King Charles spaniels were at a premium in England in the reigns of the two sovereigns of that name. I don’t doubt that they were under a cloud during the Protectorate, and that stout Oliver Cromwell owned none of them; but we find one in the study of Sir Isaac Newton, in its ignorant unconsciousness working dire mischief among the philosopher’s priceless calculations, and drawing down on its empty head the mildest rebuke—“Diamond, Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done.” However, I think the spaniels fell somewhat into disgrace, in consequence of the bad company they kept in the second Charles’ reign; and because that most unheroic of merry monarchs played with his little dogs, and fed his ducks, when he ought to have been fighting the Dutch on the Thames, or relieving the sufferers in plague-stricken London.
No doubt, in the archives of the house of Marlborough there is an account of the rise of the Blenheim dogs; but though I bow to the authority of Landseer, I am driven to conclude them a more modern “fancy,” even as the renown of Blenheim has its origin in John Churchill, and his victories in Queen Anne’s reign. Yet here are a King Charles and a Blenheim lying side by side, one of them on the very brim of a cavalier’s steeple-crowned hat, with its ostrich feather. The black and tan of the King Charles, relieved by a little white here and there, contrasts admirably with the mass of milky white, picked out with liver-colour, in the Blenheim. The silkiness of their long flapping ears is only matched by the glossy texture of their coats and the featheriness of their tails. Their soft paws are made for begging, or for resting their faces between them, as in the case of the Blenheim in the illustration. Their eyes are big, with an odd jumble of wilfulness and beseeching, like the eyes of some spoiled children. They are the loveliest and the idlest little pets in the world. They are adepts at coaxing and caressing, which form, indeed, a large part of their stock-in-trade—not that they are necessarily insincere, but they are very useless, very dependent, and they can but fondle like a child, as a small return for all the care and kindness lavished upon them. They are made to be decked in ribbons, not as part of a grand festive display—when even a huge gaunt Flora may submit to the unsuitable accompaniment, simply to do honour to the occasion—but because frippery of knots and bows belongs to them as to babies and beauties and dandies. The little dogs like their ribbons as they like their combings, washings, and gay baskets, all of which bigger dogs would look upon as an unmitigated nuisance.
Withal, the King Charleses and the Blenheims have one serious personal disadvantage. Their voices are not like Cordelia’s, low and sweet, neither are they, of course, sonorous, like the voice of a big dog. They have a high-pitched, thin, wearisome yelp, which, when they are vexed or angry, becomes painfully querulous, or peevishly vixenish.
All the other dogs we have discussed could do something for their living, besides looking pretty, wriggling and chasing their tails. Even Carlo could course when he was requested; but Roi—or Roy, as his name was corrupted into old English—and Reine were destitute of resources beyond the simple ones mentioned. Were those gifts enough to entitle the dogs to the daintiest maintenance? Were the shallow creatures worthy of being a man’s companions and friends? Alas! if our receipts were measured by our deserts, many of us would fare but badly. The little dogs were endowed with one quality which we may be thankful appeals more forcibly than any other to the hearts of men—not of weak men alone or principally, but of the manliest and most generous of their kind. Roy and Reine were helpless as delicate women and feeble children, and in that very helplessness lay their charm to the strong and capable, who were not bullies in their strength, or arrogant in their power.
I do not say that there is not a subtle flattery and deep danger in this appeal of weakness to strength. I do not pretend that it has not ruined, unawares, many a Samson, destroying him by his very magnanimity. But I do hold that the tenderness for beings at men’s mercy belongs to one of the noblest, gentlest instincts of the human heart, and that it is not only chivalrous in its development, it is, when rightly judged, profoundly Christian in its sympathies.
Roy and Reine lived considerably more than two hundred years ago, when there was another England from the one we live in to-day, an England of keen political strife. (Well, perhaps that is peculiar to no time, or at least occurs periodically once in every generation.) But it was also an England of such civil war and bloodshed, polluting its fresh fields, and darkening its peaceful hearths, as happily has not been seen since then—not when Monmouth was routed at Sedgemoor—not when the last James fled in his turn, and William of Orange landed, and appropriated the crown left vacant, which became twin circlets for his head and Mary’s—not when Bonnie Prince Charlie—a fatal title, which could not give way to anything more trustworthy—marched with his Highlanders as far south as Derby.
Charles the First and his Star Chamber, with his French queen and her French manœuvres, had turned the people of England against their government. The last Parliaments had proved either divided or rebellious. John Hampden had refused to pay the illegal ship-money; the train bands had been mustered; the whole country had risen to arms. England was parted into two warlike camps, Royalist and Roundhead.
We can see now that there were good and devoted men on both sides, and of every shade of opinion. We can think dispassionately of Lord Falkland the Royalist, and Colonel Hutchinson the Roundhead—of Milton and Andrew Marvel on the one hand, and Jeremy Taylor on the other. But it was fearfully difficult then—in the midst of bitter accusations, hard blows, and cruel wrongs, inflicted almost inevitably by both the contending parties—to distinguish that there was any merit, or any quality save base subserviency or turbulent anarchy, on that side which differed from the faction of the person speaking.
It would be no easy task to decide which of the camps indulged most largely in abusing and slandering the other; but it belonged to the nature of things, and to the characteristics of the men and their leaders, that the Cavaliers, taking them all in all, were the most careless and reckless in the expression of their feelings. It was part of the profession of every Cavalier, from Prince Rupert downwards, to be easy-minded and light-hearted, as he was loyal, to the backbone. He made it a matter of honour that his joviality should be a proof that his conscience was clear, and his cause that of the divine right of kings and the unquestioning obedience of subjects. The very nickname, “crop-eared knave,” which one man applied to his adversary, as opposed to the term “malignant,” given by the Puritan to the Cavalier, showed the light scorn of complacent superiority pitted against deadly earnestness and desperate condemnation.
As it happened in the long run, to their mutual profit, the stout defiant Cavaliers were forced to respect the equally stout and dogged Roundheads, and to carry rueful hearts within their bold breasts under their bluff exteriors; and the Roundheads were compelled to grant grace to men who—in spite of their effeminate love-looks, the levity of their songs, even the profanity of their oaths—struggled against defeat like Englishmen, endured like men, and, with all their follies and sins, were the countrymen and neighbours of their conquerors. As they were human and Christian, these conquerors could not see the beaten foemen biting the dust and wallowing in their blood silently, and think of the near and far halls and granges which these deaths, that were their deed, would leave desolate, without groaning in spirit over some of the fruits of victory, even while the fighters were persuaded it was the Lord’s triumph over the Man of Sin and Satan.