THE PASSING OF THE PEACOCKS.
I would rather look at a peacock than eat him. The feathers of an
angel and the voice of a devil.
The story of this farm would not be complete without a brief rehearsal
of my experiences, exciting, varied, and tragic, resulting from the
purchase of a magnificent pair of peacocks.
My honest intention on leasing my forty-dollars-a-year paradise was
simply to occupy the quaint old house for a season or two as a relief
from the usual summer wanderings. I would plant nothing but a few hardy
flowers of the old-fashioned kind—an economical and prolonged picnic.
In this way I could easily save in three years sufficient funds to make
a grand _tour du monde_.
_That was my plan!_
For some weeks I carried out this resolution, until an event occurred,
which changed the entire current of thought, and transformed a quiet,
rural retreat into a scene of frantic activity and gigantic undertaking.
In the early summer I attended a poultry show at Rooster, Mass., and,
in a moment of impulsive enthusiasm, was so foolish as to pause and
admire and long for a prize peacock, until I was fairly and hopelessly
hypnotized by its brilliant plumage.
I reasoned: Anybody can keep hens, “me and Crankin” can raise ducks,
geese thrive naturally with me, but a peacock is a rare and glorious
possession. The proud scenes he is associated with in mythology,
history, and art rushed through my mind with whirlwind rapidity as I
stood debating the question. The favorite bird of Juno—she called the
metallic spots on its tail the eyes of Argus—imported by Solomon to
Palestine, essentially regal. Kings have used peacocks as their crests,
have worn crowns of their feathers. Queens and princesses have flirted
gorgeous peacock fans; the pavan, a favorite dance in the days of Louis
le Grand, imitated its stately step. In the days of chivalry the most
solemn oath was taken on the peacock’s body, roasted whole and adorned
with its gay feathers, as Shallow swore “by cock and pie.” I saw the
fairest of all the fair dames at a grand mediaeval banquet proudly
bearing the bird to the table. The woman who hesitates is lost. I
bought the pair, and ordered them boxed for “Breezy Meadows.”
On the arrival of the royal pair at my ’umble home, all its
surroundings began to lose the charm of rustic simplicity, and appear
shabby, inappropriate, and unendurable. It became evident that the
entire place must be raised, and at once, to the level of those
peacocks.
The house and barn were painted (colonial yellow) without a moment’s
delay. An ornamental piazza was added, all the paths were broadened and
graveled, and even terraces were dreamed of, as I recalled the terraces
where Lord Beaconsfield’s peacocks used to sun themselves and display
their beauties—Queen Victoria now has a screen made of their feathers.
My expensive pets felt their degradation in spite of my best efforts
and determined to sever their connection with such a plebeian place.
Beauty (I ought to have called him Absalom or Alcibiades), as soon as
let out of his traveling box, displayed to an admiring crowd a tail
so long it might be called a “serial,” gave one contemptuous glance
at the premises, and departed so rapidly, by running and occasional
flights, that three men and a boy were unable to catch up with him
for several hours. Belle was not allowed her liberty, as we saw more
trouble ahead. A large yard, inclosed top and sides with wire netting,
at last restrained their roving ambition. But they were not happy.
Peacocks disdain a “roost” and seek the top of some tall tree; they are
also rovers by nature and hate confinement. They pined and failed, and
seemed slowly dying; so I had to let them out. Total cost of peacock
hunts by the boys of the village, $11.33. I found that Beauty was happy
only when admiring himself, or deep in mischief. His chief delight was
to mount the stone wall, and utter his raucous note, again and again,
as a carriage passed, often scaring the horses into dangerous antics,
and causing severe, if not profane criticism. Or he would steal slyly
into a neighbor’s barn and kill half a dozen chickens at a time. He was
awake every morning by four o’clock, and would announce the glories of
the coming dawn by a series of ear-splitting notes, disturbing not only
all my guests, but the various families within range, until complaints
and petitions were sent in. He became a nuisance—but how could he be
muzzled?
