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Victorians and Their Animals

“As expected, this collection validates a concern for the inherent

value of animals. But the additional inclusion of leashing the beast
within ourselves in light of contradictory social impulses adds an
interesting and necessary perspective to a collection on Victorian
human/nonhuman relationships.”
—Dr. Randi Pahlau, Malone University, USA

Victorians and Their Animals: Beast on a Leash investigates the

notion that British Victorians did see themselves as a naturally
dominant species over other humans and over animals. They were
conscientiously, hegemonically determined to rule those beneath
them and the animal within themselves, albeit with varying degrees
of success and failure. The articles in this collection apply
posthumanism and other theories, including queer, postcolonialist,
deconstructionist, and Marxist approaches, in their exploration of
Victorian attitudes toward animals. They study the biopolitical
relationships between human and nonhuman animals in several key
Victorian literary works. Some of this book’s chapters deal with
animal ethics and moral aesthetics. Also being studied is the
representation of animals in several Victorian novels as narrative
devices to signify class status and gender dynamics, either to iterate
socially acceptable mores, to satirize hypocrisy or breach of behavior
or to voice social protest. All of the chapters analyze the
interdependence of people and animals during the nineteenth
century.

Brenda Ayres teaches English for Liberty University in Lynchburg,

Virginia, and has previously edited several collections of essays. The
most recent is Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women
Writers: A Hall of Mirrors and the Long Nineteenth Century (2017).
Her latest monograph is Betwixt and Between: The Biographies of
Mary Wollstonecraft (2017). She published her first article on
animals in Victorian literature in The George Eliot–George Henry
Lewes Newsletter (1991), titled “Dogs in George Eliot’s Adam Bede.”
She began collecting information on the subject when she created a
panel at the Southern Conference of British Studies in 2000 titled
“Animals in Victorian Literature” and presented “The Iconization of
Animals in Victorian Culture.” Two years later she spoke on “Beast on
a Leash: Victorian Dominion over the Animal Kingdom” at the Mid-
Atlantic Popular Conference.
Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture
Series Editor: Karen Raber, University of Mississippi, USA

Literary and cultural criticism has ventured into a brave new world in recent
decades: posthumanism, ecocriticism, critical animal studies, Object-Oriented
Ontology, the new vitalism, Actor-Network Theory, and other related approaches
have transformed the critical environment, reinvigorating our encounters with
familiar texts, and inviting us to take note of new or neglected ones. A vast array
of non-human creatures, things, and forces are now emerging as important agents
in their own right. Inspired by human concern for an ailing planet, ecocriticism has
grappled with the question of how important works of art can be to the
preservation of something we have traditionally called “nature.” Yet literature’s
capacity to take us on unexpected journeys through the networks of affiliation and
affinity we share with the earth on which we dwell—and without which we die—
and to confront us with the drama of our common struggle to survive and thrive
has not diminished in the face of what Lyn White, Jr. called “our ecological crisis.”
Animals have crept, slithered, trotted, swum, and flown away from their customary
function as metaphors, emblems or analogies; now they populate critical analysis
in increasingly complex ways, always in tension with our sense of what it means to
be “human,” or whether it is even possible to claim such a category of life exists.
Posthumanism, which often shares terrain with ecocriticism and animal studies,
has further complicated our conception of the cosmos by dethroning the individual
subject and dismantling the comfortable categories through which we have
interpreted our existence: we find our “selves” colonized by microbial beings,
occupied and enhanced by mechanical inventions and contraptions, traversed by
invisible forces from atmospheric changes to radiation, made vulnerable to our
planet’s sufferings, and inspired by its capacity for renewal. New materialism, new
vitalism and all the permutations of theory that have evolved and are evolving to
account for our entanglements with lively matter have ensured, however, that our
displacement from the center of creation feels less like a demotion than a happy
event: from our previous occupation of the impoverished, isolated space atop the
mountain of creation, we might instead descend into the fecund plenitude of
kinship with all things.
Until now, however, the elements that compose this wave of scholarship on
nonhuman entities have had no place to gather, no home that would nurture them
as a collective project. “Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture”
provides that structure, giving critical treatments of all kinds of non-humans and
humans a local habitation. In this series, readers and fellow critics will find animals
of all descriptions, but also every other form of biological life; they will meet the
non-biological, the microscopic, the ethereal, the intangible. It is our goal for the
series to provide an encounter zone where all forms of human engagement with
the non-human in all periods and national literatures can be explored, and where
the discoveries that result can speak to one another, as well as to readers and
students.

