Poor Nero was run over by a butcher’s cart, in October, 1859, and, though not killed outright, was never well again. His mistress nursed and petted him—his master could not do enough; but neither care nor love could avail. Four months later he died, and was buried in the garden, with a small headstone to mark his blameless dust. “I could not have believed,” said Carlyle, “my grief, then and since, would have been the twentieth part of what it was.” And “nobody but myself,” said Nero’s mistress, “can have any idea of what that little creature has been in my life; my inseparable companion during eleven years, ever doing his little best to keep me from feeling sad and lonely. Docile, affectionate, loyal, up to his last hour.”
I happened once to pass the closed house in Chelsea, where the Carlyles lived so long. Just a little way from it, is a bronze statue of Carlyle, with kind, melancholy face—a fit memorial, in fitting place, to one who, whatever his faults, is yet among the greatest spirits of our age. Not long before he was walking this very path; now we passed from the voiceless statue to the desolate house, as from silence unto silence. The windows were closed, like eyes with sealed lids; the hospitable door was grimly shut, and the knocker, as we tried it, sent a hollow echo through the hall within.
But the noonday sunlight fell hot and cheery on the doorstep, where, comfortably ensconced in a corner, lay a black-and-white cat. It blinked lazily at us, but was too well off, and I am sure too secure, also, of our friendliness, to move.
So the house which Mrs. Carlyle’s friends used jestingly to call “a refuge for stray dogs and cats,” still offered them some slight shelter—although master and mistress, and little Nero, all were gone!
III.
PETS IN LITERARY LIFE.