Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

Preface

Prefaces are not always necessary; but when an author has either to acknowledge a courtesy, or to make an apology, then a preface becomes a duty. I have to do both.

Firstly, then, as regards acknowledgment. I have endeavoured in this book to give sketches – as near to nature as a line could be drawn – of a few of my former friends and favourites in the animal world, and many of these have appeared from time to time in the magazines and periodicals, to which I have the honour to contribute.

I have to thank, then, the good old firm of Messrs Chambers, of Edinburgh, for courteously acceding to my request to be allowed to republish “My Cabin Mates and Bedfellows,” and “Blue-Jackets’ Pets,” from their world-known Journal.

I have also to thank Messrs Cassell and Co., London, for the re-appearance herein of several short stories I wrote for their charming magazine Little Folks, on the pages of which, by the way, the sun never sets.

Mr Dean, one of my publishers, kindly permitted me to reprint the story of my dead-and-gone darling “Tyro,” and the story of “Blucher.” This gentleman I beg to thank. I have also to thank Messrs Routledge and Son for a little tale from my book, “The Domestic Cat.”

Nor must I forget to add that I have taken a few sketches, though no complete tales, from some of my contributions to that queen of periodicals yclept The Girl’s Own Paper, to edit which successfully, requires as much skill and taste, as an artist displays in the culling and arrangement of a bouquet of beautiful flowers.

With the exception of these tales and sketches, all else in the book is original, and, I need hardly add, painted from the life.

Secondly, as regards apology. The wish to have, in a collected form, the life-stories of the creatures one has loved; to have, as it were, the graves of the pets of one’s past life arranged side by side, is surely only natural; no need to apologise for that, methinks. But, reader, I have to apologise, and I do so most humbly, for the too frequent appearance of the “ego” in this work.

I have had no wish to be autobiographical, but my own life has been as intimately mixed up with the lives of the creatures that have called me “master,” as is the narrow yellow stripe, in the tartan plaid of the Scottish clan to which I belong. And so I crave forgiveness.

Gordon Stables.

Gordon Grove, Twyford, Berks.

Chapter One.

Prologistic

Scene: A lofty pine wood, from which can be caught distant glimpses of the valley of the Thames. “Aileen Aroon,” a noble Newfoundland, has thrown herself down by her master’s side. All the other dogs at play in the wood.

Aileen’s master (speaks): “And so you have come and laid yourself down beside me, Aileen, and left your playmates every one? left your playmates roaming about among the trees, while you stay here by me?

“Yes, you may put your head on my knee, dear, honest Aileen, or your chin at all events, for you yourself, old girl, have no idea of the weight of your whole head. No, Aileen, thank you, not a paw as well; you are really attempting now to take the advantage of my good nature. So be content, ‘Sable’1 – my good, old, silly, simple Sable. There, I smooth your bonnie brow to show you that the words ‘old’ and ‘silly’ are truly terms of endearment, and meant neither as a scoff at your age, nor to throw disparagement upon the amount or quality of your intellect. Intellect? Who could glance for a single moment at that splendid head of yours, my Aileen, and doubt it to be the seat of a wisdom almost human, and of a benevolence that might easily put many of our poor fallen race to shame. And so I smooth your bonnie brow thus, and thus. But now, let us understand each other, Aileen. We must have done with endearments for a little time. For beautiful though the day be, blue the sky, and bright the sunshine, I really have come out here to the quiet woods to work. It is for that very purpose I have seated myself beneath this great tree, the branches of which are close and thick enough to defend us against yonder shower, that comes floating up the valley of the Thames, if indeed it can ever reach this height, my Sable.

“No noisy school children, no village cries to disturb and distract one here, and scatter his half-formed ideas to the winds, or banish his best thoughts to the shades of oblivion. Everything is still around us, everything is natural; the twittering of the birds, the dreamy hum of insect life, the sweet breath of the fir-trees, combine to calm the mind and conduce to thought.

