Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

If I am right, by this means the dog was enabled to escape altogether the common scourge of the young of the dog race. And I believe the most distant suspicion of mange, imported by some extraordinary means to Carlo, would have been enough to have driven the head kennel-man into a fit, would have covered with gloom the countenance of the young lord, and would even have brought a cloud over the brow of his father the earl, who was a famous statesman, and was understood to have the destinies of nations at his beck.

That was a great day to more than the dog—on which he was emancipated from kennel thraldom, and was brought to the castle, where he was destined to be the companion and friend of the future earl when he was at home, though by this decision a sacrifice was made, of what would probably have been Carlo’s laurels as a regular coursing dog. Carlo might course occasionally, stirred by his master’s presence and encouragement, but no study or drawing-room dog, whatever his pedigree, could go in with a hope of winning the great matches equal to that of the dog who was kept up to the mark, by being maintained solely for that end.

It was an evidence of the degree to which social claims are permitted to prevail in every circle. “De Vaux wishes to have the dog constantly with him,” said De Vaux’s mother, as if the desire of the heir settled the question; “and Carlo is such a nice gentlemanly dog. I have been so frightened for De Vaux’s taking a fancy to a hideous turnspit, or a rough German boar-hound, or a fighting bull-terrier, with a beauty spot over one eye, or even to some wretched cur. Young men are so odd now-a-days,” she finished with a sigh of relief.

Not a footman or a housemaid was not respectful to Carlo, well-nigh as to my lord and my lady—tolerant of the trouble he gave the servants, flattered if he took any notice of them. Like all aristocratic dogs, he was inclined to keep his distance from the domestics, even from his old friends of the kennel, so soon as he saw that they were not his masters—that his master, who was also his familiar friend, proved to be their master, and stopped short with being so. Carlo was disposed to keep up an almost unbroken reserve towards the worthy persons, in their own way, who used the back stairs. He would no more have thought of visiting the kitchen, or even the housekeeper’s room or the butler’s pantry, on terms of equality, than I daresay you and I, my reader, would dream of doing, if we were, like Carlo, not so much the servant as the privileged member of an earl’s family. But Carlo was such a gentlemanly dog, as my lady had said, that he was incapable of arrogance, far less insolence. His manner was, like that of Queen Charlotte when she curtseyed to her humblest maid-servant, or of King George when he took off his hat to the gentlemen of his band, always gracious and affable.

My lord and my lady had a great partiality for Carlo. My lord would take him for a walk when the dog’s master was not at home. My lady would encourage him to sit with her in her morning-room, where she conducted her correspondence, and to glide after her in her conservatory and flower-garden, where she gathered flowers, and played at being a gardener in a big apron and gauntlet gloves, wielding shears for the destruction of dead leaves and twigs.

Carlo was introduced into the family picture which a great artist from London came down to the castle to paint. The dog had been painted several times before, and photographed on occasions without number—with De Vaux on his pony, with my lady standing on the terrace, or entering the family’s almshouses; but it was the first time that Carlo had been put on the same canvas with the head of the house, and in a picture which was destined to be one of the great works of the generation, secured for the castle. My lord, who himself dabbled in art, likened the introduction of Carlo into the piece to the use made of the white greyhound by Rubens in the “Arundel Family,” and to the similar employment of a dog, with the best effect, in Van Dyck’s “Wilton Family.” One cannot wonder that Carlo felt perfectly justified in regarding himself as a member of the earl’s family.

But Carlo was De Vaux’s special property, and the relation between them continued unbroken, in spite of the young man’s frequent absences on his travels, during the first period of the connection. These absences were trying to Carlo, who had little else to do save to miss his friend, and pine for his return; and the more he pined, the more he was praised and petted for his fidelity and devotion, till—as the dog had naturally no dislike, but, on the contrary, a great yearning for praise and petting, provided they were administered with the delicacy which he demanded in all the dealings with him—he ran a great risk either of falling into a normal condition of pining, or of becoming guilty of the most abominable affectation, passing by insensible degrees into hardened hypocrisy.

Carlo was saved from these pitfalls by De Vaux’s return from his travels, which had of course extended from Europe to Asia, including Palestine and Damascus; Africa, as far as has been made out of the course of the Nile; and America, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains.

After the celebration of De Vaux coming of age—which, to tell the truth, was in its exuberant rejoicings a considerable infliction both on him and Carlo—the heir settled down as far as he was likely to do in his ancestral home, and took Carlo into his constant society, until the dog had nothing more left to wish for.

Ah! there was the rub; it was the having nothing more left to wish for that threatened to be Carlo’s bane—to weigh him down with satiety, and oppress him with a sense of life accomplished. De Vaux laboured under a touch of the same complaint, only it took a higher form in the man than in the dog, and De Vaux and all his friends gave it another name. They made out that De Vaux, with his gifts and prospects, was rendered so difficult to satisfy, while he had such a craving after perfection, that the whole machinery of history and society disheartened and distressed him, until he could not make up his mind—and it did not really seem worth while to make it up—to join any political party, conservative or reforming, or take up any calling or work in life, beyond dreaming over what might have been, and deploring what was.