And he was so gloriously handsome! Visitors from town would come
expressly to see him. School children would troop into my yard on
Saturday afternoons, “to see the peacock spread his tail,” which he
often capriciously refused to do. As soon as they departed, somewhat
disappointed in “my great moral show,” Beauty would go to a large
window on the ground floor of the barn and parade up and down,
displaying his beauties for his own gratification. At last he fancied
he saw a rival in this brilliant, irridescent reflection and pecked
fiercely at the glass, breaking several panes.
Utterly selfish, he would keep all dainty bits for himself, leaving the
scraps for his devoted mate, who would wait meekly to eat what he chose
to leave. She made up for this wifely self-abnegation by frequenting
the hen houses. She would watch patiently by the side of a hen on her
nest, and as soon as an egg was deposited, would remove it for her
luncheon. She liked raw eggs, and six were her usual limit.
There is a deal of something closely akin to human nature in barn-yard
fowls. It was irresistibly ludicrous to see the peacock strutting about
in the sunshine, his tail expanded in fullest glory, making a curious
rattle of triumph as he paraded, while my large white Holland turkey
gobbler, who had been molting severely and was almost denuded as to
tail feathers, would attempt to emulate his display, and would follow
him closely, his wattles swelling and reddening with fancied success,
making all this fuss about what had been a fine array, but now was
reduced to five scrubby, ragged, very dirty remnants of feathers. He
fancied himself equally fine, and was therefore equally happy.
Next came the molting period.
Pliny said long ago of the peacock: “When he hath lost his taile,
he hath no delight to come abroad,” but I knew nothing of this
peculiarity, supposing that a peacock’s tail, once grown, was a
permanent ornament. On the contrary, if a peacock should live one
hundred and twenty years (and his longevity is something phenomenal) he
would have one hundred and seventeen new and interesting tails—enough
to start a circulating library. Yes, Beauty’s pride and mine had a sad
fall as one by one the long plumes were dropped in road and field and
garden. He should have been caught and confined, and the feathers,
all loose at once, should have been pulled out at one big pull and
saved intact for fans and dust brushes, and adornment of mirrors and
fire-places. Soon every one was gone, and the mortified creature now
hid away in the corn, and behind shrubbery, disappearing entirely from
view, save as hunger necessitated a brief emerging.
This tailless absentee was not what I had bought as the champion prize
winner. And Belle, after laying four eggs, refused to set. But I put
them under a turkey, and, to console myself and re-enforce my position
as an owner of peacocks, I began to study peacock lore and literature.
I read once more of the throne of the greatest of all the moguls at
Delhi, India.
“The under part of the canopy is embroidered with pearls and diamonds,
with a fringe of pearls round about. On the top of the canopy, which
is made like an arch with four panes, stands a peacock with his tail
spread, consisting all of sapphires and other proper-colored stones;
the body is of beaten gold enchased with several jewels, and a great
ruby upon his breast, at which hangs a pearl that weighs fifty carats.
On each side of the peacock stand two nosegays as high as the bird,
consisting of several sorts of flowers, all of beaten gold enameled.
When the king seats himself upon the throne, there is a transparent
jewel with a diamond appendant, of eighty or ninety carats, encompassed
with rubies and emeralds, so hung that it is always in his eye. The
twelve pillars also that support the canopy are set with rows of fair
pearls, round, and of an excellent water, that weigh from six to ten
carats apiece. At the distance of four feet upon each side of the
throne are placed two parasols or umbrellas, the handles whereof are
about eight feet high, covered with diamonds; the parasols themselves
are of crimson velvet, embroidered and stringed with pearls.” This
is the famous throne which Tamerlane began and Shah Jahan finished,
which is really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty million
five hundred thousand livres (thirty-two million one hundred thousand
dollars).
I also gloated over the description of that famous London dining-room,
known to the art world as the “Peacock Room,” designed by Whistler.
Panels to the right and left represent peacocks with their tails spread
fan-wise, advancing in perspective toward the spectator, one behind the
other, the peacocks in gold and the ground in blue.
