Title: The Widow's Dog
Author: Mitford, Mary Russell, 1787-1855
Language: English
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THE WIDOW'S DOG.

By Mary Russell Mitford


One of the most beautiful spots in the north of Hampshire--a part of the
country which, from its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting over
head-like a cradle, its winding roads between coppices, with wide turfy
margents on either side, as if left on purpose for the picturesque and
frequent gipsy camp, its abundance of hedgerow timber, and its extensive
tracts of woodland, seems as if the fields were just dug out of the
forest, as might have happened in the days of William Rufus--one of the
loveliest scenes in this lovely county is the Great Pond at Ashley End.

Ashley End is itself a romantic and beautiful village, struggling down a
steep hill to a clear and narrow running stream, which crosses the road
in the bottom, crossed in its turn by a picturesque wooden bridge, and
then winding with equal abruptness up the opposite acclivity, so that
the scattered cottages, separated from each other by long strips of
garden ground, the little country inn, and two or three old-fashioned
tenements of somewhat higher pretensions, surrounded by their own
moss-grown orchards, seemed to be completely shut out from this bustling
world, buried in the sloping meadows so deeply green, and the hanging
woods so rich in their various tinting, along which the slender wreaths
of smoke from the old clustered chimneys went smiling peacefully in the
pleasant autumn air. So profound was the tranquillity, that the slender
streamlet which gushed along the valley, following its natural windings,
and glittering in the noonday sun like a thread of silver, seemed to
the unfrequent visiters of that remote hamlet the only trace of life and
motion in the picture.

The source of this pretty brook was undoubtedly the Great Pond, although
there was no other road to it than by climbing the steep hill beyond
the village, and then turning suddenly to the right, and descending by
a deep cart-track, which led between wild banks covered with heath and
feathery broom, garlanded with bramble and briar roses, and gay with
the purple heath-flower and the delicate harebell,* to a scene even more
beautiful and more solitary than the hamlet itself.

     * One of the pleasantest moments that I have ever known, was
     that of the introduction of an accomplished young American
     to the common harebell, upon the very spot which I have
     attempted to describe. He had never seen that English wild-
     flower, consecrated by the poetry of our common language,
     was struck even more than I expected by its delicate beauty,
     placed it in his button-hole, and repeated with enthusiasm
     the charming lines of Scott, from the Lady of the Lake:--

          "For me,"--she stooped, and, looking round,
          Plucked a blue harebell from the ground,--
          "For me, whose memory scarce conveys
          An image of more splendid days,
          This little flower, that loves the lea,
          May well my simple emblem be;
          It drinks heaven's dew as blithe as rose
          That in the King's own garden grows,
          And when I place it in my hair,
          Allan, a bard, is bound to swear
          He ne'er saw coronet so fair."

     Still greater was the delight with which another
     American recognised that blossom of a thousand
     associations--the flower sacred to Milton and Shakspeare--the
     English primrose. He bent his knee to the ground in
     gathering a bunch, with a reverential expression which I
     shall not easily forget, as if the flower were to him an
     embodiment of the great poets by whom it has been
     consecrated to fame; and he also had the good taste not to
     be ashamed of his own enthusiasm. I have had the pleasure of
     exporting, this spring, to my friend Miss Sedgwick, (to
     whose family one of my visiters belongs,) roots and seeds of
     these wild flowers, of the common violet, the cowslip, and
     the ivy, another of our indigenous plants which our
     Transatlantic brethren want, and with which Mr. Theodore
     Sedgwick was especially delighted. It will be a real
     distinction to be the introductress of these plants into
     that _Berkshire_ village of New England, where Miss
     Sedgwick, surrounded by relatives worthy of her in talent
     and in character, passes her summers.

