Princess Sarah, and Other Stories

by John Strange Winter

First, your true pug must be of a certain colour, a warm fawn-colour; it must have a proper width of chest and a bull-doggish bandiness about the legs; it must have a dark streak from the top of its head along its back towards the tail; it must have a double twist to that same tail, and three rolls of fat or loose skin, set like a collar about its throat; it must have a square mouth, an ink-black--no, no, a soot-black mask (that is, face) adorned with an infinitesimal nose, a pair of large and lustrous goggle-eyes, and five moles. I believe, too, that there is something very important about the shape and colouring of its toes; but I really don't know much about pugs, and this list of perfections is only what I have been able to gather from various friends who do understand the subject.

So let me get on with my story, and say at once that Yum-Yum possessed all these perfections. She may have had others, for she was without doubt a great beauty of her kind, and she certainly was blessed with an admirable temper, an angelic temper, mild as new milk, and as patient as Job's.

And Yum-Yum belonged to a little lady called Nannie Mackenzie.

Yum-Yum: A Pug.

The Mackenzies, I must tell you, were not rich people, or in any way persons of importance; they had no relations, and apparently belonged to no particular family; but they were very nice people, and very good people, and lived in one of a large row of houses on the Surrey side of the river Thames, at that part which is called Putney.

Mr. Mackenzie was something in the city, and had not apparently hit upon a good thing, for there was not much money to spare in the house at Putney. I rather fancy that he was managing clerk to a tea-warehouse, but am not sure upon that point. Mrs. Mackenzie had been a governess, but of course she had not started life as a teacher of small children; no, she had come into the world in an upper room of a pretty country vicarage, where the olive branches grew like stonecrop, and most visitors were in the habit of reminding the vicar of certain lines in the hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm.

In course of time this particular olive plant, like her sisters, picked up a smattering of certain branches of knowledge, and, armed thus, went out into the wide world to make her own way. Her knowledge was not extensive; it comprised a fluent power of speaking her mother-tongue with a pleasant tone and correct accent, but without any very well-grounded idea of why and wherefore it was so. She also knew a little French of doubtful quality, and a little less German that was distinctly off colour. She could copy a drawing in a woodenly accurate kind of way, with stodgy skies made chiefly of Chinese white, and exceedingly woolly trees largely helped out with the same useful composition. At that time there was no sham about Nora Browne's pretensions to art--there they were, good, bad, or indifferent, and you might take them for what they were worth, which was not much. It was not until she had been Mrs. Mackenzie for some years that she took to "doing" the picture-galleries armed with catalogue and pencil, and talked learnedly about chiar-oscuro, about distance and atmosphere, about this school and that, this method or the other treatment. There were frequenters of the art-galleries of London to whom Mrs. Mackenzie, née Nora Browne, was a delightful study; but then, on the other hand, there was a much larger number of persons than these whom she impressed deeply, and who even went so far as to speak of her with bated breath as "a power" on the press, while, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Mackenzie's little paragraphs were very innocent, and not very remunerative, and generally won for the more or less weekly society papers in which they appeared a reputation for employing an art-critic who knew a good deal more about the frames than about the pictures within them.

However, all this is a little by the way! I really only give these details of Mrs. Mackenzie's doings to show that the family was, by virtue of their mother being a dabbler in journalism, in touch with the set which I saw the other day elegantly described as "Upper Bohemia."

Now in the circles of "Upper Bohemia" nobody is anybody unless they can do something--unless they can paint pictures or umbrella vases and milking-stools, unless they can sing attractively, or play some instrument beyond the ordinary average of skill, unless they can write novels or make paragraphs for the newspapers, unless they can act or give conjuring entertainments, or unless they can compose pretty little songs with a distinct motif, or pieces for the piano which nobody can make head or tail of. It is very funny that there should be so wide a difference necessary between the composition of music for the voice and music for the piano. For the first there must be a little something to catch the ear, a little swing in the refrain, a something to make the head wag to and fro; the words may be ever so silly if they are only bordering on the pathetic, and if the catch in the refrain is taking enough the rest of the song may be as silly as the words, and still it will be a success. But with a piece it is different. For that the air must be resolutely turned inside out, as it were, and apparently if the composer chances to light on one or two pretty bits, he goes back again and touches them up so as to make them match all the rest. It seems odd this, but the world does not stop to listen, but talks its hardest, and as at the end it says "How lovely!" I suppose it is all right.