been taken down, and the exhibits gone, one poor spaniel was discovered
who had lost his friends, and appealed to us for sympathy; so we
invited him to afternoon tea in the garden. Watch came to tea as usual;
but when he saw the other dog, he suddenly became demonstratively
affectionate. This was quite appreciated; but the other dog was not
therefore neglected. So Watch bit him. This was not appreciated at all.
We told Watch so, but he only sat down and turned his back to us, and
gave the family five minutes for repentance; and as they did not fall
on their knees, and beseech his forgiveness, he solemnly marched away
into the house and lay in his master’s study, quite alone, sulking. I
am sorry to say, too, that he conceived occasionally the most violent
antipathies to the most delightful and well-intentioned people. There
was a friend of ours, devoted to dogs in general, and to him in
particular, whom he would not allow to touch him; he would not take
food from her hand; once, when he had accepted from some one else the
food he had refused from her, he stopped eating it because he heard her
laugh. Once he was the victim of uncontrollable fascination. A girl
came to tea, at whose greeting he growled; then he lay down in a corner
with his eyes fixed on her. She went on talking and taking no notice of
him, and he came out into the room, little by little, looking at her,
till he finally sat straight in front of her, with his eyes fixed on
hers; and there he remained until she went away.
Watch had become identified with the family, to the extent of being
called “Watch Benson” by many friends. His English vocabulary was
wonderfully large. I remember the surprise of one gentleman who came
to talk business with my father. Watch was in the room, and, hearing
our voices outside, suddenly started to the door, which was shut. “Why
don’t you go out of the window, then?” my father said, quite quietly,
and Watch in a moment ran to the window and jumped out.
I never quite knew what Watch’s position was towards religious
exercises. I think he approved of them, but disapproved of our
exclusiveness about them. So he pretended altogether to despise
church. He was depressed on Sunday morning, came to the garden gate to
congratulate us when church was over, and pretended to be sleepy when
the time for evening church drew near. But I think that was because he
was not allowed to go; for he took up a very different position about
prayers; he insisted on coming; he had his own stall in a window;
though occasionally, when strangers were there, and he could not be
turned out, he suddenly decided to leave it for the softer rugs in the
middle of the chapel. There was one memorable occurrence, when the 26th
chapter of St. Matthew was read, and Watch got more and more excited
as he heard his own name repeated more and more emphatically, until
at the final, “I say unto all, _Watch_,” he ran eagerly out into the
middle--such exciting, personal prayers!
But he made a great point of attending; for when we changed our
house, and came to the conclusion that his presence would no longer
be appreciated, his efforts to attend prayers were quite pathetic.
Sometimes he scratched at the door, or pushed it open, and marched in
in the middle; sometimes he slunk in when we went into the chapel, and
sometimes ran in first and tried to hide. He had a vague idea in his
mind, that it was some special privilege, some special identification
with the family.
Now that we were in London half the year, Watch could not be with us
constantly. For one thing his dirty paws were such a mortification to
him, and we thought he would die from the amount of soot he licked
off. And he could not go walks, for he would stand smiling at us in
the middle of the street, with a tram, two omnibuses, a cart, and four
hansoms, bearing down upon him. So he went to stay with friends, or
down to the farm in the country.
That last was often necessary, but not a great success. Watch was
very exclusive; he never would go walking with servants, except when
everyone else was--not out, for he might have met them--but away
from home. The one exception was when the servants were nurses with
children. He was fond of children, and did not think it _infra dig._ to
play with them. In the same way he despised everyone at the farm, and
had to be treated in a very special manner, quite different from all
other dogs. “Why can’t Watch live like any of the other dogs?” one of
the children asked. “Oh, my dear, Watch is much too good for us,” his
mother told him, with a deep sarcasm. No other dog could come on the
rug when Watch was lying there. The cat might come and was welcome, and
liked the benevolent old gentleman. Just as one would not like anybody
to come and take half of one’s armchair, but might be rather flattered
if a cat or a little dog jumped up to settle itself there. Cats were
only cats, and fit subjects for philanthropy, but other dogs were his
own ill-bred relatives. As some one summed it up, “Watch doesn’t care
for dogs.”
