UNCONSCIOUS INTERPRETERS.
ANIMALS play a large part in Mr. Lucas's last, but not least charming, book of essays (" Character and Comedy," Methuen and Co., 5s.), which is as full as all his other work of humour and of observation, and of that rare capacity for contrasting the serious and the amusing side of life in such a manner as to throw light upon both. "I have for horses and dogs," he writes, " an affection that most people seem to keep for their fellow-men." Yet Mr. Lucas—we judge him out of his own mouth—is not an outdoor man. He was not brought up among beasts. He loves hunting-stories because they take him out of "the daily routine of a journalist," and it gives him pleasure "to be transported to a kind of fairy- land to which I am never likely really to penetrate, and where, if I did, I should be an alien and ashamed." Of that side of equine personality which may be described as "horseflesh" he knows nothing. He is a man of letters, and his sympathy with animals is derived from sympathy with individuals, not from rubbing shoulders with the race. He has learned all that can be learned through the medium of those interpreters whose mission it is to explain the lower to the higher creation. In other words, he has obtained his knowledge through pets. For our own part, we believe that those who have proceeded upon this system know the most. The man for whom his horses offer no study in character or comedy, but for whom each is merely the sum of his points and the representative of his value, is often less in sympathy with horse nature than many a master of one badly bred pony ; and the man whose dogs are but the living illustration of their pedigrees may enter less deeply into the canine mind than does the mistress of a single mongrel.
There are a certain number of cultivated people even nowa- days who dislike animals, not because they are afraid of them —that is a reason common only among the uneducated—but because the limitations of the animal mind irritate and confuse them. They like things to be rational—or inanimate. The crowd of sentient beings around them who cannot speak at all and think connectedly do not inspire them with curiosity, amusement, or sympathy. The last thing they wish to do is to admit any one of them to intimate relations. They would almost as soon admit a strange idiot to the domestic hearth. The majority, however, like animals now. But in order to understand animals something is required besides a feeling of benevolence towards them. For many persons their pets are mere pegs on which they hang portions of their general benevolence. They endow them with a heap of fictitious virtues, and learn, and desire to learn, nothing from them about that strange wild or servile population whose unconscious ambassadors they are. Those who know the most of that world indulge no sentimental imaginings as to the perfection of animal character, though they have an instinctive desire to get into touch with every animal they come across, are ceaselessly amused by watching their doings, and long always to bridge the chasm between the speaking and the dumb. Mr. Lucas extends his desires for a nearer acquaintance even to the wild things of the woods. This is not, we think, common, at any rate among townspeople. He has not, be tells us, "the luck of the woods," and often misses opportunities which occur to other people,—people very often who do not want them. " Last year I went to stay in a house under the South Downs close to a little spinney, and was met by the news that an old vixen had cubs there and every one had seen them playing together. I need hardly say that I did not. Yet a lady that I know well, who cares nothing for these things, once came on a small fox-cub that had lost itself near Willingdon, in Sussex, and nursed it in her arms. I, who would value such an experience rightly, will go down to my grave and never find anything. Even moles elude me." Again, he tells of an old gardener " to whom gravitate, by £1, kind of natural law, all creatures in distress, and before whose eyes are unfolded the most interesting dramas that the English fauna can play." Such men, he says, "have the key of the countryside," and "are very enviable."
But it is only with those animals who live under our roofs that we come to a real understanding as individuals, however clear a light they may throw upon their wild fellows as types. Here is a charming picture of the essayist's cat Melisande.' She is a pure-bred Persian, he tells us, and there are moments
when she is "distractingly lovely," her pearl-grey fur adorned by "burning orange " eyes. As to her character, she is " even more unsatisfactory than the generality of her selfish kind. Her life is more resolutely detached from that of her owners her return for any kindness that is shown her is even less spontaneous and noticeable. It is testimony to the amazing cleverness of cats that they are kept and fed at all, to say nothing of being petted." Why do we keep them ? Probably the reader knows—if he is one of those who has an instinctive wish to be on good terms with the lower creation—by some sort of intuition; but can he explain ? The present writer remembers to have felt a positive throb of envy in his heart when, some months ago, he saw a keeper at the Zoological Gardens put his band through the bars and pat the largest of the tigers. Yet he could by no means lay claim to any fortitude, and can only suppose his feeling arose from the same source as the one which forces him to stroke cats. Of course some less lovely cats have more amiable traits of character than Melisande.' Probably the "perfectly awful sandy cat with a permanent black smudge on his left cheek " who so " sadly democratised " Melisande's ' kittens was a better cat than she, and perhaps there are better still. " The best cat I know at this moment lives in Northamptonshire, and follows its master and mistress wherever they go, about the garden and the fields—just like a dog, only with more circumspection. Whenever they stop the cat stops too, and perhaps leans against their legs. When they go on the cat goes on too, just behind, silently, com- posedly, like a shadow with a waving tail. I should like a cat that would do that. Instead, we have the costly Melisande who would not lift a finger if she saw me drowning."
The Aberdeens and the spaniel whose portraits adorn Mr. Lucas's pages stand on a wholly different plane from `Melisa,nde: The " radiant whiteness of the character " of the latter renders the outlines of his personality difficult to trace, and Mr. Lucas, like many another artist, has not done his best for his most perfect subject. But his • Aberdeens are two of the most charming little dogs we ever beard of, even belonging to this " fascinating, naughty, incorrigible, and wholly adorable breed," who are capable, in spite of their well-known failings—their want of ready obedience and of equableness of disposition—of "putting in motion all the machinery of lovableness."
Not the least fascinating of Mr. Lucas's chapters is the one entitled "Meditation among the Cages." What must the thoughts of all these caged aliens be ? asks Mr. Lucas. " The seals and sea-lions, one can believe, are not unhappy; the otter is in his element ; the birds in the large aviaries, the monkeys, the snakes—these, one feels, are not so badly off. But the beasts and birds of a higher spirit, a mounting ambition—the eagles and hawks and lions and tigers, and Pel's owl—what a destiny ! What a future ! I would not think their thoughts." Still, to comfort oneself one must admit that there are compensations. Our dogs and cats have told us how large a place food fills in the animal heart, and how complete a power of concen- tration is possessed by minds too simple to be human. The tiger raging up and down his cage at dinner-time, pausing every now and then to try to see down the long corridor, though he is so ill-placed for seeing anywhere but across it, is thinking of one thing, and one thing only. After he has eaten, he may dream of jungles and deserts, of solitude and the sun, but for the moment his heart is fixed on blood, and when he gets it his whole soul is for the moment satisfied. The dog in full chase has no thought for his master, however harsh or kind he may be. The cat with a mouse forgets even her comforts ; and though fire and milk may be lacking to her, she is shut for the time being within the charmed circle of her own cruelty, and desires nothing. All our domestic pets tell us of the wild. The spirit of the lion and the tiger lurks in our cats and dogs. Who that has ever loved a retriever can feel quite as a stranger to a black bear,—at least when the latter is safely secured behind bars ? The retriever in his worst moments is terribly bearish, and when we study Bruin's amiable expression as he accepts the proffered bun we cannot forget that in every country wherein bears are wild legends exist of their tameableness and fidelity. Surely in those wild animals there must be something of their inter- preters. In those interpreters there is something of us. And as we regard humanity on its fiercer side we must sadly admit that in us there is something of them.
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