Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

Pour aimer celui que n’aime plus personne!”

Not a few deep thanksgivings, I believe, have gone up to the Maker of man and brute for the silent sympathy,—expressed perhaps in no nobler way than by the gentle licking of a passive hand,—which has yet saved a human heart from the sense of utter abandonment.

But I have no such sorrowful or embittering experience of human affection. I do not say, “The more I know of men the more I love dogs”; but, “The more I know of dogs the more I love them,” without any invidious comparisons with men, women, or children. As regards the children, indeed, I have been always fond of those which came in my way; and if the Tenth Commandment had gone on to forbid coveting one’s neighbour’s “child,” I am not sure that I should not have had to plead guilty to breaking it many times.

In my old home I possessed a dear Pomeranian dog of whom I was very fond, who, being lame, used constantly to ensconce herself (though forbidden by my father) in my mother’s carriage under the seat, and never showed her little pointed nose till the britzska had got so far from home that she knew no one would put her down on the road. Then she would peer out and lie against my mother’s dress and be fondled. Later on I had the companionship of another beautiful, mouse-coloured Pomeranian, brought as a puppy from Switzerland. In my hardworking life in Bristol in the schools and workhouse she followed me and ingratiated herself everywhere, and my solitary evenings were much the happier for dear Hajjin’s company. Many years afterwards she was laid under the sod of our garden in Hereford Square. Another dog of the same breed whom I sent away at one year old to live in the country, was returned to me eight years afterwards, old and diseased. The poor beast recognized me after a few moments’ eager examination, and uttered an actual scream of joy when I called her by name; exhibiting every token of tender affection for me ever afterwards. When one reflects what eight years signify in the life of a dog,—almost equivalent to the distance between sixteen and sixty in a human being,—some measure is afforded by this incident of the durability of a dog’s attachment. Happily, kind Dr. Hoggan cured poor Dee of her malady, and she and I enjoyed five happy years of companionship ere she died here in Hengwrt. I have dedicated my Friend of Man to her memory.

Among my smaller literary tasks in London I wrote an article for which Mr. Leslie Stephen (then editing the Cornhill Magazine in which it appeared) was kind enough to express particular liking. It was called “Dogs whom I have met;” and gave an account of many canine individualities of my acquaintance. I also wrote an article in the Quarterly Review on the Consciousness of Dogs of which I have given above (p. 127) Mr. Darwin’s favourable opinion. Both of these papers are reprinted in my False Beasts and True. Such has been the sum total, I may say, of my personal concern with animals before and apart from my endeavours to deliver them from their scientific tormentors.

It was, as I have stated, the abominable wrongs endured by animals which first aroused, and has permanently maintained, my special interest in them. My great-grandfather had an office in the yard at Newbridge for his magisterial work, and over his own seat he caused to be inscribed the text: “Deliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the adversary.” I know not whether it were a juvenile impression, but I have felt all my life an irresistible impulse to rush in wherever anyone is “oppressed” and try to “deliver” him, her, or it, as the case may be, from the “adversary!” In the case of beasts, their helplessness and speechlessness appeal, I think, to every spark of generosity in one’s heart; and the command, “Open thy mouth for the dumb,” seems the very echo of our consciences. Everything in us, manly or womanly, (and the best in us all is both) answers it back.

When I was a little child, living in a house where hunting, coursing, shooting, and fishing, were carried on by all the men and boys, I took such field sports as part of the order of things, and learned with delight from my father to fish in our ponds on my own account. Somehow it came to pass that when, at sixteen, my mind went through that strange process which Evangelicals call “Conversion,” among the first things which my freshly-awakened moral sense pointed out was,—that I must give up fishing! I reflected that the poor fishes were happy in their way in their proper element; that we did not in the least need, or indeed often use them for food; and that I must no longer take pleasure in giving pain to any creature of God. It was a little effort to me to relinquish this amusement in my very quiet, uneventful life; but, as the good Quaker’s say, it was “borne in on me,” that I had to do it, and from that time I have never held a rod or line (though I have been out in boats where large quantities of fish were caught on the Atlantic coast), and I freely admit that angling scarcely comes under the head of cruelty at all, and is perfectly right and justifiable when the fish are wanted for food and are killed quickly. I used to stand sometimes after I had ceased to fish, over one of the ponds in our park and watch the bright creatures dart hither and thither, and say in my heart a little thanksgiving on their behalf instead of trying to catch them.

Fifty years after this incident, I read in John Woolman’s, (the Quaker Saint’s,) Journal, Chap. XI., this remark:—

“I believe, where the love of God is verily perfected and the true spirit of government watchfully attended, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject to us will be experienced, and a care felt in us that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the great Creator intends for them under our government.”

To me as I have said it was almost the first, and not an advanced, much less “perfected,” religious impulse, which led me to begin to recognise the claims of the lower animals on our compassion. Of course, I disliked then, and always, hunting, coursing and shooting; but as a woman I was not expected to join in such pursuits, and I did not take on myself to blame those who followed them. I do not now allow of any comparison between the cruelty of such Field Sports and the deliberate Chamber-Sport of Vivisection.