"The One" Dog and "The Others": A Study of Canine Character

by Frances E. Slaughter

JIMMY

The following instance of a dog’s devotion I take from the charming appreciation of the late Lord Lytton that has recently been brought out by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour.[10] The charm of the story, as told by the dog’s master, is the cause of my breaking through the rule I have followed in this book, of only giving anecdotes that I have collected at first hand.

The hero of the story was a Pyrenean dog named Goblin, who was Lord Lytton’s constant companion during the last years of his life. Only a few months before our ambassador died at his post in Paris, he took a short holiday on the seacoast of the North of France. With him, of course, went Goblin, and his master, in a letter to a friend, gives the following account of an incident that touched him deeply.

“I must tell you that Goblin has an invincible dread and horror of water. Never yet have I been able, by any persuasion or threat, to induce him to dip his paw into lake or river, sea or pond. Well yesterday, as soon as I got here, I went to take a bath in the sea, and I took Goblin with me. As the bathing place is just in front of the hotel, I made sure when I got into the sea he would either find his way home or else wait for me on the beach, and I did not concern myself about him. The tide was flowing in, and I was therefore able to swim out some distance from shore without risk of being drifted too far by the tide. When I was already a good way out and had just turned my face landwards to swim back, imagine my surprise to perceive that the faithful beast was swimming out to me in a very fussy, floppy style. He, too, was already some way from shore, but he made slow progress against the waves, though his poor little paws beat them with desperate rapidity. He was panting and snorting loudly, and there was a look of unutterable anguish in his yellow eyes, which were all the while fixed steadily on me. He had evidently fancied I was going to be drowned, and that it was his duty to save me or perish with me, or else that I was meanly and cruelly abandoning him and at any risk he would not be left behind. This moral agony had conquered his physical horror of the water, as Aaron’s rod swallowed up those of Pharaoh’s magicians, and affection had cast out fear.

“Now, three weeks before leaving Paris, I had dreamt a bad dream which made a great impression on me, and in my dream I had seen Goblin drowned. Suddenly the thought rushed upon me that this bad dream was about to be fulfilled, and I think that in that moment my own fears became greater than Goblin’s. I made for him as fast as I could, took him in my arms, and holding him before me like a baby, swam back with him till we were in shallow water again.

“Ever since he has been in tearing spirits, cocks his tail higher than before, and is evidently proud of his exploit, which appears to have greatly raised him in his own opinion, as it has certainly done in mine; I believe he is persuaded that he saved my life. However, when I went to bathe again this morning, I took Todd, my valet, with me, and whether it was Todd’s reassuring presence, or the certainty he had acquired from yesterday’s experience, that I should presently return, I can’t say. But this time nothing would induce Goblin to go after me again into the water. Every time I called to him, or Todd urged or coaxed him forward, he shook his head knowingly, as if to say ‘No, no; I am not to be taken in a second time. I see through your tricks now!’”

The faithful dog, we read, “long survived his master and was a beloved friend to the family.”

Noble Goblin. He loved and enjoyed his life, but was ready to sacrifice it in his master’s service, or to save himself from the deeper horror of long years to be spent without him.

Once again I break through my rule to give an old, old version of the story that in modern form tells of the dying service of Gelert to his master. Who has not been touched by the simple recital of the dog’s devotion, that was so misjudged by man?

It is in the Folk Tales of the Himalayas[11] that we find the far-off echo of Gelert’s story, which still lives among the fireside legends of the hill tribes of Northern India. These stories were, as Mrs. Dracott tells us, taken down as they were told to her by the Paharee women, and she gives them as nearly as possible in the words of the narrators. The temple built on the slopes of those far-off, snow-capped mountains, keeps alive in the hearts of the simple village folk the history of a dog’s fidelity that met with bitter injustice at the hands of his owner.