Part 6
The Brownings had many pets, among them an owl, which after death was stuffed and given an honoured position in the poet’s library. Sydney Smith professed not to care for pets, especially disliking dogs; but he named his four oxen Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, and dosed them when he fancied they needed medicine. Miss Martineau relates that a phrenologist examining Sydney’s head announced, “This gentleman is a naturalist, always happy among his collections of birds and fishes.” “Sir,” said Sydney, turning upon him solemnly with wide-open eyes—“sir, I don’t know a fish from a bird.” But this ignorance and indifference were all assumed. His daughter, writing of his daily home life, says: “Dinner was scarcely over ere he called for his hat and stick and sallied forth for his evening stroll. Each cow and calf and horse and pig were in turn visited and fed and patted, and all seemed to welcome him; he cared for their comforts as he cared for the comforts of every living being around him.” He used to say: “I am for all cheap luxuries, even for animals; now, all animals have a passion for scratching their back bones; they break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look, this is my Universal Scratcher, a sharp-edged pole resting on a high and low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn; you have no idea how popular it is.” Who could resist repeating just here the wit’s impromptu epigram upon the sarcastic, diminutive Jeffrey when the caustic critic was surprised riding on the children’s pet donkey? “I still remember the joy-inspiring laughter that burst from my father at this unexpected sight, as, advancing toward his old friend, with a face beaming with delight, he exclaimed:
Witty as Horatius Flaccus, As great a Jacobin as Gracchus, Short, though not as fat as Bacchus, Riding on a little jackass.”
Before saying good-bye to the donkey I must give the appeal of Mr. Evarts’s little daughter at their summer home in Windsor, Vermont, to her learned and judicial father; so naïve and irresistible:
“DEAR PAPA: Do come home soon. The donkey is so lonesome without you!”
I once heard Mr. Evarts lamenting to Chief-Justice Chase that he had been badly beaten at a game of High Low Jack by Ben, the learned pig. “I know now,” said he, “why two pipes are called a hog’s head. It is on account of their great capacity!”
One would fancy that a busy lawyer would have no time to give to pets, but this is far from true. Burnet, in his life of Sir Matthew Hale, the most eminent lawyer in the time of Charles I and Cromwell, says of him, that “his mercifulness extended even to his beasts, for when the horses that he had kept long grew old, he would not suffer them to be sold or much wrought, but ordered his man to turn them loose on his grounds and put them only to easy work, such as going to market and the like. He used old dogs also with the same care; his shepherd having one that was blind with age, he intended to have killed or lost him, but the judge coming to hear of it made one of his servants bring him home and feed him till he died. And he was scarce ever seen more angry than with one of his servants for neglecting a bird that he kept so that it died for want of food.”
Daniel Webster’s fondness for animals is well known. When his friends visited him at Marshfield the first excursion they must take would be to his barns and pastures, where he would point out the beauties of an Alderney, and mention the number of quarts she gave daily, with all a farmer’s pride, adding, “I know, for I measured it myself.” Choate used to tell a story _à propos_ of this. Once, when spending the Sabbath at Marshfield, he went to his room after breakfast to read. Soon there came an authoritative knock at the door, and Mr. Webster shouted, “What are you doing, Choate?” He replied, “I’m reading.” “Oh,” said Webster, “come down and see the pigs.”
He would often rout up his son Fletcher at a provokingly early hour to go out and hold a lantern while he fed the oxen with nubs of corn; and, noticing a decided lack of enthusiasm in Fletcher, would say: “You do not enjoy this society, my son; it’s better than I find in the Senate.” It was a touching scene when on the last day, when he sat in his loved library, he longed to look once more into the kindly faces of his honest oxen, and had them driven up to the window to say good-bye. Speaking of Choate recalls a comical story about his finding in his path, during a summer morning’s walk, a dozen or more dorbeetles sprawling on their backs in the highway enjoying the warm sunshine. With great care he tipped them all over into a normal position, when a friend coming along asked curiously, “What are you doing, Mr. Choate?” “Why, these poor creatures got overturned, and I am helping them to take a fresh start.” “But,” said the other, “they do that on purpose; they are sunning themselves, and will go right back as they were.” This was a new idea to the puzzled pleader, but with one of those rare smiles which lit up his sad, dark face so wonderfully, he said: “Never mind, I’ve put them right; if they go back, it is at their own risk.” And an interesting anecdote is told in his biography of his touch of human sympathy for inanimate objects: “When as a boy he drove his father’s cows, he says, more than once when he had thrown away his switch, he has returned to find it, and has carried it back and thrown it under the tree from which he took it, for he thought, ‘Perhaps there is, after all, some yearning of Nature between them still.’”
