legitimate pet in the proper sense of the word? As to the bull-dog, I
say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he
will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares
to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he
puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he
has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet;
he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his
company is believed to give an air of dash and fashion to his master;
and he waddles along apparently engaged in thinking out some scheme of
reform for sporting circles in general. In a drawing-room he looks
unnatural, and his imperturbable good humour fails to secure him favour.
Dr. Jessopp tells a story of a clergyman's wife who usually kept from
fifteen to twenty brindled bull-dogs; but this lady was an original
character, and her mode of using a red-hot iron bar when any of her pets
had an argument was marked by punctuality and despatch.
The genuine collie is an ideal pet, but the cross-grained fleecy brutes
bred for the show-bench are good neither for one thing nor another. The
real, homely, ugly collie never snaps at friends; the mongrel brute with
the cross of Gordon setter is not safe for an hour at a time. The real
collie takes to sheep-driving by instinct; he will run three miles out
and three miles in, and secure his master's property accurately after
very little teaching; the present champion of all the collies would run
away from a sheep as if he had seen a troop of lions. In any case, even
when a collie is a genuine affectionate pet, his place is not in the
house. Let him have all the open air possible, and he will remain
healthy, delightful in his manners, and preternaturally intelligent. The
dog of the day is the fox-terrier, and a charming little fellow he is.
Unfortunately it happens that most smart youths who possess fox-terriers
have an exalted idea of their friends' pugilistic powers, and hence the
sweet little black, white, and tan beauty too often has life concerted
into a battle and a march. Still no one who understands the fox-terrier
can help respecting and admiring him. If I might hint a fault, it is
that the fox-terrier lacks balance of character. The ejaculation
"Cats!" causes him to behave in a way which is devoid of well-bred
repose, and his conduct when in presence of rabbits is enough to make a
meditative lurcher or retriever grieve. When a lurcher sees a rabbit in
the daytime, he leers at him from his villainous oblique eye, and seems
to say, "Shan't follow you just now--may have the pleasure of looking
you up this evening." But the fox-terrier converts himself into a kind
of hurricane in fur, and he gives tongue like a stump-orator in full
cry. I may say that, when once the fox-terrier becomes a drawing-room
pet, he loses all character--he might just as well be a pug at once. The
Bedlington is perhaps the best of all terriers, but his disreputable
aspect renders him rather out of place in a refined room. It is only
when his deep sagacious eyes are seen that he looks attractive. He can
run, swim, dive, catch rabbits, retrieve, or do anything. I grieve to
say that he is a dog of an intriguing disposition; and no prudent lady
would introduce him among dogs who have not learned mischief. The
Bedlington seems to have the power of command, and he takes a fiendish
delight in ordering young dogs to play pranks. He will whisper to a
young collie, and in an instant you will see that collie chasing sheep
or hens, or hunting among flower-beds, or baiting a cow, or something
equally outrageous. Decidedly the Bedlington does not shine as a pet;
and he should be kept only where there are plenty of things to be
murdered daily--then he lives with placid joy, varied by sublime
Berserker rage.
As to feathered pets, who has not suffered from parrots? You buy a grey
one at the docks, and pay four pounds for him on account of his manifold
accomplishments. When he is taken home and presented to a prim lady, he
of course gives her samples of the language used by the sailors on the
voyage home; and, even when his morals are cured and his language is
purified by discipline, he is a terrible creature. The imp lurks in his
eye, and his beak--his abominable beak--is like a malicious vice. But I
allow that Polly, when well behaved, gives a charming appearance to a
room, and her ways are very quaint. Lonely women have amused themselves
for many and many a weary hour with the antics of the pretty tropical
bird; and I shall say nothing against Poll for the world.
I started with the intention of merely skirting the subject; but I find
I am involved in considerations deep as society--deep as the origins of
the human race. In their proper place I like all pets, with the
exception of snakes. The aggressive pug is bad enough, but the snake is
a thousand times worse. When possible, all boys and girls should have
pets, and they should be made to tend their charges without any adult
help whatever. No indirect discipline has such a humanizing effect. The
unregenerate boy deprived of pets will tie kettles to dogs' tails, he
will shoot at cats with catapults, he is merciless to small birds, and
no one can convince him that frogs or young nestlings can feel. When he
has pets, his mental horizon is widened and his kindlier instincts
awaken. A boy or girl without a pet is maimed in sympathy.
