“But you, Vernon,” I said, “are neither scientist, sportsman, nor
butcher, and Deeming asks you what you think.”
Vernon was looking less tranquil, less gentle than usual at this
moment. His face was lit up by a fire I had never seen burning in his
eyes before.
“My sympathies march with Madame Terrascalchi’s,” he answered, “though
perhaps she expresses them with a feminine enthusiasm that may seem to
some almost hysterical, and is carried away by her passion of pity into
an excess of animosity against men and women, who often err against the
animal world more from lack of imagination than from any definite bias
towards cruelty.”
“The question is, are we to be the servants of the animals or they to
be our servants?” Deeming said rather drily. “I notice that Madame
Terrascalchi is eating something that looks remarkably like a veal
cutlet at this very moment.”
“Oh,” said Vernon, with his pleasant smile. “I hold no brief for her.
I believe her, in fact, to be very—shall I say human? But as to what
you were saying. Is it wholly a matter of whether we are to be masters
or slaves? Cannot we and the animals—we are not, of course, discussing
dangerous wild beasts—be friends, or, let us say, could we not be
friends, good and close friends, they serving us in their way, we
serving them in ours?”
“How are we to serve the animals?” asked Deeming, still drily.
“By considering them far more than we generally do, by studying them,
their natures, habits, desires, likes and dislikes far more closely, by
encouraging their affection for us, and giving them more of ours.”
“I think that would be a great waste of time.”
“Deeming is a terribly busy man, Vernon,” I said.
“I know my London well enough to know it,” Vernon remarked politely.
“Still, I think we might find time for that; even that we ought to find
time for it. I am rather what you might call a ‘crank’ on the subject
of the animal world.”
“I didn’t know it,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I am.”
The almost fierce light again shone in his eyes.
“I love all animals. Ouida speaks of their ‘mysterious lives,’ spent
side by side with ours, and comparatively little noticed, little
sympathised with by us. I know that many animal-lovers would raise a
cry of protest against this. ‘Look,’ they would say, ‘how dogs are
worshipped and petted, how horses are loved by their owners, how
cats are stroked and fondled!’ and so forth. Yes, it is true. Out
of the great world of the animals, we—those of us who are fond of
animals—select a few who, we think, can minister to our pleasure, and
we give them, or think we give them, a good time. But these pet animals
who enjoy life are few in number compared with the many who are made
to suffer by man; the dogs that are kept everlastingly tied up, or are
half-starved, or are perpetually cuffed and kicked and beaten; the cats
that are abandoned to die when their thoughtless owners change home;
the horses that are overdriven, tortured by tight bearing-reins, lashed
with the whip, made to draw loads that are too heavy for them; the
birds—let me include them—that are forced to spend their lives in tiny
cages in dark places. To any real, observant lover of animals, even
of the so-called pet animals—excluding the beasts of burden, donkeys,
mules, oxen, and the beasts that form part of our food supply, and
the dumb creatures that are given over to the tender mercies of the
sportsman: the hares that are coursed, the foxes and stags and deer
that are hunted, the pigeons that are let out of traps (their eyes
pierced to make them fly in a given direction) to be shot and are often
left maimed to die, the sea-birds that the Cockney ‘wings’ and abandons
to starve and rot, floating helpless on the waves of the sea, the
pheasants that, wounded in a battue, are crushed one on the top of the
other into bags to perish of suffocation; excluding all these—to any
real and observant lover of animals the lack of sympathy, or the actual
cruelty of man, is a perpetual source of disturbance, of anxiety, even
of lively distress and misery.”
I was quite amazed at the energy with which Vernon had spoken, at the
vigour and force of his manner. He paused for a moment, then he added—
“My love of animals has given me very many horrible moments in my
life, moments in which I confess that my heart has been turned to
bitterness and I have longed to make men suffer as they were making
animals suffer. Yes, I have longed to see the cursed Cockney sportsman
drifting face to face with a lingering death upon the sea, the callous
game-preserver wounded in one of his traps and alone in the darkness of
night in the forest, the careless hunter at bay with hounds rushing in
upon him. But especially have I known the longing to turn one whom I
have seen being cruel to a pet animal into that animal, and to be his
master for a little while. You know some hold that theory.”
“What theory?” said Deeming.
“That what we do is eventually done to us in another life; for
instance, that if a man has been brutal to an animal, at death his soul
passes into a similar animal, which endures the fate he once meted out
when he was a man.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Deeming. “You surely can’t believe such
unscientific nonsense!”
“I did not say I believed it, but I should not be sorry to.”