There are enough anecdotes about birds as pets to fill another big book. One of Dickens’s most delightful characters was ponderous, impetuous Lawrence Boythorn, with his pet bird lovingly circling about him. In Washington, in Salmon P. Chase’s home, when he was Secretary of the Treasury, lived a pet canary, one of the tamest, which had a special liking for the grave, reserved statesman. It was allowed to fly about the room freely, and had an invariable habit of calmly waiting beside the secretary at dinner until he had used his finger-bowl; then Master Canary would take possession of it for a bath. In Jean Paul Richter’s study stood a table with a cage of canaries. Between this and his writing table ran a little ladder, on which the birds could hop their way to the poet’s shoulder, where they frequently perched.
Celia Thaxter loved birds. She writes: “I can not express to you my distress at the destruction of the birds. You know how I love them; every other poem I have written has some bird for its subject, and I look at the ghastly horror of women’s headgear with absolute suffering. I remonstrate with every wearer of birds. No woman worthy of the name would wish to be instrumental in destroying the dear, beautiful creatures, and for such idle folly—to deck their heads like squaws—who are supposed to know no better—when a ribbon or a flower would serve their purpose just as well, and not involve this fearful sacrifice.” In a letter she describes a night visit from birds.
“Two or three of the earlier were down in the big bay window, and between two and three o’clock in the morning it began softly to rain, and all at once the room filled with birds: song sparrows, flycatchers, wrens, nuthatches, yellow birds, thrushes, all kinds of lovely feathered creatures fluttered in and sat on picture frames and gas fixtures, or whirled, agitated, in mid air, while troops of others beat their heads against the glass outside, vainly striving to get in. The light seemed to attract them as it does the moths. We had no peace, there was such a crowd, such cries and chirps and flutterings. I never heard of such a thing; did you?
“Oh, the birds! I do believe few people enjoy them as you and I do. The song sparrows and white-throats follow after me like chickens when they see me planting. The martins almost light on my head; the humming birds _do_, and tangle their little claws in my hair; so do the sparrows. I wish somebody were here to tell me the different birds, and recognise these different voices. There are more birds than usual this year, I am happy to say. The women have not assassinated them all for the funeral pyres they carry on their heads.... What between the shrikes and owls and cats and weasels and women—worst of all—I wonder there’s a bird left on this planet.
“In the yard of the house at Newton, where we used to live, I was in the habit of fastening bones (from cooked meat) to a cherry tree which grew close to my sitting-room window; and when the snow lay thick upon the ground that tree would be alive with blue jays and chickadees, and woodpeckers, red-headed and others, and sparrows (not English), and various other delightful creatures. I was never tired watching them and listening to them. The sweet housekeeping of the martins in the little boxes on my piazza roof is more enchanting to me than the most fascinating opera, and I worship music. I think I must have begun a conscious existence as some kind of a bird in æons past. I love them so! I am always up at four, and I hear everything every bird has to say on any subject whatever. Tell me, have you ever tied mutton and beef bones to the trees immediately around the house where you live for the birds?”
Matthew Arnold wrote of his canary and cat in a most loving way.
POOR MATTHIAS.
Poor Matthias! Found him lying Fallen beneath his perch and dying? Found him stiff, you say, though warm, All convulsed his little form? Poor canary, many a year Well he knew his mistress dear; Now in vain you call his name, Vainly raise his rigid frame.
Vainly warm him in your heart, Vainly kiss his golden crest, Smooth his ruffled plumage fine, Touch his trembling beak with wine. One more gasp, it is the end, Dead and mute our tiny friend.
Poor Matthias, wouldst thou have More than pity? Claim’st a stave? Friends more near us than a bird We dismissed without a word. Rover with the good brown head, Great Attossa, they are dead; Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme Tells the praises of their prime.
· · · · ·
Thou hast seen Attossa sage Sit for hours beside thy cage; Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird, Flutter, chirp, she never stirred. What were now these toys to her? Down she sank amid her fur; Eyed thee with a soul resigned, And thou deemedst cats were kind. Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat Had Tiberius been a cat.
Fare thee well, companion dear, Fare forever well, nor fear, Tiny though thou art, to stray Down the uncompanioned way. We without thee, little friend, Many years have yet to spend; What are left will hardly be Better than we spent with thee.
Maclise was one of the intimate associates, if we may use the expression, of Dickens’s celebrated Raven. The letter in which the bereaved owners announced to Maclise the death of this interesting bird has been published, but the reply of the artist is now printed for the first time:
“_March 13, 1841._
“MY DEAR DICKENS: I received the mournful intelligence of our friend’s decease last night at eleven, and the shock was great indeed. I have just dispatched the announcement to poor Forster, who will, I am sure, sympathize deeply with our bereavement.
