BORROWED FROM DUMAS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 11 September 1937, Page 9

BORROWED FROM DUMAS

BYRON’S PARLOUR TRICKS (By Air Mail—From Out Own Correspondent) LONDON, 19th August. It is amusing to find a genuine Dumas episode cropping up in a London gossip column as modern history. Wc are told that Lord Hailsham’s pet spaniel, Byron, has parlour tricks. When the Lord Chancellor holds out a piece of cake, and asks him whether he will eat this for Mr Ramsay Macdonald, Byron re r uses to budge. The same happens when he is invited to devour the desirable morsel tor Sir

Stafford Cripps, but for Lord Baldwin he will eagerly jump forward to eat the cake. This trick of course, depends not on any canine political prejud’ces. but on the raising of his master’s voice at the approved name. In Duma’s “Twenty Years After” there is a whole chapter devoted to the pranks played by an illustrious French prince of the blood whilst a political prisoner in a royal fortress. He teaches his dog to jump over a cane for various illustrious people, but. when the great Cardinal Mazarin. his master’s enemy, is mentioned, the clog not only refuses to jump, but breaks the cane in his teeth. One assumes that our Lord Chancellor reads his Dumas.