The other dogs could not be expected to appreciate this, and Watch’s
airs provoked at last one outburst from King, the steady old
patriarchal collie of the farm. King flew upon him one fine day to
have it out, and all the other dogs, seeing that King “had taken out a
free ticket,” as the bailiff phrased it, flew to avenge their private
grievances. Watch was very nearly killed, but he kept his airs to
the last. Such strong arguments were brought to bear upon King, that
ever after, when Watch crossed the yard, King retired promptly to his
kennel. He could not trust his own self-control, and fled temptation.
Poor King! he had a sad end. He and a young golden collie called Pat
went out together in some woods--poachers, I fear. Towards evening Pat
came back in a fearful state of agitation, trembling. The dog must
have longed for words to tell what he had seen! But they guessed it.
The gamekeeper was known to have a grudge against King, and he was
never heard of again from that day to this.
Watch had a very different end. He grew old and blind. He had to live
altogether at the farm now, but he did not mind that. He had two great
friends. One was the bailiff’s daughter, and one the niece of the
landlady at the “Cricketers,” over the way. The first nursed Watch,
the second he went to see every day. But the niece got married, and
Watch never crossed the road again, but transferred all his affection
to Katie. He was nearly blind now, quite deaf, and very rheumatic. He
had not much emotion left; it soon wearied him. I remember while he
was still at the house, that when we all came home at the end of the
holidays in two detachments, he greeted the first-comers effusively,
and then retired under the sofa, and took no notice of the second batch
until they had been in the house about an hour; then, his emotions
being rested, he came out and greeted them too with affection.
But two loves remained to the end; his love for Katie and his love
for milk pudding--and Katie generally gave him the milk pudding. He
hobbled about after her as long as he could, and sat in her room. Once
they thought him dying. He lay on Katie’s bed, and Katie was away--was
coming back that evening. His head lay on the pillow and his eyes were
closed, and they thought him dead, when Katie came upstairs and spoke
to him; and the life came back to him, and she fed him, and he lived a
few days more. Then he died, this time with Katie close to him.
He is buried by the gold-fish pond under a cedar, and he has a
tombstone and an epitaph, “_Esne Vigil_.” And the other day I passed
by, and freshly-gathered daisies were lying on it. I think Katie must
have put them there.
[Illustration]
IX
KIDS OF THE GOATS
They were Zoe and Marcianus Capello (but she was no kid), and Capricorn
and his brother, and Chat and Tan. I did not possess them all at the
same time; in fact, I never had more than three at one time, and that
was because Marcianus Capello had twins.
Zoe was the first. When she came to us she was a little white kid, just
taken from her mother; she was very pretty, with a dark mark down her
back and two little tassels of hair on her neck. But, as I say, she was
only just taken from her mother, and the first evening was full of much
trouble and care, for we could not find anything she would eat, and
we thought she would be starved. She would not be fed, moreover, with
milk, and we were in despair until we thought of trying if she would
eat the tender sprouts of may. It was early spring, and for a day or so
all her meals were taken in our arms, as we held her up to nibble at
the hawthorn hedge.
But she soon grew less fastidious, and, as goats do, would eat
anything, from garden flowers, laurel leaves, and cabbages, down to
paper and bread. She was tethered in the field, and this was very
necessary, for if she was free she would follow us everywhere, would
go walks with us out of doors, and would come into the house after us.
The chief difficulty with kids is superabundant affection; they wail
pitifully when one leaves them alone, and cannot be persuaded that
their presence is not always desirable. Some friends of ours--they were
Quakers too--used to dress up a stick with a waterproof and hat to
keep their kid company. It satisfied her completely; but was it quite
consistent with the Friends’ idea of truth?
Zoe nearly had a bad accident once, in consequence of her fondness
for coming into the house. I was sitting on the steps at the door
and playing with her, when suddenly she bounced away from me and
ran into the drawing-room. I pursued her, and she, knowing she was
wrong, ran farther, saw a way of escape, and jumped straight through a
large plate-glass window. I thought she would be cut to pieces, and
in agonies rushed outside, where I found her making the most of her
opportunities by devouring our best rose trees under the window.
