Throughout these very discursive annals I have tried to keep in remembrance a lesson that I learnt a few years ago from a very interesting book of Mr. Seton Thompson’s called, I think, “In the Arctic Prairies.” In it he began by saying that travellers’ accounts of their sufferings from mosquitoes were liable to degenerate into a weariness to the reader; therefore he determined to mass all he had suffered into one chapter. Thenceforward, when the remembrance of the mosquitoes became too poignant for endurance, a pause came in the narrative, and a footnote said (with an audible groan), “See Chapter So and So.” Thus it has been with me and dogs. This is Chapter So and So, and I honourably invite the Skip of Defiance already several times advocated.

M. Maeterlinck has written of dogs with deep discernment, yet not, I think, in quite the right spirit. No dogs, save perhaps hounds, should speak of “Master,” or “Mistress.” The relationship should be as that of a parent; at farthest, that of a fond governess. R. L. Stevenson’s essay, “The Character of Dogs,” treats of dogs with all his enchanting perception and subtlety, and contains the matchless phrase “That mass of carneying affectations, the female dog”; yet memorable as the phrase is, I would venture to protest against the assumption that is implicit in it, namely, that affectation is a thing to be reprobated. Martin’s and my opinion has ever been that it is one of the most bewitching of qualities. I believe I rather enjoy it in young ladies; I adore it in “the female dog.” But it must be genuine affectation. The hauteur of a fox terrier lady with a stranger cad-dog is made infinitely more precious by the certainty that when the Parent’s eye is removed, it will immediately become transmuted into the most unbridled familiarity.

I recall a sunny summer morning when, on the lawn tennis ground at Drishane, Martin and I received a visit from the then parson of the parish, and from his large black retriever. Candy and Sheila, my fox terriers, ladies both, received it also, but in their case, with a dignity that we could not hope to emulate. Shortly after the interview opened, chancing to look round, I beheld two motionless round white mounds, hedgehog in attitude, super-hedgehog in sentiment, buried in profoundest slumber. Round the mounds, with faint yelps, in brief rushes, panting with adoration, with long pink tongue flapping, and white teeth flashing, fore-legs wide apart and flung flat on the grass, went the parson’s retriever. With sealed eyes the ladies slept on. Yet, when Martin and the parson and I had strayed on into the flower garden, I cannot conceal the fact that both the Clara Vere de Veres abandoned themselves to a Maenad activity that took the amazed and deeply gratified retriever as its focal point, and might have given effective hints to any impersonator of Salome dancing before King Herod.

I have ever been faithful to two breeds, foxhounds, and fox terriers, and, as I look back over a long series of Grandes Passions, I see Ranger and Rachel and Science, with their faithful, beautiful hound-faces, waving their sterns to me through the mists of memory, and The Puppet, and Dot, and, paramount among them all, the little “Head-dog,” Candy, all waiting in the past, to be remembered and praised, and petted. Mention has already been made of The Puppet’s brief but brilliant life. Martin has summed him up as “an engaging but ill-mannered little thing,” but this dispassionate assessment did not interfere with her affection for him. Some time after his early and tragic death, she sent me a little MS. book entitled “Passages in the Life of a Puppet, By its Mother, Being some Extracts from Her Correspondence.” These, with her comments, elucidatory and otherwise, I still preserve, and they are often both entertaining and instructive. They are, on the whole, of too esoteric a nature for these pages, but I may offer one extract that may be regarded as not unsuitable by that influential person, “the general reader.” This treats of The Puppet in the capacity of parent, and is endorsed by Martin, “The Puppet in his own Home Circle is unamiable, and is much disliked by his wife.”

