My Literary Zoo

by Kate Sanborn

DEVOTED TO DOGS.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.—George Eliot.

Literature, history, and biography are full to overflowing of instances of affection between dogs and their owners. Remember the dog Argus, which died of joy on the return of his master Ulysses after twenty years’ absence. The story is touchingly told in Homer’s Odyssey:

“As he draws near the gates of his own palace, he espies, dying of old age, disease, and neglect, his dog Argus—the companion of many a long chase in happier days. His instinct at once detects his old master, even through the disguise lent by the goddess of wisdom. Before he sees him he knows his voice and step, and raises his ears—

And when he marked Odysseus in the way,

And could no longer to his lord come near,

Fawned with his tail and drooped in feeble play

His ears. Odysseus, turning, wiped a tear.”

It is poor Argus’s last effort, and the old hound turns and dies—

Just having seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Egyptians held the dog in adoration as the representative of one of the celestial signs, and the Indians considered him one of the sacred forms of their deities. The dog is placed at the feet of women in monuments, to symbolize affection and fidelity; and many of the Crusaders are represented with their feet on a dog, to show that they followed the standard of the Lord as a dog follows the footsteps of his master. “Man,” said Burns, “is the god of the dog”—knows nothing higher to reverence and obey. Kings and queens have found their most faithful friends among dogs. Frederick the Great allowed his elegant furniture at Potsdam to be nearly ruined by his dogs, who jumped upon the satin chairs and slept cosily on the luxurious sofas, and quite a cemetery may still be seen devoted to his pets. The pretty spaniel belonging to Mary Queen of Scots deserves honourable mention. He loved his ill-starred mistress when her human friends had forsaken her; nestled close by her side at the execution, and had to be forced away from her bleeding body. One of the prettiest pictures of the Princess of Wales is taken with a tiny spaniel in her arms.

Before going further, just recall some of the most famous dogs of mythology, literature, and life, simply giving their names for want of space:

Arthur’s dog Cavall.

Dog of Catherine de’ Medicis, Phœbê, a lapdog.

Cuthullin’s dog Luath, a swift-footed hound.

Dora’s dog Jip.

Douglas’s dog Luffra, from The Lady of the Lake.

Fingal’s dog Bran.

Landseer’s dog Brutus, painted as The Invader of the Larder.

Llewellyn’s dog Gelert.

Lord Lurgan’s dog Master McGrath: presented at court by the express desire of Queen Victoria.

Maria’s dog Silvio, in Sterne’s Sentimental Journey.

Punch’s dog Toby.

Sir Walter Scott’s dogs Maida, Camp, Hamlet.

Dog of the Seven Sleepers, Katmir.

The famous Mount St. Bernard dog, which saved forty human beings, was named Barry. His stuffed skin is preserved in the museum at Berne.

Sir Isaac Newton’s dog, who by overturning a candle destroyed much precious manuscript, was named Diamond.

The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever since retained his name, Cynossema. There are even legends of nations that have had a dog for their king. It is said that barking is not a natural faculty, but is acquired through the dog’s desire to talk with man. In a state of nature, dogs simply whine and howl.

When Alexander encountered Diogĕnês the cynic, the young Macedonian king introduced himself with the words, “I am Alexander, surnamed ‘the Great.’” To which the philosopher replied, “And I am Diogĕnês, surnamed ‘the Dog.’” The Athenians raised to his memory a pillar of Parian marble, surmounted with a dog, and bearing the following inscription:

“Say, dog, what guard you in that tomb?”

A dog. “His name?” Diogĕnês. “From far?”

Sinopé. “He who made a tub his home?”

The same; now dead, among the stars a star.

What man or woman worth remembering but has loved at least one dog? Hamerton, in speaking of the one dog—the special pet and dear companion of every boy and many a girl, from Ulysses to Bismarck—observes that “the comparative shortness of the lives of dogs is the only imperfection in the relation between them and us. If they had lived to threescore and ten, man and dog might have travelled through life together; but as it is, we must have either a succession of affections, or else, when the first is buried in its early grave, live in a chill condition of dog-lessness.” I thank him for coining that compound word. Almost every one might, like Grace Greenwood and Gautier, write a History of my Pets, and make a most readable book. Bismarck honoured one of his dogs, Nero, with a formal funeral. The body was borne on the shoulders of eight workmen dressed in black to a grave in the park. He had been poisoned, and a large reward was offered for the discovery of the assassin. The prince, statesman, diplomatist, does not believe in dog-lessness, and gives to another hound, equally devoted, the same intense affection. “My dog—where is my dog?” are his first words on alighting from a railway, as Sultan must travel second class. He even mixes the food for his dogs with his own hands, believing it will make them love him the more.

Another Nero was the special companion of Mrs. Carlyle, a little white dog, who had for his playmate a black cat, whose name was Columbine, and Carlyle says that during breakfast, whenever the dining-room door was opened, Nero and Columbine would come waltzing into the room in the height of joy. He went with his mistress everywhere, led by a chain for fear of thieves. For eleven years he cheered her life at Craigenputtock, “the loneliest nook in Britain.”

Nero’s death was a tragical one. In October, 1859, while walking out with the maid one evening, a butcher’s cart driving furiously round a sharp corner ran over his throat. He was not killed on the spot, although his mistress says “he looked killed enough at first.” The poor fellow was put into a warm bath, wrapped up in flannels, and left to die. The morning found him better, however; he was able to wag his tail in response to the caresses of his mistress.

Little by little he recovered the use of himself, but it was ten days before he could bark.

He lived four months after this, docile, affectionate, loyal up to his last hour, but weak and full of pain. The doctor was obliged at last to give him prussic acid. They buried him at the top of the garden in Cheyne Row, and planted cowslips round his grave, and his loving mistress placed a stone tablet, with name and date, to mark the last resting place of her blessed dog.

“I could not have believed,” writes Carlyle in the Memorials, “my grief then and since would have been the twentieth part of what it was—nay, that the want of him would have been to me other than a riddance. Our last midnight walk together—for he insisted on trying to come—January 31st, is still painful to my thought. Little dim white speck of life, of love, fidelity, and feeling, girdled by the darkness of night eternal.”

Is not that a delightful revelation of tenderness in the heart of the grand old growler, biographer, critic, historian, essayist, prophet, whom most people feared? I like to read it again and again.

The selfish, cynical Horace Walpole sat up night after night with his dying Rosette. He wrote: “Poor Rosette has suffered exquisitely; you may believe I have too,” and honoured her with this epitaph:

Sweetest roses of the year

Strew around my Rose’s bier.

Calmly may the dust repose

Of my pretty, faithful Rose;

And if yon cloud-topped hill behind

This frame dissolved, this breath resigned,

Some happier isle, some humbler heaven,

Be to my trembling wishes given,

Admitted to that equal sky

May sweet Rose bear me company.

And of the dog Touton, left him by Madame du Deffand, he said: “It is incredible how fond I am of it; but I have no occasion to brag of my dogmanity” (another expressive word). He said, “A dog, though a flatterer, is still a friend.” Byron, that egotistic, misanthropic genius, composed an epitaph on Boatswain, his favourite dog, whose death threw the moody poet into deepest melancholy. The dog’s grave is to the present day shown among the conspicuous objects at Newstead. The poet, in one of his impulsive moments, gave orders in a provision of his will—ultimately however, cancelled—that his own body should be buried by the side of Boatswain, as his truest and only friend. This noble animal was seized with madness, and so little was his lordship aware of the fact, that at the beginning of the attack he more than once, during the paroxysms, wiped away the dreaded saliva from his mouth. After his death Lord Byron wrote to his friend Mr. Hodges: “Boatswain is dead. He died in a state of madness on the 18th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to any one near him. I have now lost everything excepting old Murray.” Visitors to his old estate will find a marked monument with this tribute:

NEAR THIS SPOT

ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF

ONE THAT POSSESSED BEAUTY, WITHOUT VANITY,

STRENGTH, WITHOUT INSOLENCE,

COURAGE, WITHOUT FEROCITY,

AND ALL THE VIRTUES OF MAN, WITHOUT HIS VICES.

THIS PRAISE, WHICH WOULD BE

UNMEANING FLATTERY

IF INSCRIBED OVER HUMAN ASHES,

IS BUT A JUST TRIBUTE

TO THE MEMORY OF BOATSWAIN, A DOG,

WHO WAS BORN IN NEWFOUNDLAND, MAY, 1803,

AND DIED

AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY, NOVEMBER 18, 1808.

Epitaph.

When some proud son of man returns to earth

Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,

The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,

And storied urns record who rests below;

When all is done, upon the tomb is seen

Not what he was, but what he should have been.

But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, the foremost to defend.

Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth;

While man, vain insect, hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

O man, thou feeble tenant of an hour,

Debased by slavery or corrupt by power,

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,

Degraded mass of animated dust.

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit.

By Nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.

Ye who perchance behold this simple urn

Pass on, it honours none you wish to mourn;

To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise:

I never knew but one, and here he lies.

Walter Scott’s dogs had an extraordinary fondness for him. Swanston declares that he had to stand by, when they were leaping and fawning about him, to beat them off lest they should knock him down. One day, when he and Swanston were in the armory, Maida (the dog which now lies at his feet in the monument at Edinburgh), being outside, had peeped in through the window, a beautifully painted one, and the instant she got a glance of her beloved master she bolted right through it and at him. Lady Scott, starting at the crash, exclaimed, “O gracious, shoot her!” But Scott, caressing her with the utmost coolness, said, “No, no, mamma, though she were to break every window at Abbotsford.” He was engaged for an important dinner party on the day his dog Camp died, but sent word that he could not go, “on account of the death of a dear old friend.” He tried early one morning to make the fire of peat burn, and after many efforts succeeded in some degree. At this moment one of the dogs, dripping from a plunge in the lake, scratched and whined at the window. Sir Walter let the “puir creature” in, who, coming up before the little fire, shook his shaggy hide, sending a perfect shower bath over the fire and over a great table of loose manuscripts. The tender-hearted author, eying the scene with his usual serenity, said slowly, “O dear, ye’ve done a great deal of mischief!” This equanimity is only equalled by Sir Isaac Newton’s exclamation, now, alas! pronounced a fiction, “O Diamond, Diamond, little dost thou know the injury thou hast done!”

“The wisest dog I ever had,” said Scott, “was what is called the bulldog terrier. I taught him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker who was bringing bread to the family. I beat him and explained the enormity of the offence, after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was mentioned, without getting up and retiring to the darkest corner of the room with great appearance of distress. Then if you said, ‘The baker was well paid,’ or ‘The baker was not hurt, after all,’ Camp came forth from his hiding place, capered and barked and rejoiced. When he was unable, toward the end of his life, to attend me when on horseback, he used to watch for my return, and the servant would tell him ‘his master was coming down the hill’ or ‘through the moor,’ and, although he did not use any gesture to explain his meaning, Camp was never known to mistake him, but either went out at the front to go up the hill or at the back to get down to the moorside. He certainly had a singular knowledge of spoken language.”

Once when the great novelist was sitting for his picture he exclaimed, “I am as tired of the operation as old Maida, who has been so often sketched that he got up and walked off with signs of loathing whenever he saw an artist unfurl his paper and handle his brushes!”

It is well known that a dog instantly discerns a friend from an enemy; in fact, he seems to know all those who are friendly to his race. There are few things more touching in the life of this great man than the fact that, when he walked in the streets of Edinburgh, nearly every dog he met came and fawned on him, wagged his tail at him, and thus showed his recognition of the friend of his race.

Àpropos of understanding what is said to them, Bayard Taylor says, “I know of nothing more moving, indeed semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessness in the face of a dog who understands what is said to him and can not answer.”

Walter Savage Landor, irascible, conceited, tempestuous, had a deep affection for dogs, as well as all other dumb creatures, that was interesting. “Of all the Louis Quatorze rhymesters I tolerate La Fontaine only, for I never see an animal, unless it be a parrot, a monkey, or a pug dog, or a serpent, that I do not converse with it either openly or secretly.”

The story of the noble martyr Gellert, who risked his own life for his master’s child, only to be suspected and slain by the hand he loved so well, is perhaps too familiar to be repeated, and yet I can not resist Spenser’s version:

The huntsman missed his faithful hound; he did not respond to horn or cry. But at last as Llewelyn “homeward hied” the dog bounded to greet him, smeared with gore. On entering the house he found his child’s couch also stained with blood, and the infant nowhere to be seen. Believing Gellert had devoured the boy, he plunged his sword in his side, but soon discovered the cherub alive and rosy, while beneath the couch, gaunt and tremendous, a wolf torn and killed:

Ah, what was then Llewelyn’s woe!

Best of thy kind, adieu.

The frantic blow which laid thee low

This heart shall ever rue.

And now a gallant tomb they raise,

With costly sculpture decked;

And marbles storied with his praise

Poor Gellert’s bones protect.

There never could the spearman pass

Or forester unmoved;

There oft the tear-besprinkled grass

Llewelyn’s sorrow proved.

And there he hung his horn and spear,

And there, as evening fell,

In fancy’s ear he oft would hear

Poor Gellert’s dying yell.

And till great Snowdon’s rocks grow old,

And cease the storm to brave,

The consecrated spot shall hold

The name of “Gellert’s Grave.”

Dr. John Brown’s exquisite prose poem of Rab and his Friends is as lasting a memorial to that dog as any built of granite or marble. The dog is emphatically the central figure, the hero of the story. The author sat for his picture with Rab by his side, and we are told that his interest in a half-blind and aged pet was evinced in the very last hours of his life. The dog has figured as the real attraction in several novels, and Ouida lets Puck tell his own story. Mrs. Stowe devoted one volume to Stories about our Dogs, and wrote also A Dog’s Mission. Matthew Arnold had many pets, and not only loved them in life, but has given them immortality by his appreciative tributes to dogs, and cat and canary. Here are two dog requiems: