Sincerely yours,
E.B. White
LETTER 02
MY FAITHFUL DOG MIGHT BEAR ME COMPANY
Frances Power Cobbe to The Spectator
18 November 1871
Frances Power Cobbe was an Irish journalist, feminist and dog lover who spent much of her life successfully campaigning for the rights of both women and animals. In 1892, deeply affected by gruesome stories of experiments being carried out on animals, she founded the world’s first anti-vivisection organisation. Cobbe wrote numerous essays about the canine population, and in 1867 published The Confessions of a Lost Dog, an autobiography ‘written’ by her beloved Pomeranian, Hajjin. In 1871, she wrote this letter to The Spectator in response to a recent piece in the magazine on Greyfriars Bobby, a famous Skye Terrier who for fourteen years, according to legend, stood guard at the grave of his owner in Edinburgh, awaiting his return.
THE LETTER
Sir,
You ask in your last number whether “anyone can seriously doubt that Greyfriars Bobby has rejoined the master he loved so faithfully?” Pray allow me to state a reason which appears scarcely to have received the attention it deserves, for hoping that so it may be.
Admitting that many of the arguments in favour of the immortality of “the spirit of a man which goeth upward” do not apply directly to the spirit of a beast, it still holds, I apprehend, that if man’s immortality be accepted as proven, a strong presumption may be thence derived in favour of the immortality of those creatures who attain that moral stage whereat man becomes an immortal being. What that stage may be we do not presume to guess, but we cannot suppose the tremendous alternative of extinction or immortality to be decided by arrival at any arbitrary or merely physical turning-point such as may occur at various epochs either before birth or at the moment of birth. We must believe it to be determined by entrance on some moral or mental stage such as may be represented by the terms Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Intelligence, Power of Love, or the like; by the development, in short, of the mysterious Somewhat above the purely vegetative or animated life for which such life is the scaffolding. If, then (as we are wont to take for granted), a child of some six or eighteen months old be certainly an immortal being, it follows that the stage of development which involves immortality must be an early one. And if such be the case, that stage was unquestionably attained by the dog to whose honour Miss Coutts builds her fountain. To wait till the human mind and heart have displayed the intelligence and self-sacrifice of Greyfriars Bobby, before we treat children as immortal beings, would be, I fear, to postpone that promotion rather late in life for a good many of our little darlings.
I beg that it may be remarked that this argument expressly restricts itself to the case of the higher animals, and thus escapes the objection which has always been raised to the hypothesis of the immortality of the humbler creatures, namely, that if we proceed a step below the human race we have no right to stop short of the oyster. I merely contend that where any animal manifestly surpasses an average human infant in those steps of development which can be assumed to involve existence after death, then we are logically and religiously justified in expecting that the Creator of both child and brute will show no favouritism for the smooth white skin over the rough hairy coat.
Various authorities, theological and poetical, promise us in heaven harps, jewels, palms, and flowers, all sorts of good things from the vegetable and mineral world,—only, so far as I can learn, no animals except four monstrous creatures which few of us would desire to behold. For my own part, even if it betray a completely “untutored mind,” I must confess that a world devoid of loving brutes and singing birds would seem to me wanting in a very large element of earth’s beauty and happiness; and that instead of a crown and a harp, for whose possession I have no ambition whatever, I should be very thankful to find that
“United in that equal sky,
My faithful dog might bear me company.”
I am, Sir, &c.,
PHILOZOOIST
LETTER 03
NEVER GET A BULLDOG
Roald Dahl to his mother
8 February 1944
When he wrote this letter to his mother, Roald Dahl was working at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. – one of hundreds of undercover agents employed by Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service to spy on the United States. Dahl’s debut novel, The Gremlins, had been published the year before, and it would be another seventeen years until his first children’s book, James and the Giant Peach, set him on the path to becoming one of the best loved and entertaining authors in history. What is clear from his countless letters home during World War II, however, is that Dahl had been honing his craft for some time.
THE LETTER
Dear Mama
I just got a cold; the first one that I’ve had for many months, since last spring, I think. There’s not much point in telling you because by the time you get this, it will be gone – or I hope so anyway.
Last week a friend of mine in the embassy called Paul Scott Rankin went on leave. He left behind him for me to take care of, his enormous brown bulldog, called Winston. I said I didn’t mind; he looked all right. But Winston is no ordinary old dog. He is stupid and lecherous and cantankerous and all the time he grunts and snorts and slobbers. Paul said, let him sleep in your bedroom and he will be all right. He snorts all of the time, but you will find that pleasant and soporific. So the first night Winston slept in my bedroom. He snored and grunted and made a great noise all night, and I slept very little.
In the morning I took him into the embassy and let him sit in my office. But he farted continuously and with great gusto. Once he did it whilst I was dictating to the secretary, and I had to turn him out on the spot so that she wouldn’t think it was me. But he scratched on the door and I had to let him in again and open all the windows. He continued to fart regularly and contentedly for the rest of the day, and I was very cold with the windows open. Once when I went out of the room to see someone, I came back to find him sitting on top of my desk amidst piles of secret papers and red boxes which had G.R. in gold on their lids. I threw him off and he farted again.
That evening I had supper with crown prince Olav and Martha at the Norwegian embassy so while I went in I left Winston in the car. After dinner I said that I would have to go out and give Winston a walk and let him have a pee. They all said, ‘Bring him in.’ I said, ‘He farts; he isn’t any good and he has no respect for royalty.’ They said, ‘Bring him in.’ So I brought him in and he spent the rest of the evening slinking around the room casting lustful eyes in the direction of the crown princess and belching quickly. He only farted once there, and they thought it was a Norwegian ambassador, so that was all right. The ambassador was embarrassed.
That