Arrival of Tonton, a pet dog, to Walpole.—Tonton does not understand English.
Horace Walpole, in May 1781,[104] had announced Tonton's arrival to his correspondent, the Hon. H. S. Conway. He says:—"I brought him this morning to take possession of his new villa, but his inauguration has not been at all pacific. As he has already found out that he may be as despotic as at St Joseph's, he began with exiling my beautiful little cat, upon which, however, we shall not quite agree. He then flew at one of my dogs, who returned it by biting his foot till it bled, but was severely beaten for it. I immediately rung for Margaret (his housekeeper) to dress his foot; but in the midst of my tribulation could not keep my countenance, for she cried, 'Poor little thing; he does not understand my language!' I hope she will not recollect, too, that he is a Papist!" In a postscript he tells the general that Tonton "is a cavalier, and a little of the mousquetaire still; but if I do not correct his vivacities, at least I shall not encourage them, like my dear old friend."
In a letter of about the same date to Mason the poet, he again alludes to his fondness of Tonton, but adds—"I have no occasion to brag of my dogmanity."[105]
Horace Walpole, in 1774, thus refers to Margaret, in a letter to Lady Ossory:—"Who is to have the care of the dear mouse in your absence? I wish I could spare Margaret, who loves all creatures so well that she would have been happy in the ark, and sorry when the deluge ceased; unless people had come to see Noah's old house, which she would have liked still better than cramming his menagerie."[106] A sly allusion to the numerous fees Margaret got from visitors. Horace, in another of his letters, alludes to this, and, in a joke, proposes to marry Margaret to enrich himself.
Horace Walpole.—Death of his dog Tonton.
Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Ossory, Feb. 24, 1789,[107] says:—"I delayed telling you that Tonton is dead, and that I comfort myself. He was grown stone deaf, and very nearly equally blind, and so weak that the two last days he could not walk up-stairs. Happily he had not suffered, and died close by my side without a pang or a groan. I have had the satisfaction, for my dear old friend's sake and his own, of having nursed him up, by constant attention, to the age of sixteen, yet always afraid of his surviving me, as it was scarcely possible he could meet a third person who would study his happiness equally. I sent him to Strawberry, and went thither on Sunday to see him buried behind the chapel near Rosette. I shall miss him greatly, and must not have another dog; I am too old, and should only breed it up to be unhappy when I am gone. My resource is in two marble kittens that Mrs Damer has given me, of her own work, and which are so much alive that I talk to them, as I did to poor Tonton! If this is being superannuated, no matter; when dotage can amuse itself it ceases to be an evil. I fear my marble playfellows are better adapted to me, than I am to being your ladyship's correspondent." Poor Tonton was left to Walpole by "poor dear Madame de Deffand." In a letter to the Rev. Mr Cole, in 1781, he announces its arrival, and how "she made me promise to take care of it the last time I saw her. That I will most religiously, and make it as happy as is possible."[108]
Archbishop Whately and his Dogs.
"In these rambles he was generally attended by three uncompromising-looking dogs, the heads of which, if it were possible to draw them together in shamrock form, would forcibly suggest Cerberus. Richard Whately found, or thought he found, in the society of these dogs far brighter intelligence, and infinitely more fidelity, than in many of the Oxford men, who had been fulsomely praised for both.
"In devotion to his dogs, Dr Whately continued true to the end of his life, and during the winter season might be daily seen in St Stephen's Green, Dublin, playing at 'tig' or 'hide and seek' with his canine attendants. Sometimes the old archbishop might be seen clambering up a tree, secreting his handkerchief or pocket-knife in some cunning nook, then resuming his walk, and, after a while, suddenly affecting to have lost these articles, which the dogs never failed immediately to regain.
"That he was a close observer of the habits of dogs and other quadrupeds we have evidence in his able lecture on 'Animal Instinct.' Dr Whately, when referring to another subject, once said not irrelevantly, 'The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind: a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things.' Dr Whately was of opinion that some brutes were as capable of exercising reason as instinct. In his 'Lectures and Reviews' (p. 64) he tells of a dog which, being left on the bank of a river by his master, who had gone up the river in a boat, attempted to join him. He plunged into the water, but not making allowance for the strength of the stream, which carried him considerably below the boat, he could not beat up against it. He landed, and made allowance for the current of the river by leaping in at a place higher up. The combined action of the stream and his swimming carried him in an oblique direction, and he thus reached the boat. Dr Whately adopts the following conclusion—'It appears, then, that we can neither deny reason universally and altogether to brutes, nor instinct to man; but that each possesses a share of both, though in very different proportions.'"[109]