1380. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 326–330.
[London]
Saturday. Sept. 15 [sic, for 16]. 1843. [1]
Victory & joy my beloved friend! Flush is at home!– He was recovered last night.
To give you the whole history of the hunting out of the banditti to their dens, wd be very long. My brothers, .. through a suspicious intermediatory,—Bishop of Oxford Street, [2] who knows you & who seems to me to have a great many too many intimate friends who deserve hanging, (at the other extreme end from you my dearest Miss Mitford!) to be quite without pretension himself,—became acquainted with one of the three great Agents of the dogstealers, .. Taylor, .. an ostensible cobler, but bearing, I hear, the mystery of iniquity [3] not merely in his hands but his countenance. When Alfred (Daisy) went to this man the day before yesterday, he said at first, .. you will never see your dog, Sir, again“. “And why?’. “Precisely because of your handbills. You have been so ill-advised as to make the affair known; the police are on the alert: and in all such cases, the custom of the FANCY is to send off the dogs in question instantly, either abroad or into the country– It is a fatal step, to make a loss known to the police.“ Daisy however persisted manfully,— having a card from Bishop & an imperative message that he (Taylor) was to find the dog, upon his head—“We will see, Sir, however, said the villain,—“what we can do. Leave me; and in two hours time I shall be in Wimpole Street with news of the dog—and if he is still in London & in the hands of the Fancy, you shall come with me & receive him at another place.” This was the day before yesterday morning. At eight oclock in the evening when everybody was at dinner, Daisy was called into the hall to Taylor. “I have found the dog” said the wretch, “give me five pounds, & come in a cab with me to the place.” Daisy had received instructions from myself to hesitate at no price whatever; but I unfortunately being low at the time in my finances & forced to borrow for the occasion, & he aware of this, he made some movement towards the dining room to get the money from Papa. Now Papa has an inveterate repugnance always to being what he calls “imposed upon”,—& on this account, a good deal of our diplomacy, which went upon the hope of being imposed upon in exchange for Flush, was kept advisedly from him. At the proposition of “five pounds”, he arose in indignation, got up from dinner to thunder thunderbolts against the agent of the Fancy, told him that he was a rascal, that he (Papa) wd give not a farthing more than two sovereigns .. unless he gave himself (the agent) into the charge of the police; & that as to the dog, it & he might go!– The effect was immediate. Taylor smiled significantly at Daisy, & observed as he passed through the door, .. “You will never see your dog again.”
My horror & distress when I came to hear of this, you may imagine. Papa said, ‘Say nothing of this to Ba’—but the voices were loud,—& I had been listening all day for a whisper. My brothers told me that they feared to stir any more in the matter, as Papa had said that he wd take it into his own hands. I never slept (or scarcely) for the second night.
Yesterday morning however, my resolution rose up into action, through hearing, as Henry did from Bishop, that the “Fancy”-people were capable of cutting the dog’s throat if it did not bring them exactly what they calculated on receiving. I knew that Papa’s plan was to proceed by police—& to leave the case pendent & my Flushie unenquired about for a few days, until the expectations of the right honorable “Fancy” came down to the two sovereigns. My despair overcame my sense of obedience! I sent down to Bishop, the three sovereigns, to persuade the other party to take the two & say no more about it. Is it a pardonable equivocation? Think .. of his throat being cut, poor little creature! Is it not better to be imposed on a hundred times over?—— Imposition, I always think, disgraces the imposer, & not the imposed upon—although men, & particularly some men, are otherwise minded. Taylor came here and agreed to meet Henry at Bishop’s with the dog—insisting besides on half a guinea more for his own share in the recovery—that is, for calling himself a cobler (“Boots neatly mended here!”) when he is a dogstealer by trade. Henry agreed to everything, went down to Bishop’s, & identified Flush who rushed up to him, kissing him eagerly, as Henry says, & then drank at a basin of water, which accidentally was in the room, as if the whole world’s thirst were on his tongue. Taylor observed (the savage!—) “Yes! he is thirsty. And when you get him home you had better give him something to eat instantly, for he has ate nothing & drunk nothing since he has been with the Fancy”!– He said also with most marvellous coolness, “that they had been for two years on the watch for Flush, & that they had hoped to get hold of him the other day when he was out with the lady in the chair, as he had been several times lately.” Conceive the audacity!—and the hardheartedness!! They must have guessed at my state of health, by the very movement of the chair,—drawn for a few steps & then resting!—and to calculate cooly on such an opportunity of taking away the little dog of which I was obviously so fond!– I said so to my brothers; & they laughed. “Hardheartedness! Why they wd have cut your own throat for five pounds”!– And that is true.
Mr Taylor’s parting consolation was to this effect. “Well Sir! If you lose your dog again whether in London or the country, come to me and I will recover him for you”. Most marvellous audacity!—meaning of course .. (as you translate from Araminta) “If you lose your dog again whether in town or country, you may be sure that I am at the bottom of it.”