It was a small clear lake almost emfoofomed in trees, across which an
embankment, formed for the purpose of a decoy for the wildfowl with
which it abounded, led into a wood which covered the opposite hill; an
old forest-like wood, where the noble oaks, whose boughs almost dipped
into the water, were surrounded by their sylvan accompaniments of birch,
and holly, and hawthorn, where the tall trees met over the straggling
paths, and waved across the grassy dells and turfy brakes with which it
was interspersed. One low-browed cottage stood in a little meadow--it
might almost be called a little orchard--just at the bottom of the
winding road that led to the Great Pond: the cottage of the widow King.

Independently of its beautiful situation, there was much that was at
once picturesque and comfortable about the cottage itself, with its
irregularity of outline, its gable ends and jut-ting-out chimneys,
its thatched roof and penthouse windows. A little yard, with a small
building which just held an old donkey-chaise and an old donkey, a still
older cow, and a few pens for geese and chickens, lay on one side of the
house; in front, a flower court, surrounded by a mossy paling; a larger
plot for vegetables behind; and, stretching down to the Great Pond on
the side opposite the yard, was the greenest of all possible meadows,
which, as I have before said, two noble walnut and mulberry-trees, and a
few aged pears and apples, clustered near the dwelling, almost converted
into that pleasantest appanage of country life, an orchard.

Notwithstanding, however, the exceeding neatness of the flower-court,
and the little garden filled with choice beds of strawberries, and
lavender, and old-fashioned flowers, stocks, carnations, roses, pinks;
and in spite of the cottage itself being not only almost covered with
climbing shrubs, woodbine, jessamine, clematis, and musk-roses, and in
one southern nook a magnificent tree-like fuchsia, but the old chimney
actually garlanded with delicate creepers, the maurandia, and the lotus
spermus, whose pink and purple bells, peeping out from between their
elegant foliage, and mingling with the bolder blossoms and darker
leaves of the passion-flower, give such a wreathy and airy grace to the
humblest building;* in spite of this luxuriance of natural beauty, and
of the evident care bestowed upon the cultivation of the beds, and the
training of the climbing plants, we yet felt, we hardly could tell
why, but yet we instinctively felt, that the moss-grown thatch, the
mouldering paling, the hoary apple trees, in a word, the evidences of
decay visible around the place, were but types of the fading fortunes of
the inmates.

     * I know nothing so pretty as the manner in which creeping
     plants interwreath themselves one with another. We have at
     this moment a wall quite covered with honeysuckles,
     fuchsias, roses, clematis, passion flowers, myrtles,
     scobsea, acrima carpis, lotus spermus, and maurandia
     Barclayana, in which two long sprays of the last-mentioned
     climbers have jutted out from the wall, and entwined
     themselves together, like the handle of an antique basket.
     The rich profusion of leaves, those of the lotus spermus,
     comparatively rounded and dim, soft in texture and colour,
     with a darker patch in the middle, like the leaf of the old
     gum geranium; those of the maurandia, so bright, and
     shining, and sharply outlined--the stalks equally graceful
     in their varied green, and the roseate bells of the one
     contrasting and harmonising so finely with the rich violet
     flowers of the other, might really form a study for a
     painter. I never saw anything more graceful in quaint and
     cunning art than this bit of simple nature. But nature often
     takes a fancy to outvie her skilful and ambitious
     handmaiden, and is always certain to succeed in the
     competition.

And such was really the case. The widow King had known better days. Her
husband had been the head keeper, her only son head gardener, of
the lord of the manor; but both were dead; and she, with an orphan
grandchild, a thoughtful boy of eight or nine years old, now gained a
scanty subsistence from the produce of their little dairy, their few
poultry, their honey, (have I not said that a row of bee-hives held
their station on the sunny side of the garden?). and the fruit and
flowers which little Tom and the old donkey carried in their season to
Belford every market-day.

Besides these their accustomed sources of income, Mrs. King and Tom
neglected no means of earning an honest penny. They stripped the downy
spikes of the bulrushes to stuff cushions and pillows, and wove the
rushes themselves into mats. Poor Tom was as handy as a girl; and in the
long winter evenings he would phut the straw hats in which he went to
Belford market, and knit the stockings, which, kept rather for show than
for use, were just assumed to go to church on Sundays, and then laid
aside for the week. So exact was their economy.