Zoe lived with us for a year. Then I was kept indoors by a bad cold and
throat, and I heard that the kid was sympathising with me by having a
bad throat also. But alas, poor Zoe! her throat was much worse than
mine, and though we strapped a little blanket on her back to keep her
warm, and though the gardener and the cowman poured gruel down her
throat, when she could hardly swallow, she got thinner and weaker, and
one morning she died. I sobbed audibly all through prayers that morning.
Then a friend of mine told me that some cousins of hers were anxious
to part with a goat they had, and Marcianus Capello, otherwise called
Marcap, arrived. She was not at all like Zoe; she was a large, dull,
elderly, brown and white goat. She did not want to make friends at all;
she chiefly wanted to eat. But there was one great advantage about
her, for a few weeks after I had her she gave birth to two little twin
billygoats--two fluffy black-and-white creatures with huge legs.
Marcap was, like Zoe, tethered in the field, and it was supposed that
filial affection would keep the kids near her. The kids had a fine
time in consequence. One morning one heard a rattling over the roof of
the nursery, and found the kids were playing King of the Castle on the
house-top. Another time they came skipping out of a yard where building
was going on, covered with lime to the tops of their legs; and for some
little time we were terribly afraid that the smallest kid would lose
his eyesight, as he had splashed lime up into his eyes, and that they
both would come out of it with skinny hairless legs. A procession,
of my nurse holding a cup of milk and water, myself and my youngest
brother (who was too naughty to be left alone), could be seen crossing
the field three times a day to bathe the kid’s eyes.
When the kids were old enough to do without their mother, we gave
Marcap away. I did not mind parting with Marcap; I never should have
got fond of her, for she had no idea of intimacy. But to part with a
kid was a different matter; it took us a long time to decide that it
would be better to keep the biggest and strongest kid, Capricorn; and
we gave away the little one.
Capricorn proved just a little more warlike than it is quite convenient
for a kid to be, if you are in the habit of taking it out for walks.
In the first place, if he met a flock of sheep in a field, he would at
once begin to drive them away, running and butting after them. In the
second place, if he met cows, he would invariably have a pitched battle
with them, unless he was dragged away by main force. I have seen him in
the middle of a ring of cows, knocked down by them, and getting up to
butt them again. Thirdly, if he met a donkey, even in a cart, he would
go for it, which sometimes caused the drivers of the cart to swear.
Lastly, if he met children, he would try to awe them by standing on his
hind-legs. His wickedness gradually developed with his growth. Before
he was grown up he was a very affectionate kid. Once, when I turned
back in a walk, the rest of my family had the greatest difficulty in
inducing Capricorn to go with them. He got on very well with our wise
collie. Watch was useful in fetching him up, if he lagged behind in a
walk to carry out some of his evil designs. I had a little cart for
Capricorn, too, and made him pull up stones for a rockery we were
making; this was a good outlet for his energies, and he had less time
to be wicked.
But he finally got too fierce for us to keep him any longer. If I was
running down a hill by his side he would try to hook me with his horns,
and he was not at all to be trusted with children. I gave him away
reluctantly, and it was some consolation to hear that he nearly killed
his new master, who came upon him suddenly in the dark. Since then I
found out that it was not individual wickedness, but, so to speak,
class wickedness, and that it is rarely safe to keep a billygoat when
he grows up.
Then for some time I had no kid. After a while a lady near who kept
goats gave me two kids.
These were very pretty kids; one was quite white, the other fawn
colour, and very graceful. They would follow me everywhere; but, as I
could not keep two, Chat, the white one, was given away.
It was considerably easier to take Tan walks than it had been to take
Capricorn; for Tan did not want to fight every beast or child she met.
Watch was useful in fetching her as he had been with Capricorn. Long
afterwards, when the acquaintanceship between them was a thing of the
past, to say, “Watch, fetch the kid,” would bring her hurrying up to
us. Tan was the only one of my goats who ever learnt a trick, but I
taught her to shake hands in exchange for leaves or oats.
Then we moved from the place where we were living, and I left Tan
behind me for a child of the family who were coming into our old house.