Victorians and Their Animals

Beast on a Leash
Brenda Ayres
For more information about this series, please visit:
www.routledge.com/Perspectives-onthe-Non-Human-in-Literature-and-
Culture/book-series/PNHLC
Victorians and Their Animals
Beast on a Leash

Edited by
Brenda Ayres
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Brenda Ayres to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-35956-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42900-2 (ebk)
Figure Front: Kittens’ Tea and Croquet Party by Walter Potter (1870), photograph
by Phil Brown (3D Phil).
Dedicated to My Father, Charles L.
Ayres (1926–2018), and to All Other
Lovers of Animals
Contents

List of Figures
Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Beast on a Leash

BRENDA AYRES

1 Gaskell’s Activism and Animal Agency

BRENDA AYRES

2 Old and New Beef: Caring for Animals in Household Words

LIAM YOUNG

3 George Eliot’s Use of Horses in Measuring the Moral Maturity of

Characters in Her Novels
CONSTANCE M. FULMER

4 Pigs in Great Expectations: Class, Dehumanization, and Marxist

Animal Studies
JESSICA KUSKEY

5 Ants, Insects, and Automatons: Classifying Creatures in Hardy’s

The Return of the Native
ANNA WEST

6 It’s Raining Cats and Dogs in the Novels of George Eliot

BRENDA AYRES
7 A Fine Kettle of Fish: Cultural (and Culinary) Preservation in
Anglo-Jewish Ghetto Stories
LINDSAY KATZIR

8 Gendered Metamorphoses in the Natural History Museum and

Trans-Animality in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle
PANDORA SYPEREK

9 The “Animality” of Speech and Translation in The Jungle Books

CHRISTIE HARNER

List of Contributors
Index
Figures

Figure Front: Kittens’ Tea and Croquet Party by Walter Potter

(1870), photograph by Phil Brown (3D Phil).
0.1 Windsor Castle in Modern Times: Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert, with Victoria, Princess Royal by Edwin Henry Landseer
(1841–1843). Credit: Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II 2018.
6.1 Happy Family by Walter Potter (1870), photograph by Philip
Brown (3D Phil).
6.2 Rabbits’ Village School by Walter Potter (1888), photograph by
Philip Brown (3D Phil).
6.3 The Kittens’ Wedding by Walter Potter (1890), photograph by
Philip Brown (3D Phil).
8.1 Lithinus nigrocristatus on lichen-covered bark, c. 1890. Natural
History Museum, London, photograph by author.
8.2 Edward Linley Sambourne, “Next Hideous ‘Sensation
Chignon,’” Punch 53 (November 30, 1867): 219.
8.3 Edward Linley Sambourne, “Suffrage For Both Sexes,” Punch
58 (April 2, 1870): 128.
8.4 Alice Comyns Carr, Beetle Wing Dress for Ellen Terry, 1888.
Smallhythe Place, photograph by author.
Preface and Acknowledgments