The only extravagance in which Mrs. King indulged herself was keeping
a pet spaniel, the descendant of a breed for which her husband had been
famous, and which was so great a favourite, that it ranked next to Tom
in her affections, and next to his grandmother in Tom's. The first time
that I ever saw them, this pretty dog had brought her kind mistress into
no small trouble.

We had been taking a drive through these beautiful lanes, never more
beautiful than when the richly tinted autumnal foliage contrasts with
the deep emerald hue of the autumnal herbage, and were admiring the fine
effect of the majestic oaks, whose lower branches almost touched the
clear water which reflected so brightly the bright blue sky, when Mrs.
King, who was well known to my father, advanced to the gate of her
little court, and modestly requested to speak with him.

The group in front of the cottage door was one which it was impossible
to contemplate without strong interest. The poor widow, in her neat
crimped cap, her well-worn mourning gown, her apron and handkerchief
coarse, indeed, and of cheap material, but delicately clean, her grey
hair parted on her brow, and her pale intelligent countenance, stood
leaning against the doorway, holding in one thin trembling hand a letter
newly opened, and in the other her spectacles, which she had been fain
to take off, half hoping that they had played her false, and that the
ill-omened epistle would not be found to contain what had so grieved
her. Tom, a fine rosy boy, stout and manly for his years, sat on the
ground with Chloe in his arms, giving vent to a most unmanly fit of
crying; and Chloe, a dog worthy of Edwin Landseer's pencil, a large and
beautiful spaniel, of the scarce old English breed, brown and white,
with shining wavy hair feathering her thighs and legs, and clustering
into curls towards her tail and forehead, and upon the long glossy
magnificent ears which gave so much richness to her fine expressive
countenance, looked at him wistfully, with eyes that expressed the
fullest sympathy in his affliction, and stooped to lick his hand, and
nestled her head in his bosom, as if trying, as far as her caresses had
the power, to soothe and comfort him.

"And so, sir," continued Mrs. King, who had been telling her little
story to my father, whilst I had been admiring her pet, "this Mr.
Poulton, the tax-gatherer, because I refused to give him our Chloe, whom
my boy is so fond of that he shares his meals with her, poor fellow, has
laid an information against us for keeping a sporting dog--I don't know
what the proper word is--and has had us surcharged; and the first that
ever I have heard of it is by this letter, from which I find that I must
pay I don't know how much money by Saturday next, or else my goods will
be seized and sold. And I have but just managed to pay my rent, and
where to get a farthing I can't tell. I dare say he would let us off now
if I would but give him Chloe; but that I can't find in my heart to do.
He's a hard man, and a bad dog-master. I've all along been afraid that
we must part with Chloe, now that she's growing up like, because of our
living so near the preserves--"

"Oh, grandmother!" interrupted Tom, "poor Chloe!"

"But I can't give her to _him_. Don't cry so, Tom! I'd sooner have my
little goods sold, and lie upon the boards. I should not mind parting
with her if she were taken good care of, but I never will give her to
him."

"Is this the first you have heard of the matter?" inquired my father;
"you ought to have had notice in time to appeal."

"I never heard a word till to-day."

"Poulton seems to say that he sent a letter, nevertheless, and offers to
prove the sending, if need be; it's not in our division, not even in our
county, and I am afraid that in this matter of the surcharge I can
do nothing," observed my father; "though I have no doubt but it's a
rascally trick to come by the dog. She's a pretty creature," continued
be, stooping to pat her, and examining her head and mouth with the air
of a connoisseur in canine affairs, "a very fine creature! How old is
she?"

"Not quite a twelvemonth, sir. She was pupped on the sixteenth of last
October, grandmother's birthday, of all the days in the year," said Tom,
somewhat comforted by his visiter's evident sympathy.