I could not go so extensively into interior decoration, and my mania
for making the outside of the house and the grounds highly decorative
had received a severe lesson in the verdict, overheard by me, as I
stood in the garden, made by a gawky country couple who were out for a
Sunday drive.
As Warner once said to me, “young love in the country is a very solemn
thing,” and this shy, serious pair slowed up as they passed, to see my
place. The piazza was gay with hanging baskets, vines, strings of beads
and bells, lanterns of all hues; there were tables, little and big, and
lounging chairs and a hammock and two canaries. The brightest geraniums
blossomed in small beds through the grass, and several long flower beds
were one brilliant mass of bloom, while giant sun-flowers reared their
golden heads the entire length of the farm.
It was gay, but I had hoped to please Beauty.
“What is that?” said the girl, straining her head out of the carriage.
“Don’t know,” said the youth, “guess it’s a store.”
The girl scrutinized the scene as a whole, and said decisively:
“No, ’taint, Bill—it’s a saloon!”
That was a cruel blow! I forgot my flowers, walked in slowly and sadly
and carried in two lanterns to store in the shed chamber. I also
resolved to have no more flower beds in front of the house, star shaped
or diamond—they must all be sodded over.
That opinion of my earnest efforts to effect a renaissance at
Gooseville—to show how a happy farm home should look to the
passer-by—in short, my struggle to “live up to” the peacocks revealed,
as does a lightning flash on a dark night, much that I had not
perceived. I had made as great a mistake as the farmer who abjures
flowers and despises “fixin’ up.”
The pendulum of emotion swung as far back, and I almost disliked
the innocent cause of my decorative folly. I began to look over my
accounts, to study my check books, to do some big sums in addition, and
it made me even more depressed. Result of these mental exercises as
follows: Rent, $40 per year; incidental expenses to date, $5,713.85.
Was there any good in this silly investment of mine? Well, if it came
to the very worst, I could kill the couple and have a rare dish. Yet
Horace did not think its flesh equal to an ordinary chicken. He wrote:
I shall ne’er prevail
To make our men of taste a pullet choose,
And the gay peacock with its train refuse.
For the rare bird at mighty price is sold,
And lo! What wonders from its tail unfold!
But can these whims a higher gusto raise
Unless you eat the plumage that you praise?
Or do its glories when ’tis boiled remain?
No; ’tis the unequaled beauty of its train,
Deludes your eye and charms you to the feast,
For hens and peacocks are alike in taste.
Then peacocks have been made useful in a medicinal way. The doctors
once prescribed peacock broth for pleurisy, peacocks’ tongues for
epilepsy, peacocks’ fat for colic, peacocks’ galls for weak eyes,
peahens’ eggs for gout.
It is always darkest just before dawn, and only a week from that
humiliating Sunday episode I was called by my gardener to look at
the dearest little brown something that was darting about in the
poultry yard. It was a baby peacock, only one day old. He got out
of the nest in some way, and preferred to take care of himself. How
independent, how captivating he was! As not one other egg had hatched,
he was lamentably, desperately alone, with dangers on every side,
“homeless and orphanless.” Something on that Sabbath morning recalled
Melchizedec, the priest without father or mother, of royal descent,
and of great length of days. Earnestly hoping for longevity for this
feathered mite of princely birth, I called him “Melchizedec.”
I caught him and was in his toils. He was a tiny tyrant; I was but a
slave, an attendant, a nurse, a night-watcher. Completely under his
claw!
No more work, no more leisure, no more music or tennis; my life career,
my sphere, was definitely settled. I was Kizzie’s attendant—nothing
more. People have cared for rather odd pets, as the leeches tamed and
trained by Lord Erskine; others have been deeply interested in toads,
crickets, mice, lizards, alligators, tortoises, and monkeys. Wolsey was
on familiar terms with a venerable carp; Clive owned a pet tortoise;
Sir John Lubbock contrived to win the affections of a Syrian wasp;
Charles Dudley Warner devoted an entire article in the Atlantic Monthly
to the praises of his cat Calvin; but did you ever hear of a peacock as
a household pet?
