PETS OF GREAT MEN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 14 June 1924, Page 16

PETS OF GREAT MEN

CATS, DOGS, AND A SALA-

MANDER.

Now that . Gabrifclle D'Annunzio has become a prince, his admirers are recalling many of his titles to greatness (states the " Daily Telegraph "). Not the least of them, it is to be admitted, Is his taste in pets. Once a domesticated, a salamander, and made a companion o£ the crcature~'for three years. When it died it was buried in the master's study, beneath a black marble tablet inscribed in' Latin to the memory of, tho "blessed salamander." To the salamander, we are informed, a ' goldfish, succeeded. - It was given a name, Loia-Pe-Li-Tel, no, less, but nothing is said about the.tomb. Perhaps a mausoleum worthy of the master is under construction. We havo to confess that D'Annunzio has ail our man pi letters beaten. Horace Walpolo had his goldfish, thosa which lured, poor Selima. to her doom, but ho gave them no names, and he never thought of a salamander, though we protest that the creature would have gone with the gothic oi Strawberry Hill excellently well. Matthew Arnold celebratnd the virtues of liis cat and his dachshund in kindly elegies, which may not live so long as the verses to Lesbia's sparrow, but at least suggest that the..Arnoldian animals had individuality. A very different poet, Herrick, made a, friend of his pig, "and taught the' creature to drink out of a tankard. But we must confess that this sort of thing is riot in the vein of D'Annunzio. There was' a pig, too, which suffered from an unrequijjpd passion for j Sir Walter Scott, and once disconcerted the " Shirra" by appearing- at his horse's heels at a. meet. But all animals were liable to ' fall in love with Scott, who, to be sure, never met a salamander. What amount of personal attention a exacts from its master, we are not informed, but we doubt whether it is more than Johnson paid to his cats. For Hodge, not, as he said, the finest of them, he used to go out and buy oysters, a service which Hodge doubtless received as nothing less than his due. Whether the choice of a raven as a pet by Dickens was made from affection or with an'eye to business we have never felt sure. ' But the Inimitable showed a proper appreciation of the superiority of. pets to mere children; "he bit their ankles," says he. in his touching narative of the raven's demise, " but that was play." ■ D'Annunzio, wo feel, might admit that Disraeli s liking for the Hughenden peacocks showed the right spirit. But we have nothing to set up against the salamander. There was one moment when English literature had.a chance. If only .Rosetli had thought'-.of a salamander when he was gathering his menagerie to the queer menago at Chelsea! He was the man for it.