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,