As it is the correct thing now to lie down all of a summer afternoon,
hidden by trees, and closely watch every movement of a pair of little
birds, or spend hours by a frog pond studying the sluggish life there,
and as mothers are urged by scientific students to record daily the
development of their infants in each apparently unimportant matter, I
think I may be excused for a brief sketch of my charge, for no mother
ever had a child so precocious, so wise, so willful, so affectionate,
so persistent, as Kizzie _at the same age_. Before he was three days
old, he would follow me like a dog up and down stairs and all over
the house, walk behind me as I strolled about the grounds, and when
tired, he would cry and “peep, weep” for me to sit down. Then he would
beg to be taken on my lap, thence he would proceed to my arm, then my
neck, where he would peck and scream and flutter, determined to nestle
there for a nap. My solicitude increased as he lived on, and I hoped to
“raise” him. He literally demanded every moment of my time, my entire
attention during the day, and, alas! at night also, until I seemed to
be living a tragic farce!
If put down on carpet or matting, he at once began to pick up
everything he could spy on the floor, and never before did I realize
how much could be found there. I had a dressmaker in the house, and
Kizzie was always going for a deadly danger—here a pin, there a needle,
just a step away a tack or a bit of thread or a bead of jet.
Outdoors it was even worse. With two bird dogs ready for anything but
birds, the pug that had already devoured all that had come to me of my
expensive importations, a neighbor’s cat often stealing over to hunt
for her dinner, a crisis seemed imminent every minute. Even his own
father would destroy him if they met, as the peacock allows no possible
rival. And Kizzie kept so close to my heels that I hardly dared step.
If my days were distracting, the nights were inexpressibly awful. I
supposed he would be glad to go to sleep in a natural way after a
busy day. No, indeed! He would not stay in box or basket, or anywhere
but cradled close in my neck. There he wished to remain, twittering
happily, giving now and then a sweet, little, tremulous trill,
indicative of content, warmth, and drowsiness; if I dared to move ever
so little, showing by a sharp scratch from his claws that he preferred
absolute quiet. One night, when all worn out, I rose and put him in
a hat box and covered it closely, but his piercing cries of distress
and anger prevented the briefest nap, reminding me of the old man who
said, “Yes, it’s pretty dangerous livin’ anywheres.” I was so afraid of
hurting him that I scarcely dared move. Each night we had a prolonged
battle, but he never gave in for one instant until he could roost on my
outstretched finger or just under my chin. Then he would settle down,
the conflict over, he as usual the victor, and the sweet little lullaby
would begin.
One night I rose hastily to close the windows in a sudden shower.
Kizzie wakened promptly, and actually followed me out of the room and
down-stairs. Alas! it was not far from his breakfast hour, for he
preferred his first meal at four o’clock A.M. You see how he influenced
me to rise early and take plenty of exercise.
I once heard of a wealthy Frenchman, nervous and dyspeptic, who was
ordered by his eccentric physician to buy a Barbary ostrich and imitate
him as well as care for him. And he was quickly cured!
On the other hand, it is said that animals and birds grow to be like
those who train and pet them. Christopher North (John Wilson) used to
carry a sparrow in his coat pocket. And his friends averred that the
bird grew so large and impressive that it seemed to be changing into an
_eagle_.
But Kizzie was the stronger influence. I really grew afraid of him, as
he liked to watch my eyes, and once picked at them, as he always picked
at any shining bit.
What respect I now feel for a sober, steady-going, successful old hen,
who raises brood after brood of downy darlings without mishaps! Her
instinct is an inspiration. Kizzie liked to perch on my finger and
catch flies for his dinner. How solemn, wise, and bewitching he did
look as he snapped at and swallowed fifteen flies, uttering all the
time a satisfied little note, quite distinct from his musical slumber
song!