Let me plead for discrimination in choice of pets. A gentleman--like the
celebrated Mary--had a little lamb which he loved; but the little lamb
developed into a very big and vicious ram which the owner could not
find heart to kill. When this gentleman's friends were holding sweet and
improving converse with him, that sheep would draw up behind his
master's companion; then he would shoot out like a stone from a sling,
and you would see a disconcerted guest propelled through space in a
manner destructive alike to dignity and trousers. That sheep comes and
butts at the front-door if he thinks his master is making too long a
call; it is of no use to go and apologize for he will not take any
denial, and, moreover, he will as soon ram you with his granite skull as
look at you. Let the door be shut again, and the sheep seems to say, "If
I don't send a panel in, you may call me a low, common goat!" and then
he butts away with an enthusiasm which arouses the street. A pet of that
sort is quite embarrassing, and I must respectfully beg leave to draw
the line at rams. A ram is too exciting a personage for the owner's
friends.
Every sign that tells of the growing love for dumb animals is grateful
to my mind; for any one who has a true, kindly love for pets cannot be
wholly bad. While I gently ridicule the people who keep useless brutes
to annoy their neighbours, I would rather see even the hideous, useless
pug kept to wheeze and snarl in his old age than see no pets at all.
Good luck to all good folk who love animals, and may the reign of
kindness spread!
_March, 1888._
_THE ETHICS OF THE TURF_.
When Lord Beaconsfield called the Turf a vast engine of national
demoralization, he uttered a broad general truth; but, unfortunately, he
did not go into particulars, and his vague grandiloquence has inspired a
large number of ferocious imitators, who know as little about the
essentials of the matter as Lord Beaconsfield did. These imitators abuse
the wrong things and the wrong people; they mix up causes and effects;
they are acrid where they should be tolerant; they know nothing about
the real evils; and they do no good, for the simple reason that racing
blackguards never read anything, while cultured gentlemen who happen to
go racing smile quietly at the blundering of amateur moralists. Sir
Wilfrid Lawson is a good man and a clever man; but to see the kind of
display he makes when he gets up to talk about the Turf is very
saddening. He can give you an accurate statement concerning the evils of
drink, but as soon as he touches racing his innocence becomes woefully
apparent, and the biggest scoundrel that ever entered the Ring can
afford to make game of the harmless, well-meaning critic. The subject is
an intricate one, and you cannot settle it right off by talking of
"pampered nobles who pander to the worst vices of the multitude;" and
you go equally wrong if you begin to shriek whenever that inevitable
larcenous shopboy whimpers in the dock about the temptations of betting.
We are poisoned by generalities; our reformers, who use press and
platform to enlighten us, resemble a doctor who should stop by a
patient's bedside and deliver an oration on bad health in the abstract
when he ought to be finding out his man's particular ailment. Let us
clear the ground a little bit, until we can see something definite. I am
going to talk plainly about things that I know, and I want to put all
sentimental rubbish out of the road.
In the first place, then, horse-racing, in itself, is neither degrading
nor anything else that is bad; a race is a beautiful and exhilarating
spectacle, and quiet men, who never bet, are taken out of themselves in
a delightful fashion when the exquisite thoroughbreds thunder past. No
sensible man supposes for a moment that owners and trainers have any
deliberate intention of improving the breed of horses, but,
nevertheless, these splendid tests of speed and endurance undoubtedly
tend indirectly to produce a fine breed, and that is worth taking into
account. The Survival of the Fittest is the law that governs racing
studs; the thought and observation of clever men are constantly
exercised with a view to preserving excellence and eliminating defects,
so that, little by little, we have contrived, in the course of a
century, to approach equine perfection. If a twelve-stone man were put
up on Bendigo, that magnificent animal could give half a mile start to
any Arab steed that ever was foaled, and run away from the Arab at the
finish of a four-mile course. Weight need not be considered, for if the
Eastern-bred horse only carried a postage-stamp the result would be much
about the same. Minting could carry fourteen stone across a country,
while, if we come to mere speed, there is really no knowing what horses
like Ormonde, Energy, Prince Charlie, and others might have done had
they been pressed. If the Emir of Haïl were to bring over fifty of his
best mares, the Newmarket trainers could pick out fifty fillies from
among their second-rate animals, and the worst of the fillies could
distance the best of the Arabs on any terms; while, if fifty heats were
run off, over any courses from half a mile to four miles, the English
horses would not lose one. The champion Arab of the world was matched
against one of the worst thoroughbreds in training; the English "plater"
carried about five stone more than the pride of the East, and won by a
quarter of a mile.
Unconsciously, the breeders of racers have been evolving for us the
swiftest, strongest, and most courageous horse known to the world, and
we cannot afford to neglect that consideration, for people will not
strive after perfection unless perfection brings profit.