I heard no more of her for a year, and then they wrote to me to say
that Tan was pining, and they wished that I would send for her. So she
came up by train, and the first moment she saw me she remembered me,
and we shook hands.
Tan is still alive. On misty summer mornings, one sees her pass the
windows heading a herd of cows; she is much too proud to walk with
sheep; and though she will condescend to go with cows, she keeps
herself to herself, never talks to any of them, but preserves a proud
and solitary position. On rare occasions a sudden burst of friendship
or curiosity will induce her to come into the house with me.
But my friendship with Tan, I must confess it, is not what it was;
perhaps it might never have waned if I had not consented to the year’s
separation. But although occasionally we bleat to each other from a
distance, though we shake hands over a few oats, she no longer runs
to meet me if I come near, she no longer cries out with a wailing
bleat when I go away, she no longer has to be tied up to prevent
her following me. And I do not think it is age that has made this
difference, I think it was worked by that year of separation.
[Illustration]
Passing through the farmyard on a cold day, I found Tan in the corner
where the dead leaves had blown up, and lay a foot or more deep. She
was standing in the deepest part of the heap, which came up to the top
of her legs, and had secured herself, as it were, a good hot bottle for
the night.
In conclusion, I would say that there are no pets more enchanting
than kids. They will give you as much amusement as kittens or
puppies; while they are as intelligent as grown-up dogs, and even more
wildly devoted. But there are two things you must never expect of a
goat,--neither the least unselfishness in their affection, nor the
smallest spark of benevolence.
X
COMMUNITY LIFE
Our old cowman Callaway was Cornish; he taught me to milk; he took a
fatherly interest in my animals; he talked Cornished English, and I
understood about a quarter of what he said. He had a wife who worked in
the house of a neighbour of ours, and a very elegant daughter. I never
could imagine how her hats and jackets and dresses got into the hovel
in which the family lived; however, I suppose they must have got into
it, for they certainly came out.
[Illustration]
The wife’s employer’s daughter kept guinea-pigs; and Callaway promised
to get us a white one. In due time he appeared with it. But to our
delight, when the box was opened, out came two little white creatures,
with shining red eyes, not weak bluish-pink eyes, but real good red
ones like little jewels. They were named Ixtlilxochitl and Atahualpa,
and installed in a wooden house with a wired-in yard under the laurel
trees of the drying-ground. Here they rapidly became naturalised;
burrowing under their wire fence, they found the way to the long,
fresh grass beyond, and enjoyed as much liberty as they wished till
nightfall, when the wooden slide of their house shut them safe from
dogs and rats and cats.
I had many sympathisers in my amusements. Not only was there Callaway
the cowman, who became house-builder to the community, but my old nurse
used to take the guinea-pigs a breakfast of soaked bread every morning;
and we had a butler sagacious about animals, to appeal to as a highest
authority on all difficult questions. So when, one morning, I opened
the slide, to find two new white things about as big as large mice
gaily running about, the first thing I did was to run to the servants’
hall and summon the butler to advise in this difficult and delicate
situation. Ixtlilxochitl was sent to a new hutch, hastily erected for
him, and Atahualpa kept house for the babies.
This was very good for the development of Ixtlilxochitl’s character.
He became very tame, learnt to sit up with his forepaws on my finger,
and to “lie dead” on his back with his little pink hands and feet in
the air; guinea-pigs’ forefeet are really small pink hands, with short
claws on the fingers, and a rudimentary thumb.
Guinea-pigs grow up very soon; they have no helpless infancy at all.
I have heard of a guinea-pig eating bran twenty minutes after it was
born. I know we used to carry the infants about and let them run up our
sleeves till they stuck, and had to be pulled back by their hind-legs;
and though I would not recommend this practice, they never seemed to
take any harm from it. Then, when they are about three months old they
become heads of families. At first the family only consists of one or
two members, but they increase in number until each family numbers
seven or eight. You may expect a new family once every six or eight
weeks. There is a nice sum in geometrical progression! And after this
general statement of the matter you will hardly expect me to give
you a history of each individual, though I made a chart of their
genealogies. I will, however, give a short biographical notice of the
most interesting characters.