One of the earliest academic conferences I attended was one on

George Eliot held at Northeast Missouri State in Kirksville, Missouri,
in 1991. I presented a paper entitled “Dogs in George Eliot’s Adam
Bede.” My paper had a lot of humor in it, appropriately so because
Eliot loved dogs and infused her own wonderful humor when she
wrote about them and their involvement in their humans’ lives. My
audience laughed at the right places, so I felt as validated as
someone auditioning for a comedy spot for a show. Dear Barbara
Hardy was in the audience, and after hearing my presentation, she
encouraged me to write a book on the subject. It would take me
three decades before I would make time for such a project, but I did
manage to get the conference paper published in The George Eliot–
George Henry Lewes Newsletter (September 1991).
The next thing accomplished on this topic was that I organized a
panel on “Animals in Victorian Literature” for the Southern
Conference of British Studies in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2000. I
presented a paper with the title of “The Iconization of Animals in
Victorian Culture.” Kurt Koenigsberger was on my panel and
presented a fabulous paper on elephants in Dickens. He would
publish The Novel and the Menagerie: Totality, Englishness, and
Empire in 2007.
Two years after Kentucky, I presented “Beast on a Leash: Victorian
Dominion over the Animal Kingdom” at the Mid-Atlantic Popular
Conference in Pittsburgh. Don’t ask me why I didn’t write an entire
book on Victorian animals at that time. I meant to. For years, I
wrote down references to animals mentioned in every Victorian
novel that I read or taught. My heart failed me every time I saw that
a book had been published on “my subject.” I kept telling myself I
must prioritize the project before others would “steal my thunder.” I
am not a procrastinator by nature; I have just been tied up with the
business of teaching and publishing other projects that seemed
more pressing.
2017 witnessed a frenzy of activity on the Victoria Listserv about
animals in Victorian literature and culture, which demonstrated that
the subject was hugely marketable and that if I were going to
deliver “the goods,” it was now or never. Still, I had so many other
writing commitments. Furthermore, I was thinking that the book
would be better served if it reflected multiple interests, theories,
approaches, and perspectives instead of being just a monograph.
Therefore, I decided to advertise a call for abstracts through the
Victoria Listserv, organize and edit a collection of essays, and write
the introduction and a chapter or two myself.
Routledge posted a notice that it was interested in publishing
monographs on “Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and
Culture.” I emailed my proposal to the editor of the series, Karen
Raber, and she was immediately interested; however, she
encouraged me to foreground posthuman theory in the work. The
world of posthumanism was new terrain for me which required the
reading of dozens of books and articles. All the while I was groaning,
“Why didn’t I write this thing back in the ’90s before every discipline
in the world got interested in animal studies?” Integrating the
scholarship since 1991 (and before) has been a daunting task and
then finding something new to say has been like digging for gold
after the California Gold Rush.
Nevertheless, I am immensely grateful for the many works written
about animals in literature that have opened veins of treasure that I
would never have found by myself. Of course, a great debt belongs
to Harriet Ritvo who pioneered such studies with her The Animal
Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age in
1987, which is a good starting point for anyone who wants to learn
about animals in Victorian culture. Another essential (in my opinion)
is Kathleen Kete’s The Beast in the Boudoir. Just last year (2017)
two important collections came out that I also recommend: Animals
in Victorian Literature: Context for Criticism, edited by Laurence W.
Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison; and Victorian Animal Dreams:
Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture, edited
by Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay (first printed in
2007). Be assured, though, that Victorians and Their Animals
tenders much that has never been published before.
Animal Studies is a hot trend in academe today that attracts every
discipline. If you type in “Animal Studies” in the MLA database, you
get 1,834 entries (as of April 2018); “Animals” results in 9,122. If
you search “Animal Studies” in Google Books, you get a staggering
3,080,000 hits, and “animals,” 10,800,000. “Animals and nineteenth
century” produces 2,030,000 hits. “Animals and Victorian” lists
628,000.
Why are we so fascinated with animals? Why do I spend more on
my dogs for food and medical care than I do on myself? Why am I
more enamored with some of the animals in Victorian novels than I
am with the human characters? Why have Animal Studies, Animality
Studies, and Human-Animal Studies (HAS), Anthrozoology, and
similar programs become so popular in academe? What is it about
our relationship with animals that fuels our angst and hopes for the
future for all species?
The answers, I am sure, are complex, but the questions signal
that there is more that we can learn about animals and our
relationships with them that warrant another study about them. Our
Victorian ancestors were just as fascinated with animals but perhaps
for different reasons.
I am in debt to the contributors of this volume for their insights. It
has been sheer joy to exchange collegial thoughts with them on this
subject and therefore, I give heartfelt thanks to Liam Young,
Constance M. Fulmer, Jessica Kuskey, Anna West, Lindsay Katzir,
Pandora Syperek, and Christie Harner for their chapters to this study.
I also wish to thank my student, an English major at Liberty
University, Rebecca Pickard, who asked if she could help me with the
editing. She offered this without solicitation and without credit and
remuneration only because she loves literature and literary studies
and desired to gain experience being an editor.
Walter Potter (1835–1918) was a taxidermist who displayed his
animals and his anthropomorphic dioramas in his museum in
Bramber, Sussex, England. At the time of his death he had mounted
over 10,000 specimens. The photograph of The Kittens’ Tea Party
was contributed by and granted permission to be used by Philip
Brown (3D Phil), as were The Kittens’ Wedding, The Rabbits’ Village
School, and The Happy Family published in the introduction and
Chapter 6. A great admirer of Potter’s work, Phil has generous
permitted me to use his photographs.
Introduction
Beast on a Leash
Brenda Ayres

