It was the 1888 tour, the great blizzard year, that Fussie was left
behind by mistake at Southampton. He jumped out at the station, just
outside where they stopped to collect tickets. After this long
separation, Henry naturally thought that the dog would go nearly mad
with joy when he saw him again. He described to me the meeting in a
letter:
"My dear Fussie gave me a terrible shock on Sunday night. When
we got in, J----, H----, and I dined at the Câfé Royale. I told
Walter to bring Fussie there. He did, and Fussie burst into the
room while the waiter was cutting some mutton, when, what d'ye
think--one bound at me--another instantaneous bound at the
mutton, and from the mutton nothing would get him until he'd got
his plateful.
"Oh what a surprise it was indeed! He never now will leave my
side, my legs, or my presence, but I cannot but think, alas, of
that seductive piece of mutton!"
_The Death of Fussie_
Poor Fussie! He met his death through the same weakness. It was at
Manchester, I think. A carpenter had thrown down his coat with a ham
sandwich in the pocket, over an open trap on the stage. Fussie, nosing
and nudging after the sandwich, fell through and was killed instantly.
When they brought up the dog after the performance, every man took his
hat off. Henry was not told until the end of the play. He took it so
very quietly that I was frightened, and said to his son Laurence, who
was on that tour:
"Do let's go to his hotel and see how he is."
We drove there and found him sitting, eating his supper, with the poor
dead Fussie, who would never eat supper any more, curled up in his rug
on the sofa. Henry was talking to the dog exactly as if it were alive.
The next day he took Fussie back in the train with him to London,
covered with a coat. He is buried in the dog's cemetery, Hyde Park.
His death made an enormous difference to Henry. Fussie was his constant
companion. When he died, Henry was really alone. He never spoke of what
he felt about it, but it was easy to know.
We used to get hints how to get this and that from watching Fussie. His
look, his way of walking! He _sang_, whispered eloquently and low--then
barked suddenly, and whispered again. Such a lesson in the law of
contrasts!
The first time that Henry went to the Lyceum after Fussie's death, every
one was anxious and distressed, knowing how he would miss the dog in his
dressing-room. Then an odd thing happened. The wardrobe cat, who had
never been near the room in Fussie's life-time, came down and sat on
Fussie's cushion! No one knew how the "Governor" would take it. But when
Walter was sent out to buy some meat for it, we saw that Henry was not
going to resent it! From that night onwards the cat always sat, night
after night, in the same place, and Henry liked its companionship. In
1902, when he left the theatre for good, he wrote to me:
"The place is now given up to the rats--all light cut off, and
only Barry (the stage door-keeper) and a foreman left.
Everything of mine I've moved away, including the Cat!"
[Illustration: _Photograph by Sarony_