“Why do I not come and romp and play? you ask. I cannot explain to you why. There are some things, Aileen, that even the vast intellect of a Newfoundland cannot comprehend; the electric telegraph, for instance, the telephone, and why a man must work. You do not doubt the existence of what you do not understand, however, my simple Sable. We poor mortal men do. What a thing faith is even in a Newfoundland!

“No, Sable, I must work. Here look, is proof of the fifteenth chapter of my serial tale, copy of the sixteenth must go to town with that. In this life, Aileen, one must keep ahead of the printer. This is all Greek to you, is it? Well then, for just one minute I will talk to you in language that you do understand.

“There, you know what I mean, don’t you, when I fondle your ear, and smooth it and spread it over my note-book? What a great ear it is, Aileen! No, I positively refuse to have that paw on my knee in addition to your head. Don’t be offended, I know you love me. There, put back that foot on the grass.

“Yes, Aileen, it was very good of you, I admit, to leave your fan and your romps, and come and lay your dear kindly head on my lap. The other dogs prefer to play. Even ‘Theodore Nero,’ your husband, is tumbling on the ground on that broad back of his, with his four immense legs pointing skywards, and his whole body convulsed with merriment. The three collies are in chase of a hare, the occasional excited yelp that is borne along on the breeze can tell us that; we pray they may not meet the keeper. The Dandie Dinmont is hidden away in the dark depths of a rabbit burrow, and the two wiry wee Scotch terriers are eagerly watching the hole ’gainst the rabbit bolts.

“Fun and romps did I say, Aileen? Alas! dear doggie, these are hardly the words to apply to your little games, for you seldom play or romp with much heart, greatly though it rejoices me to see you lively. You seldom play with much heart, mavourneen, and when you do play, you seem but to play to please me and you tire all too soon. I know you have a deep sorrow at your heart, for you lost your former master, Aileen, and you are not likely to forget him. There always is a sad look in those hazel eyes of yours, and forgive me for mentioning it, but you are turning very grey around the lips. Your bright saucy-eyed husband yonder is three years older than you, Sable, and he isn’t grey. But, Aileen, I know something that you don’t know, poor pet, for I’m very learned compared to you. The seeds of that terrible disease, phthisis, are in your blood, I fear, and will one day take you from me, and I’ll have to sit and write under this tree – alone. I’m talking Greek again, am I? It is as well, Aileen, it should be Greek to you. Why do my eyes get a trifle moist, you seem to ask me. Never mind. There! the sad thoughts have all flown away for a time, but, my dear, loving dog, when you have gone to sleep at last and for ever, I’ll find a quiet corner to lay your bones in, and – I’ll write your story. Yes, I promise you that, and it is more than any one will ever do for me, Aileen.

“Don’t sigh like that. You have a habit of sighing, you tell me. Very well, so be it, but I thought at first that it was the wind soughing through this old pine-tree of ours. Yes, ours– yours and mine, Aileen. Now, do let me work. See, I’ll put my note-book close to your great nose, and your chin shall touch my left hand; you can lie so and gaze all the time in my face. That will help me materially. But by-and-by you’ll fall asleep and dream, and I’ll have to wake you, because you’ll be giving vent to a whole series of little ventriloquistic barks and sobs and sighs, and I will not know whether you are in pain or whether your mind is but reverting to —

Chapter Two.

Introducing Aileen Aroon

“The Newfoundland, take him all in all, is unsurpassed, and possibly unequalled as the companion of man.” —Idstone.

“These animals are faithful, good-natured, and friendly. They will allow no one to injure either their master or his property, however great be the danger. They only want the faculty of speech to make their good wishes understood.” – “Newfoundland Dogs,” in McGregor’s “Historical and Descriptive Sketches of British America.”

Dog Barks. Shepherd. – “Heavens! I could hae thocht that was ‘Bronte.’”

Christopher North. – “No bark like his, James, now belongs to the world of sound.”

Shepherd. – “Purple black was he all over, as the raven’s wing. Strength and sagacity emboldened his bounding beauty, but a fierceness lay deep down within the quiet lustre of his eye, that tauld ye, had he been angered he could hae torn in pieces a lion.”

North. – “Not a child of three years old and upwards in the neighbourhood that had not hung by his mane, and played with his paws, and been affectionately worried by him on the flowery greensward.” – “Noctes Ambrosianae.”

