Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

After these two came Enid, Elaine, and Geraint. Enid was the first to have a baby, and she had only one—a fat round one, which grew and prospered until one day when he suddenly disappeared. We searched and hunted with anxious hearts, but with no result. After a time we wanted to move the hutches to a new place, and when we took up that in which poor Enid and the baby lived, there was a hole under it—a rat’s hole, and at the end of the hole, as we peered down, we saw a little white thing—the skin and bones of a baby guinea-pig. Enid never had another baby; she grew sad and thin and pined away, and at last she died.

Then Elaine had a baby—two; but one was deformed, completely paralysed in his hind-legs, and I felt that the kindest thing to do would be to destroy him. So I took out a bottle of laudanum, and prepared to begin the hari-kari. Poor little guinea-pig! it was already very ill, and I could with difficulty get its little rabbit-like mouth open. What a tiny throat! could it swallow even enough poison to end its panting little life? When I laid it down again there was very little change, and I did not know what to do; then the pink nose, the hands and feet, began to have a slightly blue tinge. I could not disturb it again to open its mouth, so I poured a little more laudanum on its mouth and nose, and the limbs got bluer, and the breathing became harder, and at last ceased. It was a dreadful thing to do. However, on the whole, it was less dreadful than drowning it. Once I had to drown a bat.... We will draw a veil over that.

However, to proceed with the guinea-pigs. The baby that was not deformed was a very nice little pig—small but comely. He grew up and was called Jim.

There is an individuality about guinea-pigs, not explicable but to be apprehended intuitively. Jim was quite individual. You would have known that if you had only seen him sitting upright at his mother’s side to nibble out of the hay trough.

The guinea-pigs lived in a large estate fenced in by wire; inside the yard were various settlements, bedrooms, all with free access to the yard, and usually to the ground beyond, for they made holes under the wire and disported themselves outside. They had a beautiful rack to hold their hay, saucers for bran, and were given a breakfast of soaked bread every morning. At breakfast-time shrill whistles might be heard from the guinea-pig yard. Most people think guinea-pigs have only one noise, but in reality they have, quite clearly defined, three fundamental notes, of desire, contentment, and anger. They whistle when they are hungry, make what are called “guinea-pig noises” when they are well content—for ordinary conversation, and they gnash their teeth when they are angry.

About this time, when the colony was not too large, I used to take them out for picnics.

Opposite the front door, at the corner of the lawn, there is a large escalonia tree; on warm summer evenings it sheds a delicious fragrant smell from leaves and flowers. Opposite this there is a stile made to get into the fields. The stile is made in such a manner as to be a very comfortable seat. Here, under the escalonia, I used to turn out the guinea-pigs for a day in the country, while I read a book on the stile, and Watch was put to guard them; if any little pig strayed too far, he saw where it went to, and helped me to find it again.

But, in time, the colony grew too large for this, and at last it began to increase with a rapidity that alarmed me; for, as you see, it is not a case of the simple geometrical progression of creatures which have the same number in every family; but, as guinea-pigs get older, each family gets larger, so that it is like a sum in compound interest, at an accelerating rate of interest. I began to be frightened when the “five Mitchinsons” were born, and the next family was larger still.

In fact, they would have eaten us out of garden and farm, if it had not been for what political economists call “violent checks”; these violent checks were kidnapping, nepoticide, and massacre.

Kidnapping was the first check. Our house was being added to, and there were various workmen about, and one morning when I visited the hutches, Daisy and Ally Mitchinson were missing. There is no more to say about it; they were never seen again. I felt like a mother, who, having complained of the burden and size of her family, is deprived of one of them.