It was the age of Queen Victoria: an age of reign, an age of victory,

an age of the victor—from the perspective of the Victorian Britons
who saw themselves historically and naturally poised to rule the
world. Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Spencer’s
terminology for it, “the survival of the fittest,” became woven into
the fabric of Victorian Weltanschauung, as the empire grew. British
nationalism rose to lofty heights by the end of the century when the
empire consisted of 10 million square miles and 400 million people
(Read 1994: 350). Just six years after the Queen’s death, the empire
occupied more than one-fifth of the world’s land mass (Fraser 2003:
606). Many Englishmen believed, by virtue of survival of the fittest,
that they were not only superior to animals, they were also superior
to most other humans and therefore it was their duty and natural
and God-given right to dominate others.
With conquest of the seas, a host of English migrants flocked to
the remotest kingdoms of the world to find, name, and conquer the
animals there, even if they had to “exterminate all the brutes,”1
including entire species and tribes and villages. The information that
they gathered about animals proliferated through the presses. Emily
Shore documented twelve volumes on bird behavior (Gates 1998:
70). Jane Blackburn painted birds, and Elizabeth Gould illustrated
them, but the most famous bird book in the nineteenth century, a
best-seller, was published by Thomas Bewick (Vol. 1 in 1797 and Vol.
2 in 1804) and immortalized in Jane Eyre (Brontë 1848 1–3). Emily
Bowes Gosse illustrated underwater life. Margaret Fountaine
identified 22,000 butterflies (Gates 1998: 87). Eleanor Ormerod
became the expert on the botfly and Hessian fly, and she wrote
books to gardeners as to how to differentiate beneficial from
injurious insects (88). Henry Walter Bates returned to England from
the Rain Forest with a collection of 14,712 species of insects, 8,000
of them previously unknown (Bates 1892 [1863]: lxv). Other
predominant biologists, whose passion took them into the jungles
and deserts where no Europeans had trod before included: Walter
Fitch, Sarah Bowdich Lee, Mary Kingsley, Henry Guillemand, William
Buchell, and others.
The increasing volume of animals that the British could identify, as
well as the increasing volume of animals and humans that they could
dominate seemed to convince them that they were a superior race.
Domination was not just the mentality and act of scientists either;
there were more than just naturalists who tramped through the
wilds. This was “the golden age” of white hunters on safari.2 An
exuberant number of animal trophies were brought back to England,
which incited more pride of the empire. Gordon Cumming, Samuel
White Baker, William Cornwallis Harris, William Henry Drummond,
George P. Sanderson, and Horace Gordon Hutchinson, to name just
a few, were notorious baggers of African animals. They nearly
eradicated entire continents of buffalos, elephants, giraffes,
rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses in just a few decades. As for the
favorite sport of the aristocracy at home, there were foxhunting and
horse racing. Considered lower class but attracting scores of
gentlemen as well were bull-baiting and cockfighting. Britons of all
classes collected insects, went rockpooling, and kept home
aquariums and terrariums.
Many Westerners lived vicariously through adventures written by
Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Joseph
Conrad, G. A. Hentry, and E. M. Forster. Haggard’s works inspired
Edgar Rice Burroughs to create Tarzan. Women tapped into the
literary market through their writing, illustrating, and painting, made
lucrative because of the growing interest in exotic and extinct
animals. Mary Anning and her dog Tray achieved fame for her
collection of Jurassic marine fossils. A pioneer of archaeozoology was
Dorothy Bate (Shindler 2005: 229). As a young woman, she travelled
to Cyprus, and in limestone caves she “was the first to find
Pleistocene fossils of pygmy elephants and hippos” (2). Flora Annie
Steel wrote adventure stories of women in India, the most well-
known being her 1896 novel, On the Face of the Waters (Steel
1896). Isabella Bird became famous for her explorations and her
records of flora and fauna.3
The nineteenth century was a great age of exploration,
geographically, intellectually, and scientifically, that raised more
