Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

I have already described Prince’s appearance, and sketched his history, while I have left my readers to study for themselves the copy which the painter has supplied of the dog’s primitive abode. But I must turn back and call attention to it at this point, in order to mark the gulf between it and Carlo’s home. First, look at Prince’s lodging, with its rude block for a table, the red-handled knife on the block, the pewter pot which has contained his master’s beer and still holds his pipe standing behind the dog, and, lying at his feet, a well-polished bone.

Next, contemplate Carlo sitting in an elegant, pensive attitude in his master’s study; was there ever a deeper gulf alike between dogs and their quarters?

Carlo belongs as unmistakeably to the castle—one turret of which, with its fluttering flag when the family are at home, we see through the study window in the picture—as the castle belongs to Carlo. Both dog and scene—the table littered with books and writing materials, the riding-gloves, the fine old bell glass and flask of rare old wine, the foils, together with that glimpse through the window of the castle turret—are products of centuries of civilisation and generations of culture. Now look at the dog himself, as refined as any fine lady, for no fine gentleman was ever so absolutely removed from the faintest trace of rude nature—not to say from caddishness or snobbishness. Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. Measure him from the tip of his long nose to the point of his long tail, from his small head and slender throat to his delicate haunches and fine legs, and do not forget his large soft eyes and exquisite skin. Is he not grace personified?—grace, not dignity, for dignity implies power. Indeed there are critics who would limit Carlo’s dominant attribute to superlative elegance, since they allege that perfect grace demands natural vigour, and vigour or power is exactly the quality which the dog lacks. Being a high-bred hound, he may be fleet as a bird—fleet as Master Magrath of racing renown; but stamina, endurance (apart from fleetness), simple force of constitution and character, are not in him.

I have said Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. You cannot look at him without suspecting what a weight the vulgar world is on his mind. It does not enrage him; he is too mildly superior for that. Rage is more or less of a brutal quality, and Carlo is as little of a savage brute as any four-footed creature ever was. The wilful low life and rude practices of the mass of living beings simply depress his not very strong spirits, and torture his keen sensibilities. He is often rendered wretched by the mere coarseness of the world in general; and this wretchedness bulks so largely in his excited imagination that his peculiar trial shuts out from him every other dog’s trial. Carlo has fared delicately all his days. He has never known what it is to want food and shelter; the best and most suitable of everything has been provided sedulously for his use by the men whose business it is to wait upon him, instead of his having had to hunt hard to satisfy his most pressing wants, and to submit to being hunted in turn, kicked and abused for presuming to have wants, and for seeking to satisfy them. He has hardly ever heard a rough word addressed to him, so that he will mope for hours if he is merely overlooked—if his master has not smiled upon him, stroked his head, taken in his hand one fine paw after the other. Naturally, Carlo has little sympathy to spare from his own sentimental woes, which he plaintively airs and nurses, for the matter-of-fact miseries of homeless dogs, starved, beaten, done to death for the idle amusement of the spectators.

Yet Carlo is a gentle, generous dog, by natural temperament, and, so far from having no feelings, his feelings are only of too fine a description. The truth is, there is a subtle—all the more serious—danger to moral character in exquisitely fine feelings, especially when they accompany a morbidly fastidious taste and effeminate habits.

When I say effeminate habits, I wish not to be mistaken. I do not mean that Carlo was a larger lap-dog, utterly idle and useless—that he sat and lay all day and all night in that luxurious study, or in a still more luxurious drawing-room, or in a kennel very little behind the two rooms in comfort and beauty. On the contrary, he saw plenty of sun and wind. He had been trained, like his master, to count as the best part of his time those hours which were spent in the open air, and in active exercise. Coursing was exactly to Carlo what stalking deer, riding to hounds, and rowing a boat were to his master. When the dog’s blood and breeding were up, he could make a good fight in his doggish sport.

What I do intend to convey is, that in Carlo, and, for that matter, in his master also, the instincts of self-preservation, self-resource, and independence were sensibly and unconsciously weakened. The two could not have earned a dinner for themselves to save their lives, and if they had earned it they would not have known what to do with it, unless some foreign aid had happily come to them. Even after they had been initiated into the necessary process, they would have been so revolted by all the plain details inevitable to preparing a dinner, that they would have left it to be devoured by hardier applicants, till hunger urged them on to the stifling of their over-trained and stimulated susceptibilities.

Carlo first saw the light in a perfectly appointed kennel, built in the shape of a pagoda, one of the show-places in a noble ancestral park. His birth was attended with all the éclat of the coming into the world of a great and important personage, and his pedigree was as proudly and hotly upheld as that of many a prince whose inheritance depends on his family tree. The young heir up at the castle had scarcely been welcomed with greater exultation, or had more unremitting care and attention bestowed on him than was lavished by the kennel staff on the puppy, the finest of the litter, the progeny of a valuable and favourite dog. Neither were the kennel men and boys the only or the principal persons who waited on the levees of Carlo. My lord and my lady visited him almost daily; the most cherished visitors at the castle were taken to inspect his points, and admire his promise; indeed it was regarded as a mark of favour, on the part of the earl and the countess, when some comparatively humble visitor—parson, lawyer, or doctor, with his wife or daughters—was invited to go to the kennel and have a look at the special puppy. The kennel was the first place the young lord ran to when he was home from Eton.

Carlo was led through all the trying stages of puppyhood with the most tender anxiety for his welfare. His weaning and teething were carefully seen to. I am almost sure that he was inoculated for distemper, either in the ear or under a front leg, at a spot which could not be reached by tooth or claw; and that the operation was performed by a distinguished veterinary surgeon, who came from the next large town for the purpose.