churchyard, and lingered
near the spot until his death in 1872.
With permission,
Erected by the
Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
The story of leal Bobby has been often told, but is well worth telling once again. While life sits warm at our hearts, we should remember this other little heart, so constant and loving. He has been sculptured, painted, sketched, memorialized, as though he were royal.
One gloomy day I passed the memorial fountain, and turned in at Greyfriars. It was already closing time, still the old curator let me in, and while searching for a “potograph” as he called it, of Bobby, told me what he could about him. Bobby lies buried in a flower-bed in front of the church. For more than a dozen years he made his master’s grave his home—a grave unmarked until his own devotion became its monument. The curator tried at first to drive him away, but without success, and ended by letting him do as he would. A friendly restaurant-keeper gave him food; every body indeed was kind, and in his doggish heart he must have felt their kindness; yet outwardly he drew near to none. Why should he when his real life lay deep down in six feet of earth?
“Here’s the potograph at last, ma’am,” said the old curator, “and here’s his collar, if you’d like to see it.”
I touched reverently the half-worn band of leather, remembering how near it had once lain to a faithful little heart.
“They tried to get his body from me,” continued Bobby’s friend, “that they might stuff the skin, and keep it in the museum. But I said to myself, ‘No, sirs; you mean it well, but it ain’t what Bobby ‘d ‘a’ wanted, and he’s the first call to be axed.’ I meant to do the fair thing by him, dead or alive. He’d never ‘a’ lain here thirteen year, wet weather or dry, cold or warm, summer and winter, unless he’d meant it. You see, ma’am, I naturally knew it wa’n’t right for his skin to be that far from his master’s; so when he died, I just quietly took my own way, and got him under ground before them as wanted him knew rightly he was dead. And there he is,”—pointing to the flower-bed—“all that’s left of him.”