Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

They were very much delighted with the wool, and played with it a great deal, but they seemed to have no idea of the proper use of it; if we put it into the nest for them, they merely pulled it out again.

This became so hopeless, and I was so anxious to try to rear little canaries, that a friend promised me another hen. She, however, forgot what our circumstances were, and sent us a pair, who were promptly named Jock and Mummy. I would not have Jack defrauded of his wife after all, so Mummy was taken away from Jock and given to Jack instead. There is not much to tell about poor Jock. He was a middle-aged gentleman, subject to chronic asthma, and could never in that state of health have undertaken the cares and responsibility of a young family. His cage was always hung up near the fire, and when he was worse than usual I gave him a tiny drop of sal-volatile in his water. He was a contented, cheerful bird, and lived as long as with his age and asthma one could expect.

Mummy was a crested bird, pale yellow with a green crest, rather pretty, but in mind utterly vulgar. Of course she was far more effective than the refined Thyrsis had ever been. She knew all about nest building, and began at once; while the cynical and gentlemanly Jack looked on. The pair always reminded one of an aristocratic philosopher who had married his cook.

But one must give Mummy the whole credit of the nest; she put the moss and hair and wool into it, she squatted herself down in it, turned round, fluffed herself out to make it hard and round and compact; and at intervals went to keep up her strength by taking her “dishing-up beer” in the shape of hempseed.

Then she laid eggs quite satisfactorily, and they came out quite satisfactorily, and one by one all the nestlings died—not satisfactorily. On examining the little corpses, we found that they had died of starvation. Jack was found guilty at the inquest, for a first principle of domestic life among canaries is that the father feeds the birds while they are very young. What was the reason, then, that he had so disgracefully neglected his duty of feeding them, while his devoted wife sat on the nest to keep them warm? There must be something more than grandeur and cynicism to make a gentleman allow his children to die of starvation.

At last we found out the reason—Jack was flirting with his first love! Thyrsis’ cage was hung in Jack’s sight, and instead of feeding his infant children, or attending to them in any way, he clung to the corner of his cage all day and serenaded Thyrsis. We put Thyrsis out of his sight; Mummy laid a second set of eggs, and Jack attended to them as if he had done it all his life. It is true that he threw the eldest out of the nest on to the floor of the cage, but there is great excuse for that; a gentleman of refined and fastidious feelings must have had a dreadful shock when he first saw an unfledged canary and realised that that repulsive creature was his progeny. With all his cynicism, he could never have imagined that anything so loathsome existed. I don’t see what else he could have done,—I should have done it myself in his place. From whatever point you look at them, unfledged canaries are altogether and absolutely hideous; their brownish-pink skin is scantily covered with hairs, little bits of flesh wave helplessly about where their wings and legs are going to be, they have two large dark swellings where their eyes are going to be, and the only thing that is defined about them is a huge mouth which is almost always open and yelling. I had to pick the canary up from the bottom of the cage, and I still owe Jack a grudge for it, though I cannot in justice blame him.

Little canaries, when they are fledged, are as pretty as before they are frightful. These three little birds, when they were fledged, were all different and all beautiful. One was like her mother, yellow and green and crested; one like his father, all yellow; and one a sort of mixture, green and yellow and without a crest. Now a curious thing happened: the father chiefly devoted himself to feeding the little hen, who was like her mother; the mother (who begins to feed the birds when they are getting fledged and do not need warmth so much) fed the little cock like the father; and I have sometimes seen these two of their superfluity feeding their neglected brother. He throve well on the little attention he got.

I brought up several nests-ful. We had Tweedledum and Tweedledee,—Tweedledee’s name was subsequently changed to “Jewel” by a little cousin to whom I gave it, and who considered it a priceless treasure,—and Daffodil, the neglected nondescript, and Vicary, and Roumenik, called after the Wallachian country-place of some friends of ours; and others whose names I forget. Roumenik was the only one I kept, he was the last hatched, and was called “the Baby” until he died at the mature age of eight years.

There was one wonderful chicken who did not live to have a name. He was very precocious, and died young. This was how it happened: the misguided Mummy laid an egg in January, and in consequence, as I have always believed, of the weather being so much too cold when it was hatched, the bird could never get fledged; when it had already begun to be active and of a roving disposition, it still had no feathers on. Even sprouting wing-feathers might have broken its fall a little, on the many occasions when it tried to get out of the nest and fell on its back on the bottom of the cage. One day it had a fall more serious than usual, and till evening it sat on the edge of its waterglass with its head hanging down and its neck apparently dislocated. In the morning I found it dead in the waterglass. So I do not know to this day which accident it died of.