questions than it could answer. Never before had there been so
many readers in England, English travelers to other countries, and
people who were inquisitive about the world around them and
beyond. Men like W. G. Palgrave, David Livingston, Sir Henry Morton
Stanley, John Hanning Speke, and Richard Francis Burton were
determined to find the source of the Nile. Through writing about
their quest, they made the world accessible to the most provincial.
With the ability to speak forty languages and dialects, Burton
traveled through Africa, Arabia, Ethiopia, and North and South
Americas, recording biology and folklore as he went. He also boasted
of learning the language of the monkey. His translations of works fill
seventy volumes, including the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883)
and an unbowdlerized 16-volume edition of Arabian Nights (1885–
1888), which included several animal fables.
It may seem odd that Victorians were enthralled with “uncivilized”
peoples and exotic animals since they viewed domestication as a
virtue. But by learning about them, the Victorians were reassured
that self-control and the British proper way of doing things were
eminently the irreproachable paragon for the modern age. “The
maintenance and study of captive wild animals,” Harriet Ritvo (1987)
theorizes, were “simultaneous emblems of human mastery over the
natural world and of English dominion over remote territories.” They
“offered an especially vivid rhetorical means of reenacting and
extending the work of the empire” (205), and they were “a
compelling symbol of human power” (232). Imported exotic animals
were pervasive in nineteenth-century England. They were exhibited
by showmen on the streets and in coffeehouses and taverns, so that
every class of person could see them (Cowie 2014: 2). Circuses,
zoos, menageries, freak shows, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show
were major sources of entertainment, especially for the burgeoning
middle class. Having gained equestrian skills while an officer in the
British Calvary, in the 1760s Philip Astley began performing
breathtaking feats on horses that he rode in a circle (Nickell 2005:
7–8). The eighteenth-century horseman was a hero, so Linda Simon
(2014) deduces, adding that his command over a beast extolled his
muscularity and manliness, which may be one of the reasons that
Astley’s riding became so popular (29). Another is because he
reenacted battle scenes, thus “fueling contemporary imaginings of
warfare and of Britain’s military prowess” (Assael 2005: 53). After
building Astley’s Amphitheatre Riding House—later renamed the
Royal Amphitheatre (Nickell 2005: 7)—he covered it with canvas and
other more permanent structures to protect visitors from inclement
weather (Simon 2014: 31). Added to his show were clowns, a zebra
(31–32), a monkey, and other acts (Velten 2013: 135), and before
long he was running nineteen circuses (Hoh and Rough 1990: 44).4
Astley’s was not the only circus in England. Charles Hughes and
Charles Dibdin formed the English Royal Circus in 1782. Hughes took
it to St. Petersburg in 1790, and it became Russia’s first circus
(Neirick 2012: 6). One of his trick riders, John Bill Ricketts, went to
America and started a circus there (Curnutt 2001: 232). These
circuses included elephants, lions, tigers, and bears. Most managers
of circuses and menageries purchased their exotic animals from
ship’s captains (Ritvo 1996: 44).
Menageries, at first called “beast shows” (44), evolved into zoos,
beginning with the London Zoo in 1828. Many of the animals
became national pets, but only so long as they behaved themselves
like domesticated animals. Chunee was an Indian elephant brought
to England in 1810 who lived in the Exeter Change. He was beloved
by children who “patted and petted him” (“Death” 1852: 362),
including Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, and Queen Victoria
(Bondeson 1999: 78). After sixteen years in captivity, he started to
experience what all Victorian newspapers and journal articles called
“annual paroxysm,” a euphemism for being “sexually excitable.” One
written account also said that he suffered from an infected tusk that
went untreated. In truth he was suffering from a “square foot of
toothache” (Thornbury 1865: 184).5 Although the stories do not
agree as to the basic cause of his drastic change in temperament, he
did kill a man. Based on the write-up in the Annual Register, 6
Richard Altick (1978) spins this account:

