Brutes
AWIN LAXDSEER has come to a better understandinor of the brute creation than has any other man. He must have had a pet spaniel, or cat, or horse, that in hours of extreme confidence gave him the secret grips, signs, and passwords of the great fraternity of animals. He knows the language of feathers, the feeling of a sheep being sheared, of an ox goaded, and the humiliation of a dost when kicked off the piazza. In presence of Landseers hunted stag, you join sides with the stag, and wish him escape from the hounds; and when pursuers and pursued go tumbling over the rocks into the mad torrent beneath, the reindeer with lolling and bloody tongue, and eye that reels Into its last darkness, you cry “Alas!” for the stag, but “Good!” for the hounds; and wonder that the painter did not take the dogs off the scent before the catastrophe.
Was ever a bay mare more beautifully shod than, In Kensington Museum, Landseer shoes her. The blacksmith-shop Is just such a one as we rode to, with rope-halter on the horse’s head, and when, barefoot, we dismounted, the smith of the leathern apron, and rusted spectacles, and hands seemingly for five years an exile from wash-basins, bade us look out how we trod on the hot Iron. Does anything sound more clearly through the years than the wheeze of the old bellows, and the clanor of the sledcrehammer, and the whistle of the horse-tail brush with which we kept off the flies; while, with the uplifted and uneasy foot of the horse between the workman’s legs, he clenched the nail, clipped off the raggedness of the hoof, and filed smooth the surface, the horse flinching again and again, as the nail came too near the quick? And then the lightning of the sparks as the hammer fell on the red-hot iron, and the chuck and siss and smoke of the bar as it plunged Into the water - bucket! Oh! there was a rugged poetry in a blacksmith -shop, and even now the sound of the old wagon-tire at the door rouses me up like a war-whoop, and in the breath of the furnace I glow with memories. Only a few months ago, I walked into a city blacksmith-shop, and asked if at any time I could get a horse shod there. You see, there might be a time when I would buy a horse, and he might need such services; but our chief reason for going in was that we wanted to see if such a place looked as it did of yore.
As Landseer lifts the back foot of the bay mare, the wrinkles of her haunches are warm with life, and her head turns round most naturally to oversee the job, as much as to say: “Be careful how you drive that nail,” or, “Your holding my hoof is very uncertain.” On behalf of all the horses which go limping with ill-set shoe and nails in the hock, I thank this blacksmith. I know he is doing his work well, or, from the spirit of the mare, he would before this have been hurled into the middle of the turnpike — hammer, apron, and nail-box.
No one so well as Landseer can call up a bloodhound, and make him lie down in the right place — a decided case of armed peace. You treat him well, not so much because of your respect for dogs, as out of consideration for your own interest. Walk softly about him and see the great reefs of hide — more skin than a dog needs, as though he had been planned on a larger scale, but after he had begun to be filled in, the original plan had been altered. See the surplusage of snarl in that terrier, and of hair on that poodle, and how damp he is on the end of his nose!
And here you find one of Landseer’s cows, full-uddered, glad to be milked. You will see the pail foam over soon if that careless milkmaid does not upset it. Bless me! I have seen that cow a hundred times before. It is the very one I used, in boyhood, to drive up as the evening breeze was rustling the cornsilk, and making the tall tassels wave like the plumes of an Indian warrior squatting in the woods: a cow of kindly look, the breath of clovei sweeping from her nostrils, meeting me at the bars with head through the rails, and low moan of petition for the barn-yard.
Even the donkey is introduced with a loving touch in Landseer’s pictures. Now, a man who can favorably regard mule or ass is a marvel of sympathy. I am in fresh memory of a mule in the Alps. He might as well have lived on Newark Flats, for all the good fine scenery did him. With what an awkward tread he carried me up to the Mer de Glace, jerking backward and forward, so that I was going both ways at once, but, nevertheless, slowly advancing, because the jerk forward was somewhat in excess of the jerk backward. The flies were ravenous, and to catch one of them he would stop mid-cliff, throw one foot up till he struck my foot in the stirrup, as though he proposed to get on himself, and then would put his head back, till nothing save a strong grip of the saddle kept me from seeing the Alps inverted. But have the fly he would, reckless of shout and whip, and thump of heel in the side. Mules are stubborn, crafty — unlike men, in the fact that they look chiefly after their own interests (?); but these brutes are not very intelligent, considering, from their ears, how large an opportunity they have of hearing. They have most imperfect intonation, and but little control over their voice. When a donkey begins to bray, it seems he does not know when he will be able to stop, or whether the voice will rise or fall in its cadences. But donkeys cannot help this, and for their sins they are to be pitied. Therefore, Edwin Landseer calls them into his pictures. What a kind man he must be! Blessed the dog that fawns at his feet, the horse that draws his carriage, the cat that mews on his window-sill, the deer that ranees through his park! Thrice blessed their master!