"The sixteenth of October! Then Mr. Poulton may bid good-bye to his
surcharge; for unless she was six months old on the fifth of April, she
cannot be taxed for this year--so his letter is so much waste paper.
I'll write this very night to the chairman of the commissioners, and
manage the matter for you. And I'll also write to Master Poulton, and
let him know that I'll acquaint the board if he gives you any farther
trouble. You're sure that you can prove the day she was pupped?"
continued his worship, highly delighted. "Very lucky! You'll have
nothing to pay for her till next half-year, and then I'm afraid that
this fellow Poulton will insist upon her being entered as a sporting
dog, which is fourteen shillings. But that's a future concern. As to
the surcharge, I'll take care of that A beautiful creature, is not she,
Mary? Very lucky that we happened to drive this way." And with kind
adieus to Tom and his grandmother, who were as grateful as people could
be, we departed.

About a week after, Tom and Chloe in their turn appeared at our cottage.
All had gone right in the matter of the surcharge. The commissioners
had decided in Mrs. King's favour, and Mr. Poulton had been forced to
succumb. But his grandmother had considered the danger of offending
their good landlord Sir John, by keeping a sporting dog so near his
coverts, and also the difficulty of paying the tax; and both she and Tom
had made up their minds to offer Chloe to my father. He had admired her,
and everybody said that he was as good a dog-master as Mr. Poulton was a
bad one; and he came sometimes coursing to Ashley End, and then perhaps
he would let them both see poor Chloe; "for grandmother," added Tom,
"though she seemed somehow ashamed to confess as much, was at the bottom
of her heart pretty nigh as fond of her as he was himself. Indeed, he
did not know who could help being fond of Chloe, she had so many pretty
ways." And Tom, making manful battle against the tears that would start
into his eyes, almost as full of affection as the eyes of Chloe herself,
and hugging his beautiful pet, who seemed upon her part to have a
presentiment of the evil that awaited her, sate down as requested in the
hall, whilst my father considered his proposition.

Upon the whole, it seemed to us kindest to the parties concerned, the
widow King, Tom, and Chloe, to accept the gift. Sir John was a kind man,
and a good landlord, but he was also a keen sportsman; and it was
quite certain that he would have no great taste for a dog of such
high sporting blood close to his best preserves; the keeper also would
probably seize hold of such a neighbour as a scapegoat, in case of any
deficiency in the number of hares and pheasants; and then their great
enemy, Mr. Poulton, might avail himself of some technical deficiency to
bring Mrs. King within the clutch of a surcharge. There might not always
be an oversight in that Shylock's bond, nor a wise judge, young or old,
to detect it if there were. So that, upon due consideration, my father
(determined, of course, to make a proper return for the present) agreed
to consider Chloe as his own property; and Tom, having seen her very
comfortably installed in clean dry straw in a warm stable, and fed in a
manner which gave a satisfactory specimen of her future diet, and being
himself regaled with plum-cake and cherry brandy, (a liquor of which
he had, he said, heard much talk, and which proved, as my father
had augured, exceedingly cheering and consolatory in the moment of
affliction,) departed in much better spirits than could have been
expected after such a separation. I myself, duly appreciating the
merits of Chloe, was a little jealous for my own noble Dash, whom she
resembled, with a slight inferiority of size and colouring; much such
a resemblance as Viola, I suppose, bore to Sebastian. But upon being
reminded of the affinity between the two dogs, (for Dash came originally
from the Ashley End kennel, and was, as nearly as we could make out,
grand-uncle to Chloe,) and of our singular good fortune, in having two
such beautiful spaniels under one roof, my objections were entirely
removed. Under the same roof they did not seem likely to continue. When
sent after to the stable the next morning, Chloe was missing. Everybody
declared that the door had not been opened, and Dick, who had her
in charge, vowed that the key had never been out of his pocket But
accusations and affirmations were equally useless--the bird was flown.
Of course she had returned to Ashley End. And upon being sent for to her
old abode, Tom was found preparing to bring her to Aberleigh; and Mrs.
King suggested, that, having been accustomed to live with them, she
would, perhaps, sooner get accustomed to the kitchen fireside than to a
stable, however comfortable.