The cab with Henry & Flush in it was at our door about eight oclock yesterday evening. Crow looking from a front window cried out “Flush is come”—and the minute afterwards I heard him gallopping up the stairs & felt his rapturous leaps & carresses upon my face & hands. Darling, darling little Flushie! He seemed bewildered, .. heartfull .. overfull of joy & wonder at finding us! I cried anew for pleasure,—and embraced & kissed him all over twenty times, dirty as he was, black as he was, palpably black with the soot & dust of their lothly dens. Then we gave him his favorite minced meat—and he refused to eat .. would not eat at all at first, from being so heartfull. It was only by degrees that the appetite developped itself from the loving nature! Yet his joy after the first hour, has broken out, only in fits. He lay on my pillow, & wd not be called down, .. & seemed grave & dispirited. He seems so this morning I think—& in the night he moaned & was restless. Perhaps he is not quite well from the terror & the long fasting—he is certainly thinner than when he went away. But oh! the joy of having him back! the joy on all sides! The raptures of the little creature were most affecting,—& his way of throwing himself at last into his old place on my pillow & refusing to move from it,—as if he were aware of enemies beyond, .. touched me very much. Oh, we shall take good care of him now! He never shall go from the house .. to walk in the streets, .. without a collar & chain; & he must learn to bear for the sake of safety, the discipline & restraint of the chain.
My dear Papa was delighted to come home & find Flush, & has not put me on an inquest for the means. I hear indeed that he asked Henrietta what I paid for him, & that she said “The reward of two sovereigns, I believe,—but really I know very little about it”—which was true, for everybody except Henry & me, had been out of the house all day. “Ah” remarked Papa—“two sovereigns! and I dare say, three besides.” Which is true also—but I hope I shant be questioned. In fact the recovery of my Flushie has cost me somewhere about seven sovereigns, rather more than less!—but if it had been seventy instead, it wd not have spoilt my great joy in seeing him again–
Thank you my beloved friend for your kindest sympathy of this morning. I knew that you wd be sorry. I love Flush twice over, you are aware .. for himself, once—and once for you.
Was the dog you lost, a spaniel? My dread was that the month of September wd be fatal to Flush, & that he wd be sent into the country on the strength of his drooping ears. [4] Only people kept saying that he wd be tried with a live rabbit before any such proceeding,—& he was sure to prove his absolute innocence of blood, whether of rabbit or mouse, if they tried him so!–
I am so glad you were “silly” like me—I save my reputation by it! To justify me to myself there was no need.
Here’s a long letter—& from one who began by meaning not to be “very long.” Sette’s adventures (for three of my brothers like the three eastern princes set out different ways after a dog!) [5] wd take longer to tell––& how he met dark men in dark alleys; & how he drew a fallacious hope from the ultra blackguardism of a certain Jim Green who talked pure Alsatian, [6] & was just setting out for a dog-fight to meet “lots of dogstealers,” prime men & his intimate friends.–
I have written enough today—& perhaps more than enough!—only you might care to hear some of the details of the ‘victory,’ I thought, not merely for Flush’s sake & my sake, but from your general philodogery. Oh, to transport the Fancy!! May God bless you my beloved friend.
Ever your attached
EBB.
What of Araminta?
We have had very animated good news from the travellers. [7]
I sh<d have> told you that in spite of my directions to keep clear of the police (I was so afraid of losing Flush in the uproar—so ready with all courtesy to the thieves, if they wd but let me have him back!) <…> Henry had arranged for a policeman in plain clothes to follow his cab in another, & help him to secure the thief as soon as they had the dog. A difference in the hour however caused this plan to fail.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 305–308.
Manuscript: Eton College Library, Fitzwilliam Museum, and Wellesley College.
1. 15 September 1843 was a Friday.
2. In letter 1383, EBB identifies him as “a gunmaker in Bond Street,” presumably William Bishop of 170 New Bond Street, listed in a contemporary directory as a silversmith and dealer in fire-arms, agent for Westley Richards, gunmakers.
3. II Thessalonians, 2:7. Taylor apparently had rôles in both of the two later episodes (1844 and 1846) in which Flush was stolen. EBB discussed the 1844 stealing in a letter to Miss Mitford postmarked 21 October, saying that Flush was retrieved from “the agent-thief” in the Shoreditch area of London. EBB did not then refer to Taylor by name, but she did so in 1846, when Flush was taken and rescued for the third and final time. Writing to RB on 6 September, she described her own inconclusive trip into Taylor’s neighbourhood, and her subsequent “resolution [not carried out] of going again myself to Mr. Taylor’s in Manning Street, or Shoreditch wherever it was, & saving the victim at any price.”
4. i.e., as a retriever.
5. In “Adventures of the Three Princes, Sons of the Sultan of China” in The Arabian Nights (VI, 366–374 in Jonathan Scott’s 1811 edition).
6. Thieves’ cant (OED).
7. Charles John and George Moulton-Barrett.
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