Critical Studies

by Ouida

Whatever we may think of the artistic and critical influence of Mr Ruskin on his age, we cannot but view with admiration and reverence much of his moral teaching, and there are in his writings innumerable isolated words of wisdom which would be well printed in letters of gold wherever men and women congregate and youth is educated. Amongst these is one which could not be too often reproduced before the eyes of an indifferent, egotistic, and cynical generation. It is this: 'Whosoever is not actively kind, is cruel.' It is an absolute truth, but one which is very little heeded.

I will not here speak of the three crystallised and applauded forms of cruelty, war, sport, and scientific experiment. I wish to speak only of what is by scientists termed 'lay' cruelty, but which I would myself call general and scarcely conscious cruelty—the ill-treatment of all sentient creatures not human, by human creatures, due to the apathy, egotism, and unkindness of the latter. It is to this form of cruelty that Mr Ruskin alludes in the sentence previously quoted.

The cruelty of earlier times had its chief cause in violence; the cruelty of modern times has its chief cause in cowardice and selfishness. The character of the cruelty has altered, but its prevalence remains equally widespread and its motive is more contemptible. The modern world regards the pillory and the stocks as barbarous; but it allows the railway signalman to be riveted to his post for eighteen consecutive hours, and sees no harm in it. The human race was then ruder, no doubt, but more generous; more violent in some ways, but more magnanimous. Remember the familiar story of the Roman who wrung the neck of the dove which took refuge in his bosom from the pursuing bird of prey, and was stoned by his fellow-citizens. In the modern world there would be no movement of indignation against such an act; gentlewomen and men see the necks wrung of the wounded birds in the shooting enclosures from Hurlingham to Monte Carlo without the slightest emotion of pity or effort at censure.

Not long ago I spoke of this to a young and beautiful Englishwoman of the great world, and she answered, 'Yes, it is useless to attempt to move them to any feeling for animals. You can get them to do something for people, because they think it does them good with the masses, keeps off revolution, and helps in canvassing. But for cruelty they do not care in the least.' She spoke in simplicity, with no intention of sarcasm, but she could not have uttered a greater truth, or a more cutting satire.

There are exceptions, doubtless, but they are not numerous enough to leaven the great mass of indifferent and selfish people. Animals find but few friends. Alas! they have no votes!

There is, perhaps, one thing still more nauseating than the world's apathy, and that is its self-praise; its admiration of its own charities, so miserably insignificant beside the extravagance of its own pleasures. When we think how little is done by those who could do so much to influence even their own households to justice and tenderness, one cannot wonder that the populace is unmoved by the occasional invitation to them from a higher world to display those virtues which the rich prefer rather to inculcate than to practise.

Last year in England, in a nobleman's house, a footman beat a small dog, which ran into the offices, with a red-hot poker, and piled burning coals on it until it died in indescribable agony. I wrote and asked the nobleman in question if he had dismissed this monster from his service, the man having been only punished by the Bench with a slight fine; the nobleman answered me so evasively that it was easy to read between the lines and see that he had retained the footman in his service. This act on the part of the servant was an extreme case of hideous cruelty, but his employer's condonation is by no means an extreme case; it is, indeed, a very common sample of a master's indifference, of that indifference which is practically connivance. People abandon their stables to their coachmen, their dogs to their keepers; even the animals they call pets are frequently allowed to suffer from servants, or children, and are bullied, neglected, and teased with impunity.

The disgusting spectacle of dog-catching by the police is allowed to be presented in the public streets of most capitals of Europe, continually; and there is never the outburst of revolted feeling which such an offence to all humane sentiment and common decency should provoke. If such spectacles excited in the general public one-thousandth part of such disgust as they would excite in any really civilised people, it would be impossible for such scenes to exist, in either hemisphere, to shock the sight and sense of those of more refined taste and more humane feelings.

There is an excellent association for the protection of birds, but its aims are so little in touch with its generation that it obtains only the most meagre support. Great names and patrician names are very rare upon its lists, and at its public meetings its cause has its neck at once broken by the question of sport being rigorously excluded by its chairman, who is a noted sportsman!

There is an institution in London which calls itself a 'home for lost dogs'; under this affecting title it appeals for funds, as though it were inspired solely by love and anxiety for the happiness of dogs, and for the protection and prolongation of their lives. In reality it is an institution for the organised suffocation of fifteen or twenty thousand dogs annually, which have been kidnapped by the police and taken forcibly from their owners; it is a slaughter-house for the assistance and convenience of the police, and as such should be maintained out of the funds of the Government. Nothing but the most criminal apathy in the public could permit a slaughter-house to masquerade as a 'Home' and be a petitioner to charity. The word 'home' implies peace and safety, and should not be permitted to cover a place of legalised butchery.