“Heigho!” I sighed, as I sat stirring the fire one evening in our little cosy cottage. “So that little dream is at an end.”

“Twenty guineas,” said my wife, opening her eyes in sad surprise. “Twenty guineas! It is a deal of money, dear.”

“Yes,” I assented, “it is a deal of money for us. Not, mind you, that Sable isn’t worth double. She has taken the highest honours on the show benches; her pedigree is a splendid one, and all the sporting papers are loud in her praises. She is the biggest and grandest Newfoundland ever seen in this country. But twenty guineas! Yes, that is a deal of money.”

“I wish I could make the money with my needle, dear,” my wife remarked, after a few minutes’ silence.

“I wish I could make the money with my pen, Dot,” I replied; “but I fear even pen and needle both together won’t enable us to afford so great a luxury for some time to come. There are bills that must be paid; both baker and butcher would soon begin to look sour if they didn’t get what they call their little dues.”

“Yes,” said Dot, “and there are these rooms to be papered and painted.”

“To say nothing of a new carpet to be bought,” I said, “and oilcloth for the lobby, and seeds for the garden.”

“Yes, dear,” said my wife, “and that American rocking-chair that you’ve set your heart upon.”

“Oh, that can wait, Dot. There are plenty other things needed more than that. But it is quite evident, Sable is out of the question for the present.”

I looked down as I spoke, and patted the head of my champion Newfoundland Theodore Nero, who had entered unseen and was gazing up in my face with his bonnie hazel eyes as if he comprehended every word of the conversation.

“Poor Nero,” I said, “I should have liked to have had Sable just to be a mate and companion for you, old boy.”

The great dog looked from me to my wife, and back again at me, and wagged his enormous tail.

“I’ve got you, master,” he seemed to say, “and my dear mistress. What more could I wish?”

Just as I pen these lines, gentle reader, two little toddlers are coming home from forenoon school, with slates under their arms; but when the above conversation took place, no toddlers were on the books, as they say in the navy. We were not long married. It was nine long years ago, or going on that way. The previous ten years of my life had been spent at sea; but service in Africa had temporarily ruined my health, so that invaliding on a modicum of half-pay seemed more desirable than active service on full.

These were the dear old days of poverty and romance. Retirement from active duty afloat and – marriage. It is too often the case that he who marries for love has to work for siller. Henceforward, literature was to be my staff, if not the crutch on which I should limp along until “my talents should be recognised,” as my wife grandly phrased it.

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,” says the greatest William that ever lived. There is nothing to be ashamed of in poverty, and just as little to boast about. Naval officers who retire young are all poor. I know some who once upon a time were used to strut the quarter-deck or ship’s bridge in blue and gold, and who are now, God help them, selling tea or taking orders for wine.

“With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I squeezed the hand of my bride at the altar as I spoke the words, and well she knew the pressure was meant to recall to her mind a fact of which she was already cognisant, that “all my worldly goods” consisted of a Cremona fiddle, and my Newfoundland dog, and my old sea-chest; but the bottom of that was shaky.

But to resume my story.

“Hurrah!” I shouted some mornings after, as I opened the letters. “Here’s news, Dot. We’re going to have Sable after all. Hear how D. O’C writes. He says —

“‘Though I have never met you, judging from what I have seen of your writings, I would rather you accepted Sable as a gift, than that any one else should have my favourite for money,’ and so on and so forth.”

These are not the exact words of the letter, but they convey the exact meaning.

Sable was to come by boat from Ireland, and I was to go to Bristol, a distance of seventy miles, to meet her, for no one who values the life and limbs of a dog, would trust to the tender mercies of the railway companies.

“I’ll go with you, Gordon,” said my dear friend, Captain D – . Like myself, he had been a sailor, but unmarried, for, as he used to express it, “he had pulled up in time.” He had taken Punch’s advice to people about to marry – “Don’t.”

Captain D – didn’t.

“Well, Frank,” I said, “I’ll be very glad indeed of your company.”