One of his keepers entered Chunee’s stall with a twelve-foot

spear to keep him occupied while others cleaned his cage. In an
act of hubris, the keeper threw down the spear saying that he
didn’t need it. Chunee picked up the spear and played with it.
The keeper then picked up a broom and started to beat the
elephant and ordered him to turn around. The elephant obeyed
and in so doing, accidentally “thrust his tusk” into the man and
killed him. After this, Chunee “instantly stood sill, and began to
tremble, as if conscious of the mischief he had done.” The
coroner’s jury agreed that it was an accident, but because of
previous erratic behavior, the decision was made to euthanize
him.
(311)

They were unsuccessful in killing him with poison, so a company of

soldiers from Somerset House shot at him while he was in his cage.
Commanded to kneel, the giant “actually knelt, and in that position
received the balls in the parts particularly desired to be aimed at”
(Hone 1859: 334). It took more than 150 bullets to end his life
(“Death” 1852: 364). The horrendous scene was illustrated by
George Cruikshank7 and kindled an outpouring of national grief.
Sentimental poems appeared in most of the newspapers, including
one that hoped that God would smite the keeper who commanded
the obedient elephant to kneel and receive his death blow
(Bondeson 1999: 92). Plays were performed honoring him as a
national monument that had been destroyed. At the same time, his
dissection was a public spectacle; people paid a shilling to watch it.
Afterward, his skeleton was put on display (Altick 1978: 313), but
the rest of him “was sold for cat’s meat” (Breese 1885: 660). The
Mirror of Literature ran recipes for cooking elephant (Altick 1978:
314).
Some sixty years later, when an African elephant created problems
because of coming into musth (a sexually aroused state when
elephants’ testosterone levels can rise to 60 times higher than
normal), the zoo sold him to P. T. Barnum in America (Ritvo 1987:
225–26, 232). The loss of the beloved Jumbo, upon whom many
British children had ridden in Regent’s Park and who was a favorite
of the Queen, struck considerable damage to British pride. Petitions
were signed and prayer vigils held begging for his rescue. Even
officials at London Zoo received death threats if they would persist in
exiling him to America (Harding 2000: 47). But to America he went,
and to the Americans it was a coup, but not before Jumbo and many
other exotic animals had become living emblems of the power of the
Victorian empire that had reached into the heart of Africa and had
placed the Queen as Empress of India.
In addition to public zoos and animal shows, private menageries
and elaborate aviaries, birdhouses, and dovecotes were in vogue
(Ruhling and Freeman 1994: 36). Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet
Daniel Gabriel Rossetti had his own menagerie at Cheyne Walk8 that
consisted of

a Pomeranian puppy, an Irish deerhound, a barn-owl named

Jessie, another owl named Bobby, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs,
two successive wombats, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an
ordinary marmot, kangaroos and wallabies, a deer, two or more
armadillos, a white mouse with her brood, a raccoon, squirrels, a
mole, peacocks, wood-owls, Virginian owls, horned owls, a
jackdaw, a raven, parakeets, a talking parrot, chameleons, grey
lizards, Japanese salamanders, and a laughing jackass … and a
zebu.
 (Marillier 1899: 228)

Edmund Kean, the celebrated Shakespearean actor, often romped

with his friend, a lion—actually an American puma—that he kept in
his house (Cornwall 1835: 134–35, and Jardine 1834: 133–34). Lord
Byron was also known to have given freedom of his hall to giraffes
and monkeys.9 Again, according to the perfectly typical Victorian
paradox, the lower classes were derided for living in animal squalor,
but to have a zebra roam one’s manicured lawn was quite
fashionable. