S. Bisset and his Trained Monkeys.
We have elsewhere referred to S. Bisset as a trainer of animals. Among the earliest of his trials, this Scotchman took two monkeys as pupils. One of these he taught to dance and tumble on the rope, whilst the other held a candle with one paw for his companion, and with the other played a barrel organ. These animals he also instructed to play several fanciful tricks, such as drinking to the company, riding and tumbling upon a horse's back, and going through several regular dances with a dog. The horse and dog referred to, were the first animals on which this ingenious person tried his skill. Although Bisset lived in the last century, few persons seem to have surpassed him in his power of teaching the lower animals. We have seen a man in Charlotte Square, in 1865, make a new-world monkey go through a series of tricks, ringing a bell, firing a pea-gun, and such like. Poor Jacko was to be pitied. His want of heart in his labours was very evident. Poor fellow, no time for reflection was allowed him. Like some of the masters in the Old High School,—such cruelty dates back more than thirty years,—a ferule, or a pair of tawse kept Jacko to his work. It was play to the onlookers, but no sport to master Cebus. Had he possessed memory and reflection, how his thoughts must have wandered from Edinburgh to the forests of the Amazon!
Lord Byron's Pets.
Beside horses and dogs, the poet Byron, like his own Don Juan, had a kind of inclination, or weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, live animals.
Captain Medwin records, in one of his conversations, that the poet remarked that it was troublesome to travel about with so much live and dead stock as he did, and adds—"I don't like to leave behind me any of my pets, that have been accumulating since I came on the Continent. One cannot trust to strangers to take care of them. You will see at the farmer's some of my pea-fowls en pension. Fletcher tells me that they are almost as bad fellow-travellers as the monkey, which I will show you." Here he led the way to a room where he played with and caressed the creature for some time. He afterwards bought another monkey in Pisa, because he saw it ill-used.[13]
Lord Byron's travelling equipage to Pisa in the autumn of 1821, consisted, inter cætera, of nine horses, a monkey, a bull-dog, and a mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls, and some hens.[14]
The Ettrick Shepherd's Monkey.
(From the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," Dec. 1825.[15])
Shepherd. I wish that you but saw my monkey, Mr North. He would make you hop the twig in a guffaw. I ha'e got a pole erected for him, o' about some 150 feet high, on a knowe ahint Mount Benger; and the way the cretur rins up to the knob, looking ower the shouther o' him, and twisting his tail roun' the pole for fear o' playin' thud on the grun', is comical past a' endurance.
North. Think you, James, that he is a link?