Throughout these very discursive annals I have tried to keep in remembrance a lesson that I learnt a few years ago from a very interesting book of Mr. Seton Thompson’s called, I think, “In the Arctic Prairies.” In it he began by saying that travellers’ accounts of their sufferings from mosquitoes were liable to degenerate into a weariness to the reader; therefore he determined to mass all he had suffered into one chapter. Thenceforward, when the remembrance of the mosquitoes became too poignant for endurance, a pause came in the narrative, and a footnote said (with an audible groan), “See Chapter So and So.” Thus it has been with me and dogs. This is Chapter So and So, and I honourably invite the Skip of Defiance already several times advocated.
M. Maeterlinck has written of dogs with deep discernment, yet not, I think, in quite the right spirit. No dogs, save perhaps hounds, should speak of “Master,” or “Mistress.” The relationship should be as that of a parent; at farthest, that of a fond governess. R. L. Stevenson’s essay, “The Character of Dogs,” treats of dogs with all his enchanting perception and subtlety, and contains the matchless phrase “That mass of carneying affectations, the female dog”; yet memorable as the phrase is, I would venture to protest against the assumption that is implicit in it, namely, that affectation is a thing to be reprobated. Martin’s and my opinion has ever been that it is one of the most bewitching of qualities. I believe I rather enjoy it in young ladies; I adore it in “the female dog.” But it must be genuine affectation. The hauteur of a fox terrier lady with a stranger cad-dog is made infinitely more precious by the certainty that when the Parent’s eye is removed, it will immediately become transmuted into the most unbridled familiarity.
I recall a sunny summer morning when, on the lawn tennis ground at Drishane, Martin and I received a visit from the then parson of the parish, and from his large black retriever. Candy and Sheila, my fox terriers, ladies both, received it also, but in their case, with a dignity that we could not hope to emulate. Shortly after the interview opened, chancing to look round, I beheld two motionless round white mounds, hedgehog in attitude, super-hedgehog in sentiment, buried in profoundest slumber. Round the mounds, with faint yelps, in brief rushes, panting with adoration, with long pink tongue flapping, and white teeth flashing, fore-legs wide apart and flung flat on the grass, went the parson’s retriever. With sealed eyes the ladies slept on. Yet, when Martin and the parson and I had strayed on into the flower garden, I cannot conceal the fact that both the Clara Vere de Veres abandoned themselves to a Maenad activity that took the amazed and deeply gratified retriever as its focal point, and might have given effective hints to any impersonator of Salome dancing before King Herod.
I have ever been faithful to two breeds, foxhounds, and fox terriers, and, as I look back over a long series of Grandes Passions, I see Ranger and Rachel and Science, with their faithful, beautiful hound-faces, waving their sterns to me through the mists of memory, and The Puppet, and Dot, and, paramount among them all, the little “Head-dog,” Candy, all waiting in the past, to be remembered and praised, and petted. Mention has already been made of The Puppet’s brief but brilliant life. Martin has summed him up as “an engaging but ill-mannered little thing,” but this dispassionate assessment did not interfere with her affection for him. Some time after his early and tragic death, she sent me a little MS. book entitled “Passages in the Life of a Puppet, By its Mother, Being some Extracts from Her Correspondence.” These, with her comments, elucidatory and otherwise, I still preserve, and they are often both entertaining and instructive. They are, on the whole, of too esoteric a nature for these pages, but I may offer one extract that may be regarded as not unsuitable by that influential person, “the general reader.” This treats of The Puppet in the capacity of parent, and is endorsed by Martin, “The Puppet in his own Home Circle is unamiable, and is much disliked by his wife.”
“His attitude is one of curiosity and suspicion. When I go to see Dot and the puppies, he creeps after me, walking with the most exaggerated caution on three legs, one being held high in air, in the pose of one who says ‘Hark!’ or ‘Hist!’ Sometimes he forgets, and says it with a hind-leg, but there are never more than three paws on the ground. Meantime, the Mamma, with meek, beaming eyes fixed on me, keeps up a low and thunderous growl. At other times, he scrutinises the family from a distance, severely, sitting erect, like one of Landseer’s lions (but the pose is grander), with ears inside out, as cleared for action. I dither——” The extract ends thus, with some abruptness, and recognising the truth of the final statement, I will leave the Puppet and his Passages, with an apology for having alluded to them. We have, sometimes, thought of writing a dog-novel (being attracted by the thought of calling it “Kennel-worth”), but we were forced to recognise that society is not yet ripe for it.
In fact, the position of dogs requires readjustment. It is marked by immoderation. To declaim that dogs should be kept in their Proper Place, is merely to invite to battle. One thing I will say as touching the case of dogs whose “proper place” has been, as with myself, the bosoms of their respective owners. There comes to those owners something catastrophic, a death or a disaster, or even some such household throe as a wedding or a ball. The dogs are forgotten. The belief that has been fostered in them of their own importance remains unshaken. Their intelligent consciousness of individual life is as intense as ever. Even if the amazing stories of dog-intelligence, that were heard a few years ago, were untrue, it is impossible to deny to dogs whose minds have been humanised a share of comprehension that is practically human. Yet, when the Big Moment comes in the life of the house, the dogs are brushed aside and ignored. One is sometimes dimly, remotely aware, through one’s own misery or pre-occupation, of the lonely, bewildered little fellow-being who has suddenly become insignificant, but that is all. One gives him to eat and drink, but one has withdrawn one’s soul from him, and he knows it, and wonders why, and suffers. It is inevitable, but, like many an inevitable thing, it is not fair.
After Dot, in the succession of fox terriers, came Musk, who was unto Dot as a daughter, so much so, indeed, that I find it said in my diary that Dot, like the Abbess in the Ballad of the Nun,
“—— loved her more and more,
And as a mark of perfect trust
Made her the Keeper of the Ashpit.”
Musk belonged, strictly speaking, to my sister; her name, through modifications that might interest an etymologist, but no one else, became more usually, Muck, or Pucket. As the Pucket she reigned for many years jointly with her eldest daughter, Candy, and with a later daughter, Sheila, on the steps of the throne. The Pucket had a singular fear of anyone who approached her without speaking. If, on a return after the briefest absence, the friend, or even the Mother, received her welcoming barks in silence, yet continued to advance towards her—about which there may be conceded to be something fateful—the Pucket’s voice would falter, she would retreat with ever increasing speed, and I have seen her, when further retirement was impossible, plunge herself into a bush and thence cry for help. One of her daughters will sometimes act in this way, and I have known other dogs to behave similarly. On what, then, does their apprehension of their friends rely? Not sight, nor smell; not voice, as a deaf dog recognises his friends? I can only suppose that the unwonted lack of response suggests a mental overthrow, and that Musk felt that nothing less than the failure of their reason would silence her Mother or her Aunt.
On another occasion, and a more legitimate one, I have seen Musk’s self-control overthrown. An elderly lady-guest, now dead, whose name and demeanour equally suggested the sobriquet of “The Bedlamite,” undertook one evening to sing for us. Musk, in common with all our dogs, was inured to, practically, any form of music, but when the Bedlamite advanced with a concertina to the middle of the drawing-room, and, with Nautch-like wavings of the instrument, began to shriek—there is no other word—Salaman’s entirely beautiful setting of “I arise from dreams of thee,” to the sole accompaniment of the concertina’s shrill wheezings, the Pucket, after some cautious and horrified attention, retired stealthily under the table, and uttered low and windy howls.