The suggestion was followed. A mat was placed by the side of the kitchen
fire; much pains were taken to coax the shy stranger; (Dick, who loved
and understood dogs, devoting himself to the task of making himself
agreeable to this gentle and beautiful creature;) and she seemed so far
reconciled as to suffer his caresses, to lap a little milk when sure
that nobody saw her, and even to bridle with instinctive coquetry, when
Dash, head and tail up, advanced with a sort of stately and conscious
courtesy to examine into the claims of the newcomer. For the first
evening all seemed promising; but on the next morning, nobody knew how
or when, Chloe eloped to her old quarters.

Again she was fetched back; this time to the parlour: and again she ran
away. Then she was tied up, and she gnawed the string; chained up, and
she slipped the collar; and we began to think, that unless we could find
some good home for her at a distance, there was nothing for it but to
return her altogether to Mrs. King, when a letter from a friend at Bath
gave a new aspect to Chloe's affairs.

The letter was from a dear friend of mine--a young married lady, with an
invalid husband, and one lovely little girl, a damsel of some two years
old, commonly called "Pretty May." They wanted a pet dog to live in
the parlour, and walk out with mother and daughter--not a cross yelping
Blenheim spaniel, (those troublesome little creatures spoil every body's
manners who is so unlucky as to possess them, the first five minutes of
every morning call being invariably devoted to silencing the lapdog and
apologising to the visiter,)--not a pigmy Blenheim, but a large, noble
animal, something, in short, as like as might be to Dash, with whom Mrs.
Keating had a personal acquaintance, and for whom, in common with most
of his acquaintances, she entertained a very decided partiality: I do
not believe that there is a dog in England who has more friends than my
Dash. A spaniel was wanted at Bath like my Dash: and what spaniel could
be more like Dash than Chloe? A distant home was wanted for Chloe: and
what home could open a brighter prospect of canine felicity than to be
the pet of Mrs. Keating, and the playmate of Pretty May? It seemed
one of those startling coincidences which amuse one by their singular
fitness and propriety, and make one believe that there is more in the
exploded doctrine of sympathies than can be found in our philosophy.

So, upon the matter being explained to her, thought Mrs. King; and
writing duly to announce the arrival of Chloe, she was deposited, with a
quantity of soft hay, in a large hamper, and conveyed into Belford by my
father himself, who would entrust to none other the office of delivering
her to the coachman, and charging that very civil member of a very civil
body of men to have especial care of the pretty creature, who was parted
with for no other fault than an excess of affection and fidelity to her
first kind protectors.

Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of her reception. Pretty May, the
sweet smiling child of a sweet smiling mother, had been kept up a full
hour after her usual time to welcome the stranger, and was so charmed
with this her first living toy, that it was difficult to get her to
bed. She divided her own supper with poor Chloe, hungry after her long
journey; rolled with her upon the Turkey carpet, and at last fell asleep
with her arms clasped round her new pet's neck, and her bright face,
coloured like lilies and roses, flung across her body; Chloe enduring
these caresses with a careful, quiet gentleness, which immediately won
for her the hearts of the lovely mother, of the fond father, (for to an
accomplished and right-minded man, in delicate health, what a treasure
is a little prattling girl, his only one!) of two grandmothers, of three
or four young aunts, and of the whole tribe of nursery attendants. Never
was debut so successful, as Chloe's first appearance in Camden Place.

As her new dog had been Pretty May's last thought at night, so was it
her first on awakening. He shared her breakfast as he had shared her
supper; and immediately after breakfast, mother and daughter, attended
by nurserymaid and footman, sallied forth to provide proper luxuries
for Chloe's accommodation. First they purchased a sheepskin rug; then a
splendid porcelain trough for water, and a porcelain dish to match, for
food; then a spaniel basket, duly lined, and stuffed, and curtained--a
splendid piece of canine upholstery; then a necklace-like collar with
silver bells, which was left to have the address engraved upon the
clasp; and then May, finding herself in the vicinity of a hosier and
a shoemaker, bethought herself of a want which undoubtedly had not
occurred to any other of her party, and holding up her own pretty little
foot, demanded "tilk tocks and boo thoose for Tloë."