How he enjoyed lying on one side, stretched out at full length, to bask
in the sun, a miniature copy of his magnificent father! Very careful
was he of his personal appearance, pruning and preening his pretty
feathers many times each day, paying special attention to his tail—not
more than an inch long—but what a prophecy of the future! As mothers
care most for the most troublesome child, so I grew daily more fond of
cute little Kizzie, more anxious that he should live.
I could talk all day of his funny ways, of his fondness for me, of his
daily increasing intelligence, of his hair-breadth escapes, etc.
The old story—the dear gazelle experience came all too soon.
Completely worn out with my constant vigils, I intrusted him for one
night to a friend who assured me that she was a most quiet sleeper, and
that he could rest safely on her fingers. I was too tired to say no.
She came to me at daybreak, with poor Kizzie dead in her hands. He died
like Desdemona, smothered with pillows. All I can do in his honor has
been done by this inadequate recital of his charms and his capacity.
After a few days of sincere grief I reflected philosophically that if
he had not passed away I must have gone soon, and naturally felt it
preferable that I should be the survivor.
A skillful taxidermist has preserved as much of Kizzie as possible for
me, and he now adorns the parlor mantel, a weak, mute reminder of three
weeks of anxiety.
And his parents—
The peahen died suddenly and mysteriously. There was no apparent reason
for her demise, but the autopsy, which revealed a large and irregular
fragment of window glass lodged in her gizzard, proved that she was
a victim of Beauty’s vanity. A friend who was present said, as he
tenderly held the glass between thumb and finger: “It is now easy to
see through the cause of her death; under the circumstances, it would
be idle to speak of it as pane-less!” Beauty had never seemed very
devoted to her, but he mourned her long and sincerely. Now that she had
gone he appreciated her meek adoration, her altruistic devotion.
Another touch like human nature.
And when, after a decent period of mourning, another spouse was secured
for him he refused to notice her and wandered solitary and sad to a
neighbor’s fields. The new madam was not allowed to share the high
roost on the elm. She was obliged to seek a less elevated and airy
dormitory. His voice, always distressingly harsh, was now so awful
that it was fascinating. The notes seemed cracked by grief or illness.
At last, growing feebler, he succumbed to some wasting malady and no
longer strutted about in brilliant pre-eminence or came to the piazza
calling imperiously for dainties, but rested for hours in some quiet
corner. The physician who was called in prescribed for his liver. He
showed symptoms of poisoning, and I began to fear that in his visit to
a neighbor’s potato fields he had indulged in Paris green, possibly
with suicidal intent.
There was something heroic in his way of dying. No moans, no cries;
just a dignified endurance. From the western window of the shed chamber
where he lay he could see the multitude of fowls below, in the yards
where he had so lately reigned supreme. Occasionally, with a heroic
effort, he would get on his legs and gaze wistfully on the lively crowd
so unmindful of his wretchedness, then sink back exhausted, reminding
me of some grand old monarch, statesman, or warrior looking for the
last time on the scenes of his former triumphs. I should have named
him Socrates. At last he was carried to a cool resting place in the
deep grass, covered with pink mosquito netting, and one kind friend
after another fanned him and watched over his last moments. After he
was really dead, and Tom with tears rolling down his face carried him
tenderly away, I woke from my ambitious dream and felt verily guilty of
aviscide.
But for my vainglorious ambition Beauty would doubtless be alive and
resplendent; his consort, modest hued and devoted, at his side, and my
bank account would have a better showing.
There is a motto as follows, “Let him keep peacock to himself,” derived
in this way:
When George III had partly recovered from one of his attacks, his
ministers got him to read the king’s speech, but he ended every
sentence with the word “peacock.”
The minister who drilled him said that “peacock” was an excellent word
for ending a sentence, only kings should not let subjects hear it, but
should whisper it softly.
The result was a perfect success; the pause at the close of each
sentence had such a fine elocutionary effect.
In future, when longing to indulge in some new display, yield to
another temptation, let me whisper “peacock” and be saved.