Again, we hear occasionally a good deal of outcry about the great
noblemen and gentlemen who keep up expensive studs, and the assumption
is that racehorses and immorality go together; but what would the
critics have the racing nobleman do? He is born into a strange
artificial society; his fate is ready-made for him; he inherits luxuries
and pastimes as he inherits land and trees. Say that the stud is a
useless luxury: but then, what about the daubs for which plutocrats pay
thousands of guineas? A picture costs, let us say, 2,000 guineas; it is
the slovenly work of a hurried master, and the guineas are paid for a
name; it is stuck away in a private gallery, and, if its owner looks at
it so often as once a week, it costs him £2 per peep--reckoning only the
interest on the money sunk. Is that useless luxury? The fact is that we
are living in a sort of guarded hothouse; our barbarian propensities
cannot have an easy outlet; and luxury of all sorts tends to lull our
barbarian energy. If we blame one man for indulging a costly hobby, we
must blame almost every man and woman who belongs to the grades above
the lower middle-class. A rich trader who spends £5,000 a year on
orchid-houses cannot very well afford to reprove a man who pays 50s. per
week for each of a dozen horses in training. Rich folk, whose wealth has
been fostered during the long security of England, will indulge in
superfluities, and no one can stop them. A country gentleman who
succeeds to a deer park cannot slaughter all the useless, pretty
creatures merely because they _are_ useless: he is bound by a thousand
traditions, and he cannot suddenly break away. A nobleman inherits a
colossal income, of which he cannot very well rid himself: he follows
the traditions of his family or his class, and employs part of his
profuse surplus riches in maintaining a racing stud; how can any one
find fault with him? Such a man as Lord Hartington would never dream of
betting except in a languid, off-hand way. He (and his like) are fond of
watching the superb rush of the glossy horses; they want the freedom,
the swift excitement of the breezy heath; our society encourages them to
amuse themselves, and they do so with a will. That is all. It may be
wrong for A and B and C to own superfluous wealth, but then the fact is
there--that they have got it, and the community agree that they may
expend the superfluity as they choose. The rich man's stud gives
wholesome employment to myriads of decent folks in various stations of
life--farmers, saddlers, blacksmiths, builders, corn dealers,
road-makers, hedgers, farriers, grooms, and half a score other sorts of
toilers derive their living from feeding, harnessing, and tending the
horses, and the withdrawal of such a sportsman as Mr. "Abington" from
Newmarket would inflict a terrible blow on hundreds of industrious
persons who lead perfectly useful and harmless lives. My point is, that
racing (as racing) is in no way noxious; it is the most pleasant of all
excitements, and it gives bread to many praiseworthy citizens. I have
seen 5,000 given for a Latin hymn-book, and, when I pondered on the
ghastly, imbecile selfishness of that purchase, I thought that I should
not have mourned very much if the money had been laid out on a dozen
smart colts and fillies, for, at least, the horses would have ultimately
been of some use, even if they all had been put to cab-work. We must
allow that when racing is a hobby, it is quite respectable--as hobbies
go. One good friend of mine, whose fortune has been made by shrewd
judgment and constant work, always keeps five or six racers in training.
He goes from meeting to meeting with all the eagerness of a boy; his
friends sturdily maintain that his stud is composed of "hair trunks,"
and the animals certainly have an impressively uniform habit of coming
in last But the good owner has his pleasure; his hobby satisfies him;
and, when he goes out in the morning to watch his yearlings frolicking,
he certainly never dreams that he is fostering an immoral institution.
Could we only have racing--and none of the hideous adjuncts--I should
be glad, in spite of all the moralists who associate horse-flesh with
original sin.
As to the bookmakers, I shall have much to say further on. At present I
am content with observing that the quiet, respectable bookmaker is as
honourable and trustworthy as any trafficker in stocks and shares, and
his business is almost identical with that of the stockjobber in many
respects. No class of men adhere more rigidly to the point of honour
than bookmakers of the better sort, and a mere nod from one of them is
as binding to him as the most elaborate of parchments. They are simply
shrewd, audacious tradesmen, who know that most people are fools, and
make their profit out of that knowledge. It is painful to hear an
ignorant man abusing a bookmaker who does no more than use his
opportunities skilfully. Why not abuse the gentry who buy copper to
catch the rise of the market? Why not abuse the whole of the thousands
of men who make the City lively for six days of the week? Is there any
rational man breathing who would scruple to accept profit from the rise
of a stock or share? If I, practically, back South-Eastern Railway
shares to rise, who blames me if I sell when my property has increased
in value by one-eighth? My good counsellor, Mr. Ruskin, who is the most
virulent enemy of usury, is nevertheless very glad that his father
bought Bank of England shares, which have now been converted into Stock,
and stand at over 300; Ruskin senior was a shrewd speculator, who backed
his fancy; and a bookmaker does the same in a safer way. Bookmaking is a
business which is carried out in its higher branches with perfect
sobriety, discretion, mid probity; the gambling element does not come
in on the bookmaker's side, but he deals with gamblers in a fair way.
