Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

Her Royal ’Tumnal Tintiness

She is absurdly small—a homœopathic dose of a dog. Nothing but the folly of Western fashions prevents her being carried in the sleeve, as Nature and Art intended her to be. But she is small only in figure: in all else she is as large as a Newfoundland—in fidelity and courage and spirit and protectiveness and appetite (proportionately), and love of ease—while in brain power she is larger. Although not six months old, she has the gravity of age, she suggests complete mental maturity. If she were ten she could not open an eye upon a superfluous caress with more languor or disdain. Her regality is such that one resorts to all kinds of expedients to win her favour. She has the more radiant merits of the cat—she eats like a cat, with all its meticulous cleanliness and precision, she plays with a cotton-reel like a cat, she has a cat’s flexibility in her toilet. On your knee she sinks into complacency like a cat. None the less she is a true dog too, with nearly all the stigmata of her kind—the black muzzle, the deep stoop, the flat forehead, the plumed tail carried high, the bowed legs, the minuteness, the nervous fluid. Her hue is that of a beech leaf in autumn.

When she runs from room to room she beats the floor with her fore-paws with a gallant little rocking-horse action. When she runs over grass she makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulating ripple of a sea-serpent, and her soft pads reverberate like muffled hoofs. When she is not running she is asleep. When she sleeps the most comfortable place in the room is hopelessly engaged until she wakes. However fast she may be sleeping, she wakes directly her particular friend leaves the room, her religion being sociability. Left alone she screams. Put out of the house alone, she circumnavigates it with the speed of thought, seeking an open door or window. The sunlight through her tongue is more than rubies.

One difficulty that seems to confront many owners of Pekingese spaniels is the finding of a suitable name; for it should of course be Chinese and also easily pronounceable. But to those who have the honour to possess Professor Giles’s “Chinese Biographical Dictionary” the situation is without such complications. Turning over its pages I quickly alighted upon a choice of engaging females whose names might fitly be conferred upon Her Autumn Leafiness. To mention a few, there is A-chiao, who, when a child, was shown to the Emperor Wu Ti, also a child, and he was asked what he thought of her as a possible wife. “Oh,” said the boy, “if I could get A-chiao I would have a golden house to keep her in.” There is Chao Fei-yen, who was so graceful and light that she was called “Flying Swallow.” There is Chao Yün, who died with these words from the “Diamond Sûtra” on her lips: “Like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble, like a shadow, like dew, like lightning.” There is Ch’i Nu, who had two lovers, one of which lived on the right of the house and the other on the left. Her father bade her tuck up the sleeve which corresponded to the man whom she preferred, and she tucked up both, saying that she would like to live with the handsome one and eat with the rich. (This dog is very like that.) There is Féng Hou, one of the favourites of the Emperor Yüan Ti, who, when a bear escaped, did not flee with all the other ladies, but remained to face the bear, saying: “I was afraid lest some harm should come to Your Majesty’s person.” There is Hsi Chih, who was never so lovely as when she knitted her brows; and P’an Fei, the favourite of Hsiao Pao-chüan, who said of her, “Every step makes a lily grow!” and Pei Ch’i Kung Chu, who awakened in the breast of her lover such a flame that it set fire to a temple; and Tao Yün, who when her brother likened a snow-storm to salt sprinkled in the air, corrected the feebleness of his simile by comparing it to willow-catkins whirled by the wind; and Ts’ai Luan, who compiled a rhyming dictionary and ascended to heaven with her husband, each on a white tiger.—Here, you observe, is a considerable range—although by no means all—for the selecting mind to consider.

The choice fell upon Féng Hou. That is the name to which, since it is hers and she is all caprice and individuality, she refuses to answer.

The dog will come when he is called,

The cat will turn away,

—so wrote an old observer. It is true of dogs and cats, but it is hopelessly amiss of Pekingese. I would amend it thus:—

The dog will come when he is called,

The cat will turn away;

The Pekingese will please itself,

Whatever you may say.

