Argus, beating the ground with his feeble tail in an expiring effort to
welcome the disguised Odysseus, is a prototype of his successor to-day.
Scattered here and there in the pages of history are instances of
unfaithfulness; but their rarity gives point to their picturesqueness.
Froissart tells us that the greyhound, Math, deserted his master, King
Richard the Second, to fawn on the Duke of Lancaster who was to depose
and succeed him; and that a greyhound belonging to Charles of Blois
fled on the eve of battle to the camp of John de Montfort, seeking
protection from the stronger man. These anecdotes indicate a grasp of
political situations which is no part of the dog’s ordinary make-up.
Who can imagine the fortunate, faithful little spaniel that attended
Mary Stuart in her last sad months, and in her last heroic hours,
fawning upon Queen Elizabeth? Who can imagine Sir Walter Scott’s dogs
slinking away from him when the rabble of Jedburgh heaped insults on
his bowed grey head?
The most beautiful words ever written about a dog have no reference
to his affectionate qualities. Simonides, celebrating the memory of
a Thessalian hound, knows only that he was fleet and brave. “Surely,
even as thou liest in this tomb, I deem the wild beasts yet fear thy
white bones, Lycas; and thy valour great Pelion knows, and the lonely
peaks of Cithæron.” This is heroic praise, and so, in a fashion, is
Byron’s epitaph on Boatswain. But Byron, being of the moderns, can find
no better way of honouring dogs than by defaming men; a stupidity,
pardonable in the poet only because he was the most sincere lover of
animals the world has ever known. His tastes were catholic, his outlook
was whimsical. He was not in the least discomposed when his forgetful
wolf-hound bit him, or when his bulldog bit him without the excuse of
forgetfulness. Moore tells us that the first thing he saw on entering
Byron’s palace in Venice was a notice, “Keep clear of the dog!” and the
first thing he heard was the voice of his host calling out anxiously,
“Take care, or that monkey will fly at you.”
It is a pleasant relief, after floundering through seas of sentiment,
to read about dogs that were every whit as imperfect as their masters;
about Cowper’s “Beau” who has been immortalized for his disobedience;
or Sir Isaac Newton’s “Diamond” who has been immortalized for the
mischief he wrought; or Prince Rupert’s “Boy” who was shot while
loyally pulling down a rebel on Marston Moor; or the Church of
England spaniel, mentioned by Addison, who proved his allegiance to
the Establishment by worrying a dissenter. It is also a pleasure of
a different sort to read about the wise little dog who ran away from
Mrs. Welsh (Carlyle’s mother-in-law) on the streets of Edinburgh, to
follow Sir Walter Scott; and about the London dog of sound literary
tastes who tried for many nights to hear Dickens read. It is always
possible that if men would exact a less unalterable devotion from their
dogs, they might find these animals to be possessed of individual and
companionable traits.
But not of human sagacity. It is their privilege to remain beasts,
bound by admirable limitations, thrice happy in the things they do
not have to know, and feel, and be. “The Spectator” in a hospitable
mood once invited its readers to send it anecdotes of their dogs. The
invitation was, as might be imagined, cordially and widely accepted.
Mr. Strachey subsequently published a collection of these stories in
a volume which had all the vraisemblance of Hans Andersen and “The
Arabian Nights.” Reading it, one could but wonder and regret that the
tribe of man had risen to unmerited supremacy. The “Spectator” dogs
could have run the world, the war and the Versailles Conference without
our lumbering interference.
THE END