“His attitude is one of curiosity and suspicion. When I go to see Dot and the puppies, he creeps after me, walking with the most exaggerated caution on three legs, one being held high in air, in the pose of one who says ‘Hark!’ or ‘Hist!’ Sometimes he forgets, and says it with a hind-leg, but there are never more than three paws on the ground. Meantime, the Mamma, with meek, beaming eyes fixed on me, keeps up a low and thunderous growl. At other times, he scrutinises the family from a distance, severely, sitting erect, like one of Landseer’s lions (but the pose is grander), with ears inside out, as cleared for action. I dither——” The extract ends thus, with some abruptness, and recognising the truth of the final statement, I will leave the Puppet and his Passages, with an apology for having alluded to them. We have, sometimes, thought of writing a dog-novel (being attracted by the thought of calling it “Kennel-worth”), but we were forced to recognise that society is not yet ripe for it.

In fact, the position of dogs requires readjustment. It is marked by immoderation. To declaim that dogs should be kept in their Proper Place, is merely to invite to battle. One thing I will say as touching the case of dogs whose “proper place” has been, as with myself, the bosoms of their respective owners. There comes to those owners something catastrophic, a death or a disaster, or even some such household throe as a wedding or a ball. The dogs are forgotten. The belief that has been fostered in them of their own importance remains unshaken. Their intelligent consciousness of individual life is as intense as ever. Even if the amazing stories of dog-intelligence, that were heard a few years ago, were untrue, it is impossible to deny to dogs whose minds have been humanised a share of comprehension that is practically human. Yet, when the Big Moment comes in the life of the house, the dogs are brushed aside and ignored. One is sometimes dimly, remotely aware, through one’s own misery or pre-occupation, of the lonely, bewildered little fellow-being who has suddenly become insignificant, but that is all. One gives him to eat and drink, but one has withdrawn one’s soul from him, and he knows it, and wonders why, and suffers. It is inevitable, but, like many an inevitable thing, it is not fair.

After Dot, in the succession of fox terriers, came Musk, who was unto Dot as a daughter, so much so, indeed, that I find it said in my diary that Dot, like the Abbess in the Ballad of the Nun,

Musk belonged, strictly speaking, to my sister; her name, through modifications that might interest an etymologist, but no one else, became more usually, Muck, or Pucket. As the Pucket she reigned for many years jointly with her eldest daughter, Candy, and with a later daughter, Sheila, on the steps of the throne. The Pucket had a singular fear of anyone who approached her without speaking. If, on a return after the briefest absence, the friend, or even the Mother, received her welcoming barks in silence, yet continued to advance towards her—about which there may be conceded to be something fateful—the Pucket’s voice would falter, she would retreat with ever increasing speed, and I have seen her, when further retirement was impossible, plunge herself into a bush and thence cry for help. One of her daughters will sometimes act in this way, and I have known other dogs to behave similarly. On what, then, does their apprehension of their friends rely? Not sight, nor smell; not voice, as a deaf dog recognises his friends? I can only suppose that the unwonted lack of response suggests a mental overthrow, and that Musk felt that nothing less than the failure of their reason would silence her Mother or her Aunt.

On another occasion, and a more legitimate one, I have seen Musk’s self-control overthrown. An elderly lady-guest, now dead, whose name and demeanour equally suggested the sobriquet of “The Bedlamite,” undertook one evening to sing for us. Musk, in common with all our dogs, was inured to, practically, any form of music, but when the Bedlamite advanced with a concertina to the middle of the drawing-room, and, with Nautch-like wavings of the instrument, began to shriek—there is no other word—Salaman’s entirely beautiful setting of “I arise from dreams of thee,” to the sole accompaniment of the concertina’s shrill wheezings, the Pucket, after some cautious and horrified attention, retired stealthily under the table, and uttered low and windy howls.

But there are so many points in connection with which, as it must seem to dogs, our behaviour is inscrutable. One may take the case of baths, which must daily mystify them. As I put forth to the bath-room, I can nearly always recognise in my dogs some artificiality of manner, an assumption of indifference, that they are far from feeling. They regard me with bright, wary eyes, and remain in their baskets, still as birds on eggs. “She goes,” they say, “to that revolting and unnecessary torture, known as Washy-washy. Why she inflicts it upon herself is known to Heaven alone. For our part, let us keep perfectly quiet, nor tempt the incalculable impulses that rule her in these matters.”

I have never been addicted to dachshunds, but I must make mention of one, Koko; incomparable as a lady of fashion, as a fag at lawn tennis, and as a thief. She also had a gift, not without its uses, of biting beggars. Her owner, my cousin Doctor Violet Coghill, who was in Koko’s time a medical student, had a practice in dogbites more extended than even her enthusiasm desired. Once, when a patient came to be dressed and compensated, Koko was collared, chained, and, to make assurance doubly sure, tucked under the doctor’s left arm. Thence, during the inspection of the wound, she stretched a neck like a snake, and bit the patient again. No dinner-table was safe from her depredations. “Koko is around the coasts!” parlourmaids have been heard to cry, flying to their dining-rooms, as merchant-brigs might fly to harbour upon a rumour of Paul Jones. She and another, my sister’s Max, were the first dachshunds in Carbery. I have heard Max discussed by little boys in Skibbereen.

“’Tis a daag!”

“’Tis not!”

“’Tis!”

“’Tis not! ’Tis a Sarpint!”

Another and more sophisticated critic decided that it was “a little running sofa.” But this was intentionally facetious; the serpent theory expressed a genuine conviction.

It was at one time said of my family, generally, that we were kept by a few dogs for their convenience and entertainment, and later there was a period when amongst ourselves and our cousins we could muster about fourteen, in variety, mainly small dogs. We decided to have a drag-hunt, and in order to ensure some measure of success—(I ask all serious Hound-men to turn away their eyes from beholding iniquity)—I desired my huntsman, an orderly-minded Englishman, to bring Rachel and Admiral to run the drag.

“Oh, Master, you wouldn’t ask them pore ’ounds to do such a thing?” said G.

I said I would; that they were old, and steady; in short, I apologised, but was firm.

G. asked coldly if a couple would be enough.

I said quite enough, adding that all the ladies’ and gentlemen’s dogs were coming.

G. said, “Oh, them cur-dogs——”

He then asked, with resignation, the hour of “the meet,” and retired.

At the appointed time he was there, with Rachel and Admiral, and two other couples, his principles having succumbed to the temptation of a hunt in June. The fourteen cur-dogs, ranging from griffons, through fox terriers and spaniels, to a deerhound, were there too, with a suitable number of proprietors, and the hare having been given a fair start, the pack was laid on. The run began badly, as the smallest dogs, believing the time had come to indulge their long-nourished detestation of the hounds, flung themselves upon the blameless Rachel and her party, who, for some distance, conscientiously ran the line, with cur-dogs hanging like earrings from their ears. Neither was the hare immune from difficulties. His course had been plotted to pass that old graveyard at Castle Haven whereof mention has been made, and when he arrived at it he found a funeral in progress. He lifted the drag, and tried to conceal his true character. In vain. When he had passed, and he ventured to become once more a hare, he found that there was not a man of the funeral who was not hanging over the graveyard wall, absorbed in the progress of the chase. This had been arranged to conclude at the kennels, and Candy and I, having been skirters throughout, waited at a suitable point to see the finish. First came the hare, very purple in the face, but still uncaught and undefeated, the paraffined remains of the rabbit still bouncing zealously after him. Then I heard the single, recurring note of a hound, and presently Rachel came into view at a leisurely trot; as she passed me, she smiled apologetically—she had a pretty smile that showed her front teeth—and waved her stern. I understood her to say that it was all rot, but she was going through with it. After Rachel, nothing. I was high on the hill-side above the kennels, and I heard a vague row on the road below, from which I gathered that the game had palled on the rest of the pursuers, and they were going home for tea.

I have loved many dogs. All of them have had “bits of my heart to tear,” and have torn it, but of them all, Candy comes first, and will remain so. “Wee Candy is just fearfully neat!” as her faithful friend, Madge Robertson, used to say, with the whole-hearted enthusiasm of a Highlander. Candy was a very small smooth fox terrier, eldest daughter of Muck, with a forehead as high and as full as that of the Chinese God of Wisdom, and eyes that had a more profound and burning soul in them than I have seen in the eyes of any other living thing. I pass over her nose in silence. Her figure was perfection, and her complexion, snow, with one autumn leaf veiling her right eye.

