[Picture: To Miss Dickens’ Pomeranian “Mrs. Bouncer”]
To Miss Dickens’ Pomeranian. “MRS. BOUNCER.”
Furry, lazy, warm and bright, Peeing from her fringe of white, She blinks and sleeps both day and night,
She need not fear the cruel stick, Nor has she learnt a single trick— Just deigns her mistress’ hand to lick,
She eats, and drinks, and eats again, Is never out in wind or rain,— Takes many a journey in the train,
She has her own coquettish charms, Knows no sorrows, no alarms, And dozes in her mistress’ arms—
How small and piquant are her feet— Ben Allen’s sister had as neat— She looks so saucy, one could beat
Quite ravishing when neat and clean, Her cars seem lined with crinoline: She rules the house, a haughty queen,
Just tolerates the frequent hug— Snoozing all day upon the rug, Complacent, philosophic—snug,
At dinner—ah! that pleasant Babel! Touch her paw beneath the table, She’d bite your foot—were she but able—
To find her mistress how she flew! Faithful the coming step she knew Let others be as brave and true—
When SULTAN, TURK, and LINDA fleet The lost lov’d Master rushed to meet, _His_ kindly voice would always greet
Alas! so furry, warm, and white, From this cold world she took her flight, No more on rug, by fireside bright,
Interest in London birds.—Our pet bird “Dick.”—Devotion of his dogs.—Decision to visit America.—His arrival in New York.—Comments on American courtesies.—Farewell public appearances.
The warm affection which was so characteristic of my father toward people was also directed, as I have already told, towards animals and birds. A few further anecdotes occur to me, and I have ventured to give them here, before proceeding to tell of his visit to America, his readings, and the, to me, sad story of his last public appearance.
My father’s quick and amusing observation of London birds and their habits, and of their fondness for “low company,” is full of charm and quaint oddity. He writes: “That anything born of an egg and invested with wings should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connection to wonder at. I know a low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives in single file in at the door of the jug department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manœuvres them among the company’s legs, and emerges with them at the bottle entrance, seldom in the season going to bed before two in the morning. And thus he passes his life. But the family I am best acquainted with reside in the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their abstraction from the objects in which they live, or rather their conviction that these objects have all come into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me that I have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. After careful observation of the two lords and of the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading lady, the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles, saucepans and fragments of bonnets as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that in the minds of the two lords, the early public house at the corner has superseded the sun. They always begin to crow when the public house shutters begin to be taken down, and they salute the pot-boy the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phœbus in person.”