Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

I think no place was ever fresher or sunnier than that “front of the brae” on a summer morning, though in winter it was a bleak and windy station enough. Some young colts, feeding, as they usually did, on the links, had ventured to the summit of the brae, and were approaching the stackyard. Fido was scampering among the yellow ragwort and purple bur thistles in my mother’s vicinity, and on the impulse of the moment she sent him after the young horses.

The rash suggestion was only too acceptable. Without a shade of hesitation or fear, the morsel of a dog made a dart at the heels of what were the hugest elephants to him, and though the colts had turned to retreat, he reached them in time to be spurned by one of the flying hoofs, and to fall down with his back or neck broken.

I have a vivid recollection of the consternation and grief of the little group that gathered in the great kitchen, into which the lifeless little dog was carried—of one of Fido’s young mistresses wildly entreating to have wine put within the half-open jaws of the dead dog—of the grave shake of the head with which some senior negatived the desperate proposal, and of my mother’s kindly distress at having caused the catastrophe, which had extinguished the spark of life in one of God’s happy creatures, and occasioned such affliction to the children.

I remember what a blight came over the bright day; how I rose from my dinner in a passion of sorrow, because in a moment of forgetfulness I had begun to lay aside some scrap for the dog which had ceased to need scraps; and how I walked in the garden among the Maundy roses and tall white Canterbury bells, and gathered—to store for a melancholy memorial—some early seeds of the nasturtium with which the little animal had been fond of playing, and in which there remained the marks of his tiny teeth. I have had greater losses since then, but I have not forgotten that first shock and stab of irretrievable separation.

To console us children for being deprived of our pet—and, I daresay, as some small atonement in her own person—my mother furnished us with money to buy another dog; an act in which there was a departure from the family practice of not spending what little money was to spare unnecessarily, and, above all, of not accustoming the children to anything that could be regarded as extravagance or self-indulgence. In our whole connection with dogs, this was the only instance in which one became ours by purchase.

I cannot recall that it grated on my feelings that the empty place of my dead pet should be filled up. I daresay I made some protest at first—that I would not be consoled, and that I could never like (we say like in Scotland, where an English child would say love) another doggie as I had liked Fido. But I was not then sufficiently faithful—or shall I say proud and passionate enough?—to be long able to resist the prospect of the dreary blank in the house and in my affections having another occupant, with the wholesome hope that I might take to it and be comforted, though I did not forget Fido.

I know I went in great glee, in the company of a sister a little older than myself, to the village where we had heard of a suitable dog for sale—indeed, I think we had gone and inspected it previously—and where we were to pay down our purchase-money—it was no more than five shillings—and receive our prize, which had belonged previously to a tradesman.

The dog was a small black and white animal, with straight sleek hair, and a pretty round face, set between pendant ears. I was a timid child, and did not venture to lay hands on our purchase while it was yet strange to us, and my sister undertook to carry it home in her arms. On our way we encountered a gentleman who was an acquaintance of the family, and who, not understanding how we were situated, insisted on shaking hands with us children. My sister was compelled partly to let go her captive—it did not escape, it only scrambled to her shoulder, from which she was unable to dislodge it, and where, to our affront, it stood barking wrathfully at the new-comer.

The dog had been named “Jessie Mackie,” a very human title, of which we did not approve for a dog, and so we called her “Rona,” the name of a dog of a friend’s friend. The title struck our fancy, and we believed that it had belonged originally to an island on the west coast of Scotland—rather a dignified source for a name. But I cannot say that I ever met any person who had visited the island of Rona, or who could tell exactly whereabouts in the Atlantic—from wild St. Kilda to wooded Rothesay—it was to be found.