Oh, what a wretch, if thou canst see
My fair one’s eyes with weeping red,
And know how much she grieves for thee.
James I, of England, whom Dickens designates as “His Sowship,” to express his detestation of his character, had a variety of dumb favourites. Although a remorseless destroyer of animals in the chase, he had an intense pleasure in seeing them around him happy and well cared for in a state of domesticity. In 1623 John Bannat obtained a grant of the king’s interest in the leases of two gardens and a tenement in the Nuriones, on the condition of building and maintaining a house wherein to keep and rear his Majesty’s newly imported silkworms. Sir Thomas Dale, one of the settlers of the then newly formed colony of Virginia, returning to Europe on leave, brought with him many living specimens of American zoölogy, among them some flying squirrels. This coming to his Majesty’s ears, he was seized with a boyish impatience to add them to the private menageries in St. James’s Park. At the council table and in the circle of his courtiers he recurs again and again to the subject, wondering why Sir Thomas had not given him “the first pick” of his cargo of curiosities. He reminded them how the recently arrived Muscovite ambassador had brought him live sables, and, what he loved even better, splendid white gyrfalcons of Iceland; and when Buckingham suggested that in the whole of her reign Queen Elizabeth had never received live sables from the Czar, James made special inquiries if such were really the case. Some one of his loving subjects, desirous of ministering to his favourite hobby, had presented him with a cream-coloured fawn. A nurse was immediately hired for it, and the Earl of Shrewsbury commissioned to write as follows to Miles Whytakers, signifying the royal pleasure as to future procedure: “The king’s Majesty hath commissioned me to send this rare beast, a white hind calf, unto you, together with a woman, his nurse, that hath kept it and bred it up. His Majesty would have you see it be kept in every respect as this good woman doth desire, and that the woman be lodged and boarded by you until his Majesty come to Theobald’s on Monday next, and then you shall know further of his pleasure. What account his Majesty maketh of this fine beast you may guess, and no man can suppose it to be more rare than it is; therefore I know that your care of it will be accordingly. So in haste I bid you my hearty farewell. At Whitehall, this 6th of November, 1611.”
About 1629 the King of Spain effected an important diversion in his own favour by sending the king—priceless gift—an elephant and five camels. Going through London after midnight, says a state paper, they could not pass unseen, and the clamour and outcry raised by some street loiterers at sight of their ponderous bulk and ungainly step, roused the sleepers from their beds in every street through which they passed. News of this unlooked-for addition to the Zoölogical Garden is conveyed to Theobald’s as speedily as horseflesh, whip and spur, could do their work. Then arose an interchange of missives to and fro betwixt the king, my lord treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Connay, grave, earnest, deliberate, as though involving the settlement or refusal of some treaty of peace. In muttered sentences, not loud but deep, the thrifty lord treasurer shows “how little he is in love with royal presents, which cost his master as much to maintain as could a garrison.” No matter. Warrants are issued to the officers of the Mews and to Buckingham, master of the horse, that the elephant is to be daily well dressed and fed, but that he should not be led forth to water, nor any admitted to see him without directions from his keeper. The camels are to be daily grazed in the park, but brought back at night with all possible precautions to secure them from the vulgar gaze. The elephant had two Spaniards and two Englishmen to take care of him, and the royal quadruped had royal fare. His keepers affirm that from the month of September till April he must drink not water but wyne; and from April to September “he must have a gallon of wyne the day.” His winter allowance was six bottles per diem, but perhaps his keepers relieved him occasionally of a portion of the tempting beverage which they probably thought too good to waste on an animal even if it be a royal elephant.
When Voltaire was living near Geneva he owned a large monkey which used to attack and even bite both friends and enemies. This repulsive pet one day gave his master three wounds in the leg, obliging him for some time to hobble on crutches. He had named the creature Luc, and in conversation with intimate friends he also gave the King of Prussia the same name, because, said he, “Frederick is like my monkey, who bites those who caress him.” As a contrast, remember how the hermit, Thoreau, used to cultivate the acquaintance of a little mouse until it became really tame and would play a game of bopeep with his eccentric friend.
Nothing seems too odd or disagreeable to be regarded with affection. Lord Erskine, who always expressed a great interest in animals, had at one time two leeches for favourites. Taken dangerously ill at Portsmouth, he fancied that they had saved his life. Every day he gave them fresh water and formed a friendship with them. He said he was sure that both knew him, and were grateful for his attentions. He named them Home and Cline, for two celebrated surgeons, and he affirmed that their dispositions were quite different; in fact, he thought he distinguished individuality in these black squirmers from the mire.
Even pigs have had the good fortune to interest persons of genius. Robert Herrick had a pet pig which he fed daily with milk from a silver tankard, and Miss Martineau had the same odd fancy. She, too, had a pet pig which she had washed and scrubbed daily. When too ill to superintend the operation she would listen at her window for piggie’s squeal, advertising that the operation had commenced.
John Wilson, better known as Christopher North, loved many pets, and was as unique in his methods with them as in all other things. His intense fondness for animals and birds was often a trial to the rest of the family, as when his daughter found he had made a nest for some young gamecocks in her trunk of party dresses which was stored in the attic. On his library table, where “fishing rods found company with Ben Jonson and Jeremy Taylor reposed near a box of barley-sugar,” a tame sparrow he had befriended hopped blithely about, master of the situation. This tiny pet imagined itself the most important occupant of the room. It would nestle in his waistcoat, hop upon his shoulder, and seemed influenced by constant association with a giant, for it grew in stature until it was alleged that the sparrow was gradually becoming an eagle.
The Rev. Gilbert White, who wrote the Natural History of Selborne, speaks of a tortoise which he petted, saying, “I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that show it kind offices, for as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles toward its benefactress with awkward alacrity, but remains inattentive to strangers.” Thus not only “the ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s crib,” but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings of gratitude. Think of Jeremy Bentham growing a sort of vetch in his garden to cram his pockets with to feed the deer in Kensington Gardens! “I remember,” says his friend who tells the story, “his pointing it out to me and telling me the virtuous deer were fond of it, and ate it out of his hand.” Like Byron, he once kept a pet bear, but he was in Russia at the time, and the wolves got into the poor creature’s box on a terrible night and carried off a part of his face, a depredation which the philosopher never forgot nor forgave to his dying day. He always kept a supply of stale bread in a drawer of his dining table for the “mousies.”