She danced at tea-parties, whirling in a gauze frock, and an Early Victorian straw bonnet trimmed with rosebuds. In this attire she would walk, or rather trip, elegantly, from end to end of a table, appraising what was thereon, and deciding by which cake to take up her position. To see her say her grace, with her little bonneted head in her paws, on her Mother’s knee, had power to make right-minded persons weep (even as one of my sisters-in-law has been seen to shed tears, when, from the top of an omnibus, she chanced to behold her eldest son, walking in boredom, yet in unflawed goodness, with his nurse).

She was the little dog who set the fashion to all her fellows, and her rules were of iron. Chief among these, was, as St. Paul might have said, to abstain from affectionate licking. This, she held, was underbred, and never done by the best dogs. She had a wounding way of carefully sniffing the face or the fingers, and then turning aside; but on some few and high occasions the ordinance has been infringed. Above and beyond all others of her race she had the power of expressing herself. It was she who organised and headed the Reception Committees that welcomed my return after absence, and I have often been told how, when my return was announced to her, she would assemble herself and her comrades in a position that commanded the point of arrival, and would lead the first public salutations and reproaches for past neglect; and, these suitably and histrionically accomplished, no other little dog could disclose so deep yet decorous an ecstasy, her face hidden in my neck, while she uttered faint and tiny groans of love. Portraits, and, still less, photographs, convey little or nothing to most dogs, but I have seen Candy stiffen up and gaze fixedly at a snapshot of a bull-terrier (very white on a dark background) that chanced to be on a level with her eyes, uttering the while small and bead-like growls.

Her unusual brain power was paid for by overstrung nerves, and any loud and sudden sound had power to terrify her. She nearly died from what would now be called shock, after a few hours spent in the inferno of Glasgow streets, in the course of a journey which she and I made to the Highlands. We were going to the Island of Mull, and there we enjoyed ourselves as, I think, only the guests of Highland hosts and hostesses can. Candy, as was invariably the case, immediately took precedence of all other beings.

“Jeanie,” said the Laird to his sister, “you’ve let the fire out.”

Jeanie, in whose lap Candy was embedded, replied, “I couldn’t help it, Duncan. Candy dislikes so intensely the noise of putting on coal.”

The Laird admitted the explanation.

Much remains to be desired in travelling facilities on steamers, but in nothing more than in provision

for dogs and children; a crÈche in which to immure children and those doomed to attend them, a suitably arranged receptacle in each cabin for the passenger’s dog. On a certain cross-Channel route, between Ireland and England, I had, before the War, established myself and my dogs on a sound basis. The dear Stewardess, with whom this was arranged, is now dead, so without injury to her I can reveal the relations between us. You must picture me as lurking, with two small white dogs in a leash, in some obscure spot beneath the bridge. I have secured a cabin, and during the confusion prior to getting under way I rush into it with the dogs. I then establish them in a rug under a seat. The Stewardess enters—we converse affably. (One of these many journeys took place on the same day that Queen Victoria crossed the Irish Sea to pay her last visit to Ireland. I mentioned the fact to the Stewardess. “Why, then, I hope she’ll have a good crossing, the poor gerr’l!” replied the Stewardess, benignantly.)

To return to the dogs. They, being well trained, have instantly composed themselves for sleep. The Stewardess, equally well trained, ignores them, only, when leaving the cabin, saying firmly, “Now, I don’t see them dogs. I never seen them at all.”

Then she leaves. Later, the vessel having started, and I having retired to my berth, the door is softly opened. In the darkness I hear the Stewardess’s voice hiss, in the thinnest of whispers, “Have ye their tickets?” I reply in equally gnat-like tones, “I have!” “I’ll take them, so,” she replies. And all is well.

It was this same Stewardess, in the course of my first crossing with her, of whom I wrote to Martin as follows. The subject is not strictly within the scope of this chapter, but, as may have been observed, I have absolved myself from limitations such as this.