The first two were Ulfias and Brastias. Ulfias was a nice, comely
guinea-pig; he took after his father, and had brown whiskers. Brastias
had pink ears, which were generally much bitten, and fierce red eyes;
he was an ill-conditioned, cross little beast, and a great fighter.
Moreover, he was a murderer.
[Illustration]
It is the funniest thing in the world to see guinea-pigs fighting.
They stand on the tips of their toes and raise their noses, until they
present the chin only to their adversaries; then they begin to dance
round, always chin to chin, gnashing their teeth; when they see a good
opportunity they fly in and bite. It is a scientific way of fighting,
like wrestling or fencing--quite different from the indiscriminate
plunge of a cat, who rolls round in a heap with her adversary.
After these two came Enid, Elaine, and Geraint. Enid was the first to
have a baby, and she had only one--a fat round one, which grew and
prospered until one day when he suddenly disappeared. We searched and
hunted with anxious hearts, but with no result. After a time we wanted
to move the hutches to a new place, and when we took up that in which
poor Enid and the baby lived, there was a hole under it--a rat’s hole,
and at the end of the hole, as we peered down, we saw a little white
thing--the skin and bones of a baby guinea-pig. Enid never had another
baby; she grew sad and thin and pined away, and at last she died.
Then Elaine had a baby--two; but one was deformed, completely paralysed
in his hind-legs, and I felt that the kindest thing to do would be to
destroy him. So I took out a bottle of laudanum, and prepared to begin
the hari-kari. Poor little guinea-pig! it was already very ill, and I
could with difficulty get its little rabbit-like mouth open. What a
tiny throat! could it swallow even enough poison to end its panting
little life? When I laid it down again there was very little change,
and I did not know what to do; then the pink nose, the hands and feet,
began to have a slightly blue tinge. I could not disturb it again to
open its mouth, so I poured a little more laudanum on its mouth and
nose, and the limbs got bluer, and the breathing became harder, and at
last ceased. It was a dreadful thing to do. However, on the whole, it
was less dreadful than drowning it. Once I had to drown a bat.... We
will draw a veil over that.
However, to proceed with the guinea-pigs. The baby that was not
deformed was a very nice little pig--small but comely. He grew up and
was called Jim.
There is an individuality about guinea-pigs, not explicable but to be
apprehended intuitively. Jim was quite individual. You would have known
that if you had only seen him sitting upright at his mother’s side to
nibble out of the hay trough.
The guinea-pigs lived in a large estate fenced in by wire; inside the
yard were various settlements, bedrooms, all with free access to the
yard, and usually to the ground beyond, for they made holes under the
wire and disported themselves outside. They had a beautiful rack to
hold their hay, saucers for bran, and were given a breakfast of soaked
bread every morning. At breakfast-time shrill whistles might be heard
from the guinea-pig yard. Most people think guinea-pigs have only
one noise, but in reality they have, quite clearly defined, three
fundamental notes, of desire, contentment, and anger. They whistle when
they are hungry, make what are called “guinea-pig noises” when they are
well content--for ordinary conversation, and they gnash their teeth
when they are angry.
About this time, when the colony was not too large, I used to take them
out for picnics.
Opposite the front door, at the corner of the lawn, there is a large
escalonia tree; on warm summer evenings it sheds a delicious fragrant
smell from leaves and flowers. Opposite this there is a stile made to
get into the fields. The stile is made in such a manner as to be a very
comfortable seat. Here, under the escalonia, I used to turn out the
guinea-pigs for a day in the country, while I read a book on the stile,
and Watch was put to guard them; if any little pig strayed too far, he
saw where it went to, and helped me to find it again.
But, in time, the colony grew too large for this, and at last it began
to increase with a rapidity that alarmed me; for, as you see, it is not
a case of the simple geometrical progression of creatures which have
the same number in every family; but, as guinea-pigs get older, each
family gets larger, so that it is like a sum in compound interest, at
an accelerating rate of interest. I began to be frightened when the
“five Mitchinsons” were born, and the next family was larger still.
In fact, they would have eaten us out of garden and farm, if it had not
been for what political economists call “violent checks”; these violent
checks were kidnapping, nepoticide, and massacre.