Critical Studies

by Ouida

Think how odious to the horse must be the mere forcing of the bit into his mouth and of the headstall over his ears. Without speaking of the torture of the spur, the stinging of the lash, the dreadful weight upon the spine from which the riding-horse suffers, and the dreadful strain upon the lungs and withers to which the draught and driving-horse is incessantly condemned, only realise the continued imprisonment and galling servitude in which the equine race are forced to dwell, and ask yourself if, in common pity or justice, that life should not be as much alleviated and lightened as it is possible to make it. Yet is there one owner of horses in a million who takes the trouble to see for himself how his own stables are organised, or maintains out of gratitude, in their old age or in their failing speed, the horses which have served him in their prime?

Many wild-beast shows of the present hour are as cruel as were the gladiatorial games of Rome, and far less manly. I can imagine no possible argument which can be put forward for the license awarded to the travelling caravans which attend fairs and feasts all the world over, and which are hells of animal torture. What is called the taming of beasts is the most cruel, demoralising, and loathsome of pursuits; the horrible wickedness of its methods is known to all, and the appetite it awakens and stimulates in the public is to the last degree debasing. Yet not the smallest effort is made to end it.

The encouragement of menageries, where wild animals are cowed and maltreated into trembling misery and forced to imitate the foolish attitudes and comedies of men, lies entirely with the public, i.e., with the world at large. If the nations were in any true sense civilised, such forms of diversion would, I repeat, be insupportable to them. Dancing dogs, dancing bears, performing wolves, enslaved elephants, would one and all, from the lion tortured on a bicycle in a circus, to the little guinea-pig playing a drum in the streets, be so sickeningly painful to a truly civilised public that the stolid human brutes who live by their sufferings would not dare to train and exhibit them.

Not long ago there was a somewhat silly discussion in the English press on the effect of perfumes on desert animals in captivity, of the excitement and pleasure produced on them by such odours. It occurred to no one of the sapient correspondents that such perfumes did, no doubt, recall to the poor imprisoned animals the intense fragrance of the flowers in their own jungles and tropical forests. All animals are intensely sensitive to odours, because their olfactory nerves telegraph to their brains in a way of which our own dull nostrils are utterly unconscious.

With what pretension can a world call itself humane when in its codes all 'wild' animals are unprotected by laws, and may be treated with whatever brutality is desired? When it is a question for the dweller in a jungle to kill a wild beast or be killed himself, one can understand that he chooses the first of the two alternatives. But this is no excuse for the man in cities to drag a captured lion to make the sport of fools, and to perish wretchedly of diseased joints, thwarted longings, and the anguish of nostalgia.

It is idle to speak of the civilisation of a world in which such things are possible. From a hygienic point of view alone, these poor tormented creatures, cooped up in filthy cages, breathing fetid air night and day, hearing each other's piteous cries, having no single want or instinct gratified, ill-fed, diseased, miserable, and ravaged by parasites, must be one of the most unwholesome centres of contagion conceivable. A polar bear is at this moment being taken through Europe for exhibition in a caravan; he is kept in a cage in which he cannot turn; he has a pan of water two inches deep, and a few ounces of bread as his only food!

There is no animal which is not to be attached by kindness and justice shown to him. The lion of Rosa Bonheur fell into decline from grief at being sent from her keeping to that of the Jardin des Plantes when she was absent on a distant voyage. She returned to find him dying; he recognised her voice and opened his eyes with a feeble roar of pleasure, then laid his great head down upon her knees and died. No one who knows human nature by long experience can assert for a moment that its fidelity can be secured by benefits, or its sincerity insured by affection; but when kindness and regard are shown to 'the beasts which perish,' these never fail to give them back tenfold.

Let me here tell a true history, which I should have told to Matthew Arnold had he been living then, with entire certainty of his sympathy.

A little dog of Maltese breed, who belonged to my mother, was inconsolable at her death. For three weeks he refused all food, and was kept alive by nourishment artificially administered. He sat up, and begged, day after day, before her bed and before her favourite chair, until he dropped from sheer exhaustion. He wanted for nothing that I could give him; and no habit of his daily life was changed; but he was unhappy. Whenever the door opened he thought she entered. He ran and looked into every stranger's face. He knew everything which had belonged to her. His sorrow injured his health; his heart became weak, and he died of cardiac paralysis at six years old.

What could human affection offer superior in fidelity and feeling?