“I want to put up a monument to the nameless man who inspired such love,
and to the little dog that was capable of giving it. Ah gentlemen, do
not refuse, now.” She sketched her idea of the classic fireplace bier,
the dead shepherd of the Pentlands, and the little prostrate terrier.
“Immemorial man and his faithful dog. Our society for the prevention of
cruelty to animals is finding it so hard to get people even to admit the
sacredness of life in dumb creatures, the brutalizing effects of abuse
of them on human beings, and the moral and practical worth to us of
kindness. To insist that a dog feels, that he loves devotedly and with
less calculation than men, that he grieves at a master's death and
remembers him long years, brings a smile of amusement. Ah yes! Here in
Scotland, too, where your own great Lord Erskine was a pioneer of pity
two generations ago, and with Sir Walter's dogs beloved of the literary,
and Doctor Brown's immortal 'Rab,' we find it uphill work.
“The story of Greyfriars Bobby is quite the most complete and remarkable
ever recorded in dog annals. His lifetime of devotion has been witnessed
by thousands, and honored publicly, by your own Lord Provost, with the
freedom of the city, a thing that, I believe, has no precedent. All
the endearing qualities of the dog reach their height in this loyal
and lovable Highland terrier; and he seems to have brought out the best
qualities of the people who have known him. Indeed, for fourteen years
hundreds of disinherited children have been made kinder and happier by
knowing Bobby's story and having that little dog to love.”
She stopped in some embarrassment, seeing how she had let herself go, in
this warm championship, and then she added:
“Bobby does not need a monument, but I think we need one of him, that
future generations may never forget what the love of a dog may mean, to
himself and to us.”
The Grand Leddy must have won her plea, then and there, but for the fact
that the matter of erecting a monument of a public character anywhere
in the city had to come up before the Burgh council. In that body the
stubborn opposition of a few members unexpectedly developed, and, in
spite of popular sympathy with the proposal, the plan was rejected.
Permission was given, however, for Lady Burdett-Coutts to put up a
suitable memorial to Bobby at the end of George IV Bridge, and opposite
the main gateway to the kirkyard.
For such a public place a tomb was unsuitable. What form the memorial
was to take was not decided upon until, because of two chance happenings
of one morning, the form of it bloomed like a flower in the soul of the
Grand Leddy. She had come down to the kirkyard to watch the artist at
work. Morning after morning he had sketched there. He had drawn Bobby
lying down, his nose on his paws, asleep on the grave. He had drawn him
sitting upon the table-tomb, and standing in the begging attitude in
which he was so irresistible. But with every sketch he was dissatisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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