For two days did Chloe endure the petting and the luxuries. On the third
she disappeared. Great was the consternation in Camden Place. Pretty
May cried as she had never been known to cry before; and papa, mamma,
grandmammas, aunts, nursery and house-maids, fretted and wondered,
wondered and fretted, and vented their distress in every variety of
exclamation, from the refined language of the drawing-room to the
patois of a Somersetshire kitchen. Rewards were offered, and handbills
dispersed over the town. She was cried, and she was advertised; and at
last, giving up every hope of her recovery, Mrs. Keating wrote to me.

It happened that we received the letter on one of those soft November
days, which sometimes intervene between the rough winds of October and
the crisp frosts of Christmas, and which, although too dirty under foot
to be quite pleasant for walking, are yet, during the few hours that the
sun is above the horizon, mild enough for an open carriage in our shady
lanes, strewed as they are at that period with the yellow leaves of the
elm, whilst the hedgerows are still rich with the tawny foliage of the
oak, and the rich colouring of the hawthorn and the bramble. It was such
weather as the Americans generally enjoy at this season, and call by the
pretty name of the Indian summer. And we resolved to avail ourselves of
the fineness of the day to drive to Ashley End, and inform Mrs. King
and Tom (who we felt ought to know) of the loss of Chloe, and our fear,
according with Mrs. Keating's, that she had been stolen; adding our
persuasion, which was also that of Mrs. Keating, that, fall into
whatever hands she might, she was too beautiful and valuable not to
ensure good usage.

On the way we were overtaken by the good widow's landlord, returning
from hunting, in his red coat and top-boots, who was also bound to
Ashley End. As he rode chatting by the side of the carriage, we could
not forbear telling him our present errand, and the whole story of poor
Chloe. How often, without being particularly uncharitable in judging of
our neighbours, we have the gratification of finding them even better
than we had supposed! He blamed us for not having thought well enough
of him to put the whole affair into his management from the first, and
exclaimed against us for fearing that he would compare the preserves and
the pheasant-shooting with such an attachment as had subsisted between
his good old tenant and her faithful dog. "By Jove!" cried he, "I
would have paid the tax myself rather than they should have been parted.
But it's too late to talk of that now, for, of course, the dog is
stolen. Eighty miles is too far even for a spaniel to find its way back!
Carried by coach, too! I would give twenty pounds willingly to replace
her with old Dame King and Master Tom. By the way, we must see what can
be done for that boy--he's a fine spanking fellow. We must consult his
grandmother. The descendant of two faithful servants has an hereditary
claim to all that can be done for him. How could _you_ imagine that I
should be thinking of those coverts? I that am as great a dog-lover as
Dame King herself! I have a great mind to be very angry with you."

These words, spoken in the good sportsman's earnest, hearty, joyous,
kindly voice, (_that_ ought to have given an assurance of his kindly
nature,--I have a religious faith invoices,) these words brought us
within sight of Ashley End, and there, in front of the cottage, we saw
a group which fixed our attention at once: Chloe, her own identical
self--poor, dear Chloe, apparently just arrived, dirty, weary, jaded,
wet, lying in Tom's arms as he sat on the ground, feeding her with
the bacon and cabbage, his own and his grandmother's dinner, all the
contents of the platter; and she, too happy to eat, wagging her tail as
if she would wag it off; now licking Mrs. King's hands as the good old
dame leant over her, the tears streaming from her eyes: now kissing
Tom's honest face, who broke into loud laughter for very joy, and, with
looks that spoke as plain as ever looks did speak, "Here I am come home
again to those whom I love best--to those who best love me!" Poor dear
Chloe! Even we whom she left, sympathised with her fidelity. Poor dear
Chloe! there we found her, and there, I need not, I hope, say, we left
her, one of the happiest of living creatures.





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