“I know not what to think is the probable cause of his death—I reject the idea of the Butcher Boy, for the orders he must have in his (the Raven’s) lifetime received on acct. of the Raven himself must have been considerable—I rather cling to the notion of _felo de se_, but this will no doubt come out upon the post mortem. How blest we are to have such an intelligent coroner in Mr. Wakely! I think he was just of those grave, melancholic habits which are the noticeable signs of your intended suicide—his solitary life—those gloomy tones, when he did speak—which was always to the purpose, witness his last dying speech—‘Hallo, old girl!’ which breathes of cheerfulness and triumphant resignation—his solemn suit of raven black which never grew rusty—altogether his character was the very prototype of a Byron Hero and even of a Scott—a master of Ravenswood——We ought to be glad he had his family, I suppose; he seems to have intended it, however, for his solicitude to deposit in those Banks in the Garden his savings, were always very touching—I suppose his obsequies will take place immediately—It is beautiful—the idea of his return soon after death to the scene of his early youth and all his joyful associations, to lie with kindred dusts amid his own ancestral groves, after having come out and made such a noise in the world, having clearly booked his place in that immortality coach driven by Dickens.
“Yes, he committed suicide, he felt he had done it and done with life—the hundreds of years!! What were they to him? There was nothing near to live for—and he committed the rash act.
“Sympathizingly yours, “D. MACLISE.”
The pet dove of Thurlow Weed seemed inconsolable after his death. When any gentleman called at the house the bird would alight on his shoulder, coo, and peer into his face. Then finding it was not his dear friend, he would sadly seek some other perch. Miss Weed writes: “Since the day that father’s remains were carried away, the affectionate creature has been seeking for his master. He flies through every room in the house, and fairly haunts the library. Many times every day the mourning bird comes and takes a survey of the room. He will tread over every inch of space on the lounge, and then go to the rug, over which he will walk repeatedly, as if in expectation of his dead master’s coming. Does not this seem akin to human grief?”
Whittier wrote a good deal about his pet parrot. Read his poem called “The Bird’s Question.” After his tragic end, the Quaker bard wrote of him: “I have met with a real loss. Poor Charlie is dead. He has gone where the good parrots go. He has been ailing and silent for some time, and he finally died. Do not laugh at me, but I am sorry enough to cry if it would do any good. He was an old friend. Lizzie liked him. And he was the heartiest, jolliest, pleasantest old fellow I ever saw.” He used to perch upon the back of his master’s chair at meal time; at times disgracefully profane, especially when in moments of extreme excitement he would climb to the steeple by way of the lightning rod, and there he would dance and sing and swear on a Sunday morning, amusing the passer-by and shocking his owner. At last he fell down the chimney, and was not discovered for two days. He was rescued in the middle of the night, and, although he partially recovered, he soon died. Whittier said: “We buried poor Charlie decently. If there is a parrot’s paradise he ought to go there.” He also had a pet Bantam rooster which would perch on his shoulder, and liked to be buttoned up in his coat. Grace Greenwood in Heads or Tails speaks of a diplomatic parrot belonging to Seward, at Washington, taking part in political discussion, trying to scream Sumner down, and so sympathetic that when his master had a cough he had symptoms of bronchitis.
In a trustworthy collection of epitaphs may be found this quaint tribute with old-fashioned formality to a pet bird:
“Here lieth, aged three months, the body of Richard Acanthus, a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a two-legged animal without feathers.
“Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison, and scarcely permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter.
“Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights, he was often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which his body could not, and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.
“If suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle shade of this unfortunate captive the humble though uncertain hope of animating some happier form; or trying his new-fledged pinions in some happy Elysium, beyond the reach of MAN, the tyrant of this lower world.”
Few women are so fond of pets as Sarah Bernhardt. She carries five or six with her in all her travels. When in New York the French actress has apartments at the Hoffman House. When the writer last visited her there he was received, upon entering the sitting room, by half a dozen dogs, ranging in size and species from the massive St. Bernard to the tiny, shivering black and tan.
The actress rose from a low divan and extended one hand to her guest while she pressed two very small snakes to her bosom with the other. After she had resumed her seat upon the divan, and while conversing, she fondled the snakes or allowed them to squirm at will over her person.
