Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

I have just added another famous dog to my list. It was a good list before, but it is now richer. It included Matthew Arnold’s Geist and Max and Kaiser, George Meredith’s Islet, Cowper’s Beau, Newton’s Diamond, Mrs. Browning’s Flush, Mr. Lehmann’s Rufus, all Dr. John Brown’s many friends, Scott’s deerhounds, Mortimer Collins’s St. Bernards, Pope’s spaniel. I remember only these as I write, but of course there are many others. And to this company enters now “Pomero.”

Landor’s “Pomero” came to him late in life—in the early ’forties—by which time the old man—he was then nearing seventy but had twenty fairly stormy years left—had settled again in England, his wife and family and most of his sympathies being far away in Italy. At Bath he then lived, making occasional visits to Gore House, and varying the composition of exquisite prose and tender felicitous verse with quarrels and tempests and tempests and reconciliations and tempests and lawsuits. Such then was the possessor of “Pomero”—or, as he would probably have called himself, the proud possession of “Pomero”—of whom such glimpses as I have had come to me in scraps of letters quoted by Forster in his Life of this noble, troubled, impossible, glorious creature.

Here is one, written by Landor at Warwick, when away from home, or what stood for home at that period—1844. Pomero had only just arrived from Fiesole; and it is worth remarking that had Landor lived to-day no such fortune would ever have been his, for never would he have survived such explosions of rage as the modern six months’ quarantine for imported dogs would have brought on him. (Think of him expressing his views to the custom-house officer at Dover!) “Daily,” he wrote, “do I think of Bath and Pomero. I fancy him lying on the narrow window-sill, and watching the good people go to church. He has not yet made up his mind between the Anglican and Roman Catholic; but I hope he will continue in the faith of his forefathers, if it will make him happier.”

Pomero, I should say, was a Pomeranian; but let me quote Sir Sidney Colvin’s charming sentences upon both man and dog. “With ‘Pomero’ Landor would prattle in English and Italian as affectionately as a mother with a child. Pomero was his darling, the wisest and most beautiful of his race; Pomero had the brightest eyes and the most wonderful yaller tail ever seen. Sometimes it was Landor’s humour to quote Pomero in speech and writing as a kind of sagacious elder brother whose opinion had to be consulted on all subjects before he would deliver his own. This creature accompanied his master wherever he went, barking ‘not fiercely but familiarly’ at friend and stranger, and when they came in would either station himself upon his master’s head to watch the people passing in the street, or else lie curled up in his basket until Landor, in talk with some visitor, began to laugh, and his laugh to grow and grow, when Pomero would spring up and leap upon and fume about him, barking and screaming for sympathy until the whole street resounded. The two together, master and dog, were for years to be encountered daily on their walks about Bath and its vicinity, and there are many who perfectly well remember them; the majestic old man, looking not a whit the less impressive for his rusty and dusty brown suit, his bulging boots, his rumpled linen, or his battered hat; and his noisy, soft-haired, quick-glancing, inseparable companion.”

Landseer, one feels, should have painted them: Dignity and Fidelity, Unreason and Understanding, Lion and Pomeranian. Since he did not, we must go to Forster’s extracts from the letters to fill in the picture. Another passage, also in 1844: “Pomero was on my knee when your letter came. He is now looking out of the window; a sad male gossip, as I often tell him. I dare not take him with me to London. He would most certainly be stolen, and I would rather lose Ipsley or Llanthony. The people of the house love him like a child, and declare he is as sensible as a Christian. He not only is as sensible, but much more Christian than some of those who have lately brought strife and contention into the Church.”

Again: “Pomero is sitting in a state of contemplation, with his nose before the fire. He twinkles his ears and his feathery tail at your salutation. He now licks his lips and turns round, which means ‘Return mine.’ The easterly wind has an evident effect upon his nerves. Last evening I took him to hear Luisina de Sodre play and sing. She is my friend the Countess de Molande’s granddaughter and daughter of De Sodre, Minister of Brazil to the Pope a few years ago. Pomero was deeply affected, and lay close to the pedal on her gown, singing in a great variety of tones, not always in time. It is unfortunate that he always will take a part where there is music, for he sings even worse than I do.”

So far the letters have been to Forster. Here is a passage from one to Landor’s sisters, also in 1844: “Let me congratulate you on the accident that deprives you of your carriage-horses. Next to servants, horses are the greatest trouble in life. Dogs are blessings, true blessings. Pomero, who sends his love, is the comfort of my solitude and the delight of my life. He is quite a public character here in Bath. Everybody knows him and salutes him. He barks aloud at all familiarly, not fiercely. He takes equal liberties with his fellow-creatures, if indeed dogs are more his fellow-creatures than I am. I think it was St. Francis de Sales who called birds and quadrupeds his sisters and brothers. Few saints have been so good-tempered, and not many so wise.”

For twelve years Pomero lived to make his master (his servant) happy or less unhappy, and then he died. That is the tragic thing—the brief life of these loyal devotees. It is not right, not fair, that so much love and energy should so quickly pass away. Many sensitive persons refuse for this reason to keep dogs at all. That, I think, is going too far, but I can understand it. Life at its longest for a human being is so brief and so fraught with disappointment and disillusion that, at least, one feels, the span of the most faithful and satisfying friends that man knows might have been made commensurate.... Pomero, as I have said, was Landor’s for twelve years, and then he died. Writing to Forster on the 10th of March, 1856, the old man—he was eighty-one—tells the news: “Pomero, dear Pomero, died this evening at about four o’clock. I have been able to think of nothing else....”

A few days later he wrote again: “Everybody in this house grieves for Pomero. The cat lies day and night upon his grave, and I will not disturb the kind creature, though I want to plant some violets upon it, and to have his epitaph placed around his little urn:—