So off we started the night before, for the boat would be in the basin at Hotwells early the next morning. The scene and the din on board that Irish boat beggars description, and I do not know which made the most noise, the men or the pigs. I think if anything the pigs did. It seemed to me that evil spirits had entered into the pigs, and they wanted to throw themselves into the sea. I believe evil spirits had entered into the men, too; some of them, at all events, smelt of evil spirits.

“Is it a thremendeous big brute ’av a black dog you’ve come to meet, sorr?” said the cook to me.

“Yes,” I replied, “a big black dog, but not a brute.”

“Well, poor baste, sorr, it’s in my charge she has been all the way, and she’s had lashin’s to ate and to drink. Thank you koindly, sir, and God bless your honour. Yonder she is, sorr, tied up foreninst the horse-box, and she’s been foighting with the pigs all the noight, sorr.”

She certainly had been fighting with the pigs, for she herself was wounded, and the ears of some of the pigs were in tatters.

Sable was looking very sour and sulky. She certainly had not relished the company she had been placed among. She permitted me to lead her on shore; then she gave me one glance, and cast one towards my friend.

“You’ll be the man that has come for me,” she said; she did not say “the gentleman.”

“Who is your fat friend?” she added.

We both caressed her without eliciting the slightest token on her part of any desire to improve our acquaintance.

“You may pat me,” she told us, “and call me pet names as much as you please. I won’t bite you as I did the pigs, but I don’t care a bone for either of you, and, what is more, I never intend to. I have left my heart in Ireland; my master is there.”

“Come on, Sable,” I said; “we’ll go now and have some breakfast.”

“Don’t pull,” said Sable; “I’m big enough to break the chain and bolt if I wish to. I’ll go with you, but I’ll neither be dragged nor driven.”

No dog ever had a better breakfast put before her, but she would not deign even to look at it.

“Yes,” she seemed to say, “it is very nice, and smells appetising, and I’m hungry, too; a bite of a sow’s ear is all I’ve had since I left home; but for all that I don’t mean to eat; I’m going to starve myself to death, that is what I’m going to do.”

It is very wrong and unfair to bring home any animal, whether bird or beast, to one’s house without having previously made everything needful ready for its reception. Sable’s comfort had not been forgotten, and on her arrival we turned her into the back yard, where, in a small wooden house, was a bed of the cleanest straw, to say nothing of a dish of wholesome food, and a bowl of the purest water. The doors to the yard were locked, but no chain was put on the new pet, for the walls were seven feet high or nearly so, and her safety was thus insured.

So we thought, but, alas for our poor logic! We had yet to learn what Sable’s jumping capabilities were. When I wrote next day, and told her old master that Sable had leapt the high wall and fled, the reply was that he regretted very much not having told me, that she was the most wonderful dog to jump ever he had seen or heard tell of.

Meanwhile Sable was gone. But where or whither? The country is well-wooded, but there are plenty of sheep in it. Judging from Sable’s pig-fighting qualities, I felt sure she would not starve, if she chose to feed on sheep. But one sheep a day, even for a week, would make a hole in my quarter’s half-pay, and I shuddered to think of the little bill Sable might in a very short time run me up. No one had seen Sable. So days passed; then came a rumour that some school children had been frightened nearly out of their little wits by the appearance of an enormous bear, in a wood some miles from our cottage.

My hopes rose; the bear must be Sable. So an expedition was organised to go in search of her. The rank and file of this expedition consisted of schoolboys. I myself was captain, and Theodore Nero, the Newfoundland, was first lieutenant.

We were successful. My heart jumped for joy as I saw the great dog in the distance. But she would not suffer any one to come near her. That was not her form. I must walk on and whistle, and she would follow. I was glad enough to close with the offer, and gladder still when we reached home before she changed her mind and went off again.

Chaining now became imperative until Sable became reconciled to her situation in life, until I had succeeded in taming her by kindness.

This was by no means an easy task. For weeks she never responded to either kind word or caress, but one day Sable walked up to me as I sat writing, and, much to my surprise, offered me her great paw.

“Shake hands,” she seemed to say as she wagged her tail, “Shake hands. You’re not half such a bad fellow as I first took you for.”