In reply to questions, Madame Bernhardt said that the snakes were used in the famous scene where Cleopatra presses the asp to her bosom and dies. The actress explained that the snakes with which she was playing were presented to her by a gentleman in Philadelphia. She spoke regretfully of the death of the snakes which she had brought with her from France, and which had succumbed to the hardships of the ocean voyage.
Emily Crawford tells some good stories about “The Elder Dumas,” the most dashingly picturesque character, surely, in the whole range of literature. We quote a paragraph showing Dumas’s fondness for animals:
“At his architectural folly of Monte Cristo, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he built at a cost of upward of seven hundred thousand francs, and sold for thirty-six thousand francs in 1848, Dumas had uninclosed grounds and gardens, which, with the house, afforded lodgings and entertainment not only to a host of Bohemian ‘sponges,’ but to all the dogs, cats, and donkeys that chose to quarter themselves in the place. It was called by the neighbours ‘_la Maison de Bon Dieu_.’ There was a menagerie in the park, peopled by three apes; Jugurtha, the vulture, whose transport from Africa, whence Dumas fetched him, cost forty thousand francs (it would be too long to tell why); a big parrot called Duval; a macaw named Papa, and another christened Everard; Lucullus, the golden pheasant; Cæsar, the game-cock; a pea-fowl and a guinea-fowl; Myeouf II, the Angora cat, and the Scotch pointer, Pritchard. This dog was a character. He was fond of canine society, and used to sit in the road looking out for other dogs to invite them to keep him company at Monte Cristo. He was taken by his master to Ham to visit Louis Napoleon when a prisoner there. The latter wished to keep Pritchard, but counted without the intelligence of the animal in asking Dumas before his face to leave him behind. The pointer set up a howl so piteous that the governor of the prison withdrew the authorization he had given his captive to retain him.”
It is difficult to think of any created thing that has not been found sufficiently interesting to be petted by some one!
Pliny tells us of a cow that followed a Pythagorean philosopher on all his travels. Proud Wolsey was on familiar terms with a venerable carp. St. Anthony had a fondness for pigs. Frank Buckland took to rats. Buffon’s toad has become historical. Clive owned a pet tortoise. Gautier wrote of his lizards, magpie, and chameleon. Butterflies and crickets have been domesticated and found responsive. Rosa Bonheur used to be always escorted by two great dogs, one on either side, while in her home a favourite monkey played upon her staircase, and amused visitors with its gambols and pranks. Cowper doffed his melancholy to play with hares, and immortalized his rather ungrateful pensioners in verse:
Well—one at least is safe. One sheltered hare Has never heard the sanguinary yell Of cruel man, exulting in her woes, Innocent partner of my peaceful home, Whom ten long years’ experience of my care Has made at last familiar; she has lost Much of her vigilant instinctive dread, Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine. Yes—thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor At ev’ning, and at night retire secure To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarmed; For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged All that is human in me, to protect Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love. If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave; And, when I place thee in it, sighing say, I knew at least one hare that had a friend.
James M. Hoppin, in his Old England, tells of his visit to Olney, where Cowper lived. He went to the rooms where he kept his hares, Puss, Bess, and Tiny; of the veteran survivor of this famous trio he says Cowper wrote:
Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And when he could, would bite.
Dr. John Hall was seen trudging through Central Park last winter, followed by a troop of frisky little gay squirrels. He had been feeding nuts to them, and they scattered the snow in clouds as they scampered along hoping to get more.
It would be interesting to quote from very many distinguished persons who believe in the immortality of the lower animals.
Lord Shaftesbury says: “I have ever believed in a happy future for animals. I can not say or conjecture how or where, but sure I am that the love so manifested, by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and as such it can, or rather it will, never be extinguished.”
Frances Power Cobbe wrote: “I entirely believe in a higher existence hereafter, both for myself and for those whose less happy lives on earth entitle them far more to expect it, from eternal love and justice.”
Mr. Somerville said: “The dear animals I believe we shall meet. They suffer so often here they must live again! Pain seems a poor proof of immortality, but it is used by theologians, and we find many great souls who believe and hope that animals may also have another life. Agassiz believed in this firmly. Bishop Butler saw no reason why the latent powers and capacities of the lower animals should not be developed in the future, and in his Analogy of Religion he endeavoured to carry out this train of thought, and to show that the lower animals do possess those mental and moral characteristics which we admit in ourselves to belong to the immortal spirit and not to the perishable body.”
The Rev. J. G. Wood has written a most interesting book on Man and Beast: Here and Hereafter, with the especial aim of proving the immortality of the brute creation, showing that they share with man the attributes of reason, language, memory, a sense of moral responsibility, unselfishness, and love, all of which belong to the spirit and not to the body.