For, to adapt an old proverb, where there’s a Pekingese there’s a will.

I do not think that she is ever likely to be a wonder from the point of view of the bench. At least one of the dreaded penalizations is hers already, and she may acquire others; nothing can make her fit to sit beside her illustrious grandfather, Ch. Chu’erh of Alderbourne, that Napoleon of Pekingese, that Meredith, that Brummell, all combined; nor has she the ingratiating pictorial charm of Ch. Broadoak Beetle; but no one knows what her own children may be like, and meanwhile she is enough for her owner. She has brought into a house hitherto unconscious of it the adorable piquancy of Peking.

Having done all that was possible to make Féng Hou our own, no one in the house having any independent will left, and butcher’s-bills rising like Grahame White: having done all this, it was something more than a shock to be favoured with a translation of the rhapsodical pearls of wisdom dropped from the lips of her Imperial Majesty Tzŭ Hsi, the late Dowager Empress of Western China, for the guidance of the master of her kennel. One saw at once how much was still to do if Féng Hou was to be worthy of her race. I quote this most delightful document, the very flower of Chinese solicitude and fancy.

Pearls Dropped from the Lips of Her Imperial Majesty, Tzŭ Hsi, Dowager Empress of the Flowery Land

Let the Lion Dog be small: let it wear the swelling cape of dignity around its neck: let it display the billowing standard of pomp above its back.

Let its face be black: let its fore legs be shaggy: let its forehead be straight and low, like unto the brow of an Imperial righteous harmony boxer.

Let its eyes be large and luminous: let its ears be set like the sails of a war-junk: let its nose be like that of the monkey god of the Hindus.

Let its fore legs be bent, so that it shall not desire to wander far, or leave the Imperial precincts.

Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its prey.

Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may be soundless: and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whisk of the Tibetan’s yak, which is flourished to protect the Imperial litter from the attacks of flying insects.

Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols; let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger: let it be domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other beasts, fishes, or birds that find protection in the Imperial Palace. And for its colour, let it be that of the lion—a golden sable, to be carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe, or the colour of a red bear, or a black or a white bear, or striped like a dragon, so that there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in the Imperial wardrobe.

Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.

Let it comport itself with dignity; let it learn to bite the foreign devils instantly.

Let it be dainty in its food that it shall be known for an Imperial dog by its fastidiousness.

Sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers and the breasts of quails, on these it may be fed; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province of the Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in the Imperial parks. Thus shall it preserve its integrity and self-respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with the clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to drink a throstle’s egg-shell full of the juice of the custard-apple in which have been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros horn, and apply to it piebald leeches.

So shall it remain; but if it die, remember thou, too, art mortal.

That is a very charming poem, is it not? Queen Victoria drew up no such rules for Dandie Dinmonts, nor did Charles I, so far as I know, thus establish the standard of the little creatures with whose ears he played instead of studying the signs of the times. But it must necessarily strike some apprehension into the breast of the owner of a Pekingese. Is one doing rightly by the dog? is a question that it forces upon one. In the matter of diet alone I find that we have been all to seek. No house could have been so free from sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers as this, and if a quail’s breast has chanced to enter, it was certainly not Féng Hou who ate it. As for drink—but I wonder if any one can recommend me a good, trustworthy antelope-milker: one who would not object to help in the garden when it is not milking-time? Things would be simple then—until Féng Hou was ill. But that does not bear thinking about.

Apropos of medicine, however, an odd thing happened. Féng Hou at first was not always good; indeed she was sometimes extremely naughty; and a little castigating seemed needful. A letter therefore was dispatched to London, to a provider of quaint necessaries, asking that some attractive little switch, worthy of such a creature, might be supplied. It came at once—the most delicate and radiant of rods, with a note saying that it was something of a curiosity, being pure rhinoceros horn. So we have one of the ingredients of one of the prescriptions after all! Physic indeed.