My friend, Captain D – , was delighted, and we must needs write at once to Sable’s old master to inform him of the unprecedented event.

Sable became every day more friendly and loving in her own gentle undemonstrative and quiet fashion. But as yet she had never barked.

One day, however, on throwing a stick to Nero, she too ran after it, and on making pretence to throw it again, Sable began to caper. Not gracefully perhaps, but still it was capering, and finally she barked.

When I told friend Frank he was as much overjoyed as I was. I suggested writing at once to Ireland and making the tidings known.

“A letter, Gordon,” said my friend emphatically, “will not meet the requirements of the case. Let us telegraph. Let us wire, thus – ‘Sable has barked.’”

The good dog’s former master was much pleased at the receipt of the information.

“She will do now,” he wrote; “and I’m quite easy in my mind about her.”

Now all this may appear very trivial to some of my readers, but there really was for a time, a probability that Sable would die of sheer grief, as, poor dog, she eventually succumbed to consumption.

We were, if possible, kinder to Sable, or Aileen Aroon, as she was now called, than ever. She became the constant companion of all our walks and rambles, and developed more and more excellences every week. Without being what might be called brilliant, Aileen was clever and most teachable. She never had been a trained or educated dog. Theodore Nero had, and whether he took pity on his wife’s ignorance or not, I cannot say, but he taught her a very great deal she never knew anything about before.

Here is a proof that Aileen’s reasoning powers were of no mean order. When Master Nero wanted a tit-bit he was in the habit of making a bow for it. The bow consisted in a graceful inclination or lowering of the chest and head between the outstretched fore-paws. Well, Aileen was not long in perceiving that the performing of this little ceremony always procured for her husband a morsel of something nice to eat, that “To boo, and to boo, and to boo,” was the best of policies.

She therefore took to it without any tuition, and to see those “twa dogs,” standing in front of me when a biscuit or two were on the board, and booing, and booing, and booing, was a sight to have made a dray-horse smile.

I am sure that Nero soon grew exceedingly fond of his new companion, and she of him in her quiet way.

I may state here parenthetically, that Master Nero had had a companion before Aileen. His previous experience of the married state, however, had not been a happy one. His wife, “Bessie” to name, had taken to habits of intemperance. She had been used to one glass of beer a day before she came to me, and it was thought it might injure her to stop it. If she had kept to this, it would not have mattered, but she used to run away in the evenings, and go to a public-house, where she would always find people willing to treat her for the mere curiosity of seeing a dog drink. When she came home she was not always so steady as she might be, but foolishly affectionate. She would sit down by me and insist upon shaking hands about fifteen times every minute, or she would annoy Nero by pawing him till he growled at her, and told her, or seemed to tell her, she ought to be ashamed of herself for being in the state she was. She was very fat, and after drinking beer used to take Nero’s bed from him and sleep on her back snoring, much to his disgust. This dog was afterwards sold to Mr Montgomery, of Oxford, who stopped her allowance for some months, after which she would neither look at ale nor gin-and-water, of which latter she used to be passionately fond.

Aileen and Nero used to be coupled together in the street with a short chain attached to their collars. But not always; they used to walk together jowl to jowl, whether they were coupled or not, and these two splendid black dogs were the wonder and admiration of all who beheld them. Whatever one did the other did, they worked in couple. When I gave my stick to Nero to carry, Aileen must have one end of it. When we went shopping they carried the stick thus between them, with a bag or basket slung between, and their steadiness could be depended on.

They used to spring into the river or into the sea from a boat both together, and both together bring out whatever was thrown to them. Their immense heads above the water both in friendly juxta-position, were very pretty to look at.

They were in the habit of hunting rats or rabbits in couples, one going up one side of the hedge, the other along the other side.

I am sorry to say they used at times, for the mere fun of the thing, and out of no real spirit of ill-nature, to hunt horses as well as rabbits, one at one side of the horse the other at the other, and likewise bicyclists; this was great fun for the dogs, but the bicyclists looked at the matter from quite another point of view. But I never managed to break them altogether of these evil habits.