Animals in Europe are more sympathized with than in America. I see no over-driven horses, no unsheltered cattle, no cracking away at birds with old blunderbusses, just for the sake of seeing the feathers flutter. When, on the 1 2th of August, all England and Scodand go a-grouse-hunting, and Perth and Aberdeen and Inverness and Chatsworth are shaken with
34* 2 A r a continuous bang of sportsmen, there is no cruelty. It is an honest lift of the gun, a fair look across the barrel, a twitch of the forefinger of the right hand, a flash, and game for dinner at Peacock Inn or Elephant and Castle. You see more animals in bronze and stone in Europe than in the United States. If young Americans, wanting quills to write with, have plucked the American eagle, till, featherless, and with an empty craw, it sits on the top of the Rocky Mountains wishing it were dead, the English have paid quite as much attention to the lion. You see it done up in every shape, sitting or standing, everywhere. The fountains are guarded with lions; the entrances of houses flanked with lions; the signs of stores adorned with lions, — fighting lions, sleeping lions, crying lions, laughing lions, couchant lions. English artists excel with this animal. When French and German sculptors attempt one, it is merely a lion in the abstract, too weak to rend a kid, and never having seen a jungle. But lying on the base of Nelson’s monument in Trafalgar Square are four lions that look as though they had a moment before laid down there and curled their long tails peacefully around, and had just stopped there a few minutes to see what was going on at Charing Cross and the Cockspur.
On the top of Northumberland House is a lion with mouth open and tail extended in rigid rage, so that it is uncertain which way to run, as you know not with which end he will assault you. There are more lions in London than in Numidia. Beef and mutton are liked well by the Englishman, but for regular diet, give him lion.
European horses look better satisfied than American. They either have more fodder or less drive. The best-kept horses I ever found are in Antwerp. I saw but one lean nag in that city, and that one I think was an emigrant just arrived. When good American horses die, they go to Antwerp.
Europeans caress the dog. He may lie on the mat or sit near the table. Among the Alps we had a wretched dinner — not lacking in quantity or variety, but in quality. There was enough of it, such as it was. The eggs had seen their best days, and the mutton must have been good for two or three weeks after they killed it. A Saint Bernard dog sat near by, petitioning for a morsel. The landlord was out — we saw by the bill of fare we should have high rates to pay — we could do nothing ourselves toward clearing the plates, and so we concluded to feast our friend of Saint Bernard. We threw him half an omelet, assuring him first that the amount we gave him would depend on the agility with which he caught it. Either not understanding French, or being surprised at the generosity of the provision, he let half the omelet fall to the floor, but he lost no time in correcting the failure. We threw him a mutton-chop. With a snap of the eye and a sniff, and a long sweep of the tongue over the jaw, he said by his looks as plainly as if he had spoken with his lips: “I like that better. I never get mutton-chops. I think they will agree with me.” When the landlord came in, he suspected that some unusual proceeding had taken place between his guests and the dog, and so he kicked him out of the room. The remainincr sin within us suofaested our treating the landlord as he had treated the mastiff, but our profession, and more especially the size of the man, restrained us. I left the inn more sorry to leave Bernard than his keeper.
Among the worthiest dogs of the world, or rather of the church, are the Saint Bernards. They have no frisk of merriment. The shadow of the great ledges is in their eyes, and the memory of travellers lost in Alpine snows is in their hearts. When you meet them, cheer them up with chops and omelets.
European cities are not ashamed to take some bird or beast under their patronage. Venice looks especially after her pigeons. Strasburg pets the storks whose nests are on almost all the chimneys. Berne carefully guards her bears. Egypt apotheosizes cats. Oh, that the cruelty of man to bird and beast might come to an end! They have more right to the world than man, for they preceded him In the creation, the birds having been made on Friday and the cattle on Saturday morning, and man coming: in at the faof-end of the week. No wonder that these aborigines of the world sometimes resist, and that the bees sting, and
4o6 the bears growl, and the cats get their backs up, and dogs bark, and eagles defend their eyries with iron beak, the crags echoing with the clangor of this flying squadron of the sky.
London, August 27th, 1870.