They know that he will lay them the shortest odds he can; they know that
they put their wits against his, and they also know that he will pay
them with punctilious accuracy if they happen to beat him in the
encounter of brains. Three or four of the leading betting men "turn
over" on the average about half a million each per annum; one firm who
bet on commission receive an average of five thousand pounds per day to
invest, and the vouchers of all these speculators and agents are as good
as bank notes. Mark that I grant the certainty of the bookmakers
winning; they can remain idle in their mansions for months in the year,
and the great gambling public supply the means; but I do not find fault
with the bookmakers because they use their opportunities, or else I
might rave about the iniquity of a godly man who earns in a week 100,000
from a "corner" in tin, or I might reprobate the quack who makes no less
than 7000 per cent on every box of pills that he sells. A good man once
chatted with me for a whole evening, and all his talk ran on his own
luck in "spotting" shares that were likely to move upward. Certainly his
luck as a gambler had been phenomenal. I turned the conversation to the
Turf case of Wood _v_. Cox, and the torrent of eloquence which met me
was enough to drown my intellect in its whirl and rush. My friend was
great on the iniquity of gaming and racing, and I rather fancy that he
proposed to play on the Betting Ring with a mitrailleuse if ever he had
the power. I know he was most sanguinary--and I smiled. He never for an
instant seemed to think that he was exactly like a backer of horses,
and I have no doubt but that his density is shared by a few odd millions
here and there. The stockbroker is a kind of bookmaker, and the men and
women who patronise both and make their wealth are fools who all may be
lumped under the same heading. I knew of one outside-broker--a mere
bucket-shop keeper--who keeps 600 clerks constantly employed. That seems
to point out rather an extensive gambling business.
And now I have tried to clear the ground on one hand a little, and my
last and uttermost good word has been said for the Turf. With sorrow I
say that, after all excuses are made, the cool observer must own that it
is indeed a vast engine of national demoralization, and the subtle venom
which it injects into the veins of the Nation creeps along through
channels of which Lord Beaconsfield never dreamed. I might call the Turf
a canker, but a canker is only a local ailment, whereas the evils of
betting have now become constitutional so far as the State is concerned.
If we cut out the whole tribe of bookmakers and betting-agents, and
applied such cautery as would prevent any similar growth from arising in
the place wherefrom we excised them, we should do very little good; for
the life-blood of Britain is tainted, and no superficial remedy can cure
her now. I shut my eyes on the bookmakers, and I only spare attention
for the myriads who make the bookmakers' existence possible--who would
evolve new bookmakers from their midst if we exterminated the present
tribe to-morrow. It is not the professional bettors who cause the
existence of fools; it is the insensate fools who cause the existence of
professional bettors.
Gambling used to be mainly confined to the upper classes; it is now a
raging disease among that lower middle-class which used to form the main
element of our national strength, and the tradesman whose cart comes to
your area in the morning gambles with all the reckless abandonment that
used to be shown by the Hon. A. Deuceace or Lady Betty when George the
Third was King. Your clerk, shopman, butcher, baker, barber--especially
the barber--ask their companions, "What have you done on the Lincoln?"
or "How do you stand for the Two Thousand?" just as ordinary folks ask
after each other's health. Tradesmen step out of their shops in the
morning and telegraph to their bookmaker just as they might to one of
their wholesale houses; there is not a town in broad England which has
not its flourishing betting men, and some very small towns can maintain
two or three. The bookmakers are usually publicans, barbers, or
tobacconists; but whatever they are they invariably drive a capital
trade. In the corner of a smoking-room you may see a quiet, impassive
man sitting daily in a contemplative manner; he does not drink much; he
smokes little, and he appears to have nothing in particular to worry
him. If he knows you well, he will scarcely mind your presence; men (and
boys) greet him, and little, gentle colloquies take place from time to
time; the smartest man could detect nothing, and yet the noiseless,
placid gentleman of the smoking-room registers thirty or forty bets in a
day. That is one type which I have watched for hours, days, months.
There are dozens of other types, but I need not attempt to sketch them;
it is sufficient to say that the poison has taken hard hold on us, and
that I see every symptom of a national decadence.