington, in Salmon P. Chase’s home, when he was Secretary of the
Treasury, lived a pet canary, one of the tamest, which had a special
liking for the grave, reserved statesman. It was allowed to fly about
the room freely, and had an invariable habit of calmly waiting beside
the secretary at dinner until he had used his finger-bowl; then Master
Canary would take possession of it for a bath. In Jean Paul Richter’s
study stood a table with a cage of canaries. Between this and his
writing table ran a little ladder, on which the birds could hop their
way to the poet’s shoulder, where they frequently perched.
Celia Thaxter loved birds. She writes: “I can not express to you my
distress at the destruction of the birds. You know how I love them;
every other poem I have written has some bird for its subject, and I
look at the ghastly horror of women’s headgear with absolute suffering.
I remonstrate with every wearer of birds. No woman worthy of the name
would wish to be instrumental in destroying the dear, beautiful
creatures, and for such idle folly—to deck their heads like squaws—who
are supposed to know no better—when a ribbon or a flower would serve
their purpose just as well, and not involve this fearful sacrifice.” In
a letter she describes a night visit from birds.
“Two or three of the earlier were down in the big bay window, and
between two and three o’clock in the morning it began softly to rain,
and all at once the room filled with birds: song sparrows, flycatchers,
wrens, nuthatches, yellow birds, thrushes, all kinds of lovely feathered
creatures fluttered in and sat on picture frames and gas fixtures, or
whirled, agitated, in mid air, while troops of others beat their heads
against the glass outside, vainly striving to get in. The light seemed
to attract them as it does the moths. We had no peace, there was such a
crowd, such cries and chirps and flutterings. I never heard of such a
thing; did you?
“Oh, the birds! I do believe few people enjoy them as you and I do. The
song sparrows and white-throats follow after me like chickens when they
see me planting. The martins almost light on my head; the humming birds
_do_, and tangle their little claws in my hair; so do the sparrows. I
wish somebody were here to tell me the different birds, and recognise
these different voices. There are more birds than usual this year, I am
happy to say. The women have not assassinated them all for the funeral
pyres they carry on their heads.... What between the shrikes and owls
and cats and weasels and women—worst of all—I wonder there’s a bird left
on this planet.
“In the yard of the house at Newton, where we used to live, I was in the
habit of fastening bones (from cooked meat) to a cherry tree which grew
close to my sitting-room window; and when the snow lay thick upon the
ground that tree would be alive with blue jays and chickadees, and
woodpeckers, red-headed and others, and sparrows (not English), and
various other delightful creatures. I was never tired watching them and
listening to them. The sweet housekeeping of the martins in the little
boxes on my piazza roof is more enchanting to me than the most
fascinating opera, and I worship music. I think I must have begun a
conscious existence as some kind of a bird in æons past. I love them so!
I am always up at four, and I hear everything every bird has to say on
any subject whatever. Tell me, have you ever tied mutton and beef bones
to the trees immediately around the house where you live for the birds?”
Matthew Arnold wrote of his canary and cat in a most loving way.