Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/106



CURRENT TOPICS. DICKENS' ANIMALS. — It has often occurred to the Chairman that one might construct a quite readable commentary on Dickens' unnamed characters. So fertile in his creative capacity is this great author that he runs short of names for his personages in every one of his novels. He has a class of charac ters, however, for which he contrives to find names, but who are not human. His love of the brute creation indicates a deep nature, whose sympathies are not bounded by mere human affections, but extend to all created things. St. Peter was in structed in a vision that God has made nothing common or unclean. Cowper would not number on his list of friends, though gifted with good manners and fine sense, the man who, wanting sensibility, needlessly set foot upon a worm. Coleridge, in one of the most powerful poems of this century, taught the lesson of humanity to animals through the type of the albatross. But no author of fiction makes such distinct characters of animals as Dickens. So strong is his propensity to personify animals, that in defiance of grammatical rules, he always dig nifies them by the personal pronoun " who." It must be confessed that his strictly human characters frequently less deserve this construction. Unquestionably his most famous animal character is Barnaby Rudge's raven "Grip." This personage is a much more healthy and sensible one than that morbid bird in Poe's ballad, which simply sat on a bust and croaked disaster and ministered to his master's unhappy and morbid fancies. (It is a sin gular manifestation of the poet's nature, that in his celebrated criticism on " Barnaby Rudge," he blames Dickens for not making Grip morbid and a prophet of woe and disaster, like his own dreary bird.) This excellent bird was one of the cheerful kind, who ejaculated "Hurrah!" whose favorite motto was ч Never say die," and who suggested festive ideas by continual drawing of corks, and by exhortations to "Polly " to " put the kettle on." Even his constant asseveration " I'm a devil," must be taken less as an assertion of diabolical propensities than of an excess of good fellowship, equivalent to " I'm a devil of a fellow." " Grip" was also a useful person, helping

his poor distraught master to gain a living by the display of his vocal accomplishments. He was gen erally an orderly citizen, becoming a little demoralized, to be sure, in the Gordon Riots, but returning to the paths of sobriety and loyalty upon his master's providential escape from the gallows. Perhaps the only serious blot on his character was his native acquisitiveness, unregulated by a fine sense of own ership, and accompanied by the abnormal secrecy and disposition to hoard which belong to his race. In these days, when many in the community are advocating the privilege of paying their debts at fifty cents on the dollar, men should not be severe on him for that. Less known, but even more carefully drawn, and a more influential and independent character, is the pony "Whiskers," the property of the Garland fam ily in "Old Curiosity Shop." A more willful, headstrong and determined little fellow never existed, nor one who more tyrannically ruled his owners, going or refusing to go at his sovereign pleasure, choosing his own side of the street or road, stopping beyond or short of the desired place, and finally refusing to be cared for or driven by anybody but the honest lad Kit, and therefore very unhappy during the incarceration of his young ostler, through the wicked wiles of the dwarf Quilp and the legal firm of Solomon and Sally Brass. Dickens portrays several dogs with careful delinea tion, and differentiates them in a marvelous manner. In " Jip," Dora's lap-dog, in " David Copperfield," he gives the characteristics of a lady's ribboned, spoiled and pampered pet, his mistress' favorite con fidante and not wholly unresponsive companion, who pines away with her and dies at almost the same moment, out of sympathy and grief. David's foolish but fond little wife could fitly have been furnished with no other kind of dog. A dog of sense would have been out of place with her, and neither could have cared for the other. Of a stronger and more resolute character was " Diogenes," little Paul Dombey's dog. His very name is in strict keeping with his original environment in the famous classical school of Dr. Blimber, where little Paul first encountered him. (Dickens ought to have given him a tub for a kennel.) By an exquisite sense of 83