Fantasies

Flush. On Tuesday morning, September 2, 1846, he took a cab from No. 50 Wimpole Street to Vere Street, whither he was driven by way of Bond Street. Mark the circuitous route; there is something sinister in that, and ominous, at any rate something more than meets the eye. Ostensibly, it points merely to the cabman's desire to make more than a shilling fare of it; but if Sherlock Holmes had been alive then (it was many years later that he took up his residence in the neighbouring Baker Street) he would, I feel sure, have convicted the cabman of being in the secret. Be that as it may, Flush was "shadowed" up Bond Street into Vere Street by a member (or members) of a mysterious Camorra, known vaguely, but grandiosely, as "the Society" (just as Dr. Johnson's Club was "the" Club). He went

into a shop; in due time he emerged-and then he vanished, vanished utterly. To a superficial eye Vere Street was the same; the great mundane movement still went on there; but there was no Flush. He had

disappeared like Waring. Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit. And as the ladies, his late companions, returned to Wimpole Street in the fatal cab, one of them, Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, looked white, and tried to find comfort in the thought that when she should be at Pisa with her Robert Browning she would be away from the London dog-stealers; while the other lady, Miss Arabel Barrett, more practical in temper, remarked that the dog might certainly be recovered for ten pounds

at most.

Now Flush was no common dog. This, perhaps, is a grovelling understatement. Of course, the dogs of literary anecdote-Sir Isaac Newton's, Sir Walter Scott's, Byron's, Carlyle's never are common dogs. But Flush was enormously uncommon; egregious, as Mr. Henley would say. He must have had Intimations of Immortality in Early Puppyhood. For he gave up barking at himself in the glass long before "the critics" abandoned that futile practice. "Critics who bark the loudest," writes E. B. B. to R. B., "commonly bark at their own shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he gained experience and learnt the gnothi seauton in the apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes." Unfortunately, his pedigree is not forthcoming. Indeed, there is a lurking fear that he never had one; that he was not, in the Faubourg St. Germain sense, né. Ladies, especially poetesses, have the royal right of waiving these considerations; just as a Doña Maria may overlook the lack

of birth in a Ruy Blas. But if Flush had not the genealogy, he had all the instincts of a courtier; was, in fact, one of nature's noblemen. It is not at random that I have compared him with Ruy Blas; for E. B. B. declares that with her he was "sublime ”—which is your right Hugoesque quality.

....

The record of his sublimity merits quotation in full. “You would laugh to see me at my dinner—Flush and me—Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of 'chicken,' wagged his tail with an emphasis, . . . . he goes off to the sofa, shuts his eyes, and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at meal-times? And, remember, this is not the effect of discipline. Also if another than myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he teases straightway with eyes and paws, . . . teases like a common dog, and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But with me he is sublime!" It seems, too, that when he was not a Ruy Blas he was an Autolycus. For, moreover, he has been a very useful dog in his time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat accomplished without an objection on his side, always." Mark the significance of " in his time"; it establishes the interesting fact that Flush was no longer in his first youth.

There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and Flush took it when he passed from E. B. B. to R. B. To what precise part of R. B. he passed the Browning correspondence showeth not. But, doubtless, it was a soft part, for his mistress writes: "He did not hurt you, really? You will forgive him for me? The truth is that he hates all unpetticoated people." As a petticoat would have saved R. B., the inference as to the point of attack is obvious. Apparently it was R. B.'s umbrella that had annoyed Flush. "It is not savageness," says his mistress pathetically. All the same, the bitten poet, with all his delicate sympathy, could not conceal his satisfaction when Flush had his ears slapped. Here I find what is perhaps the most human touch in the whole correspondence. Long before this incident R. B. had ventured to allude to the animal as 66 even Flush." "You know," he writes, "what even Flush is to me through you." 'Twas a case of Love me Love my Dog, if ever there was one. But, as we have seen, Flush "got even" with the poet in quite another sense.

So much for Flush's career previous to the historic 2nd of September. We left him.

dans ce sac dont Scapin l'enveloppe.

The name, however, of the miscreant, the man with the bag, was, as you might expect, not Scapin, but plain Taylor, and he lived down Whitechapel way. The apparition of this Taylor throws a lurid light of Balzac

across the page. mystery of Vautrin. dog-stealer, a mere man with a bag; but in his home in Whitechapel he is a sort of Pirate King, the chief of a Confederacy who make three or four thousand a year by their honourable employment. Interviewed by a respectable footman from No. 50 Wimpole Street, he is found "smoking a cigar in a room with pictures" early Landseers, no doubt. He negotiates like a Minister Plenipotentiary of the First Class. Ten pounds or the dog's head shall be sent to E. B. B. in a basket. R. B. clearly would prefer the dog's head. On principle, he says, the principle of defying all dogstealers to do their worst. But we know why. Then Taylor he has now become "the archfiend, Taylor”— cedes a point: "they (ie. the Confederacy, Les Treize) would accept six pounds, six guineas, with half a guinea for himself, considering the trouble of the mediation." I confess that, from a man like Taylor, the mention of this paltry half-guinea pains me. It suggests that archfiends "are cheap to-day." Taylor-Vautrin, Taylor the diplomat and virtuoso, Taylor who had seemed at one moment descended from the great Condottieri of the Renaissance, ought to have bargained for one of E. B. B.'s sonnets in the original MS. and crushed

He has a touch of the magnificent
In Vere Street he is a common

morocco.

But in one respect the Robber Chief was faithful to the great romantic tradition; he had a chieftainess, a worthy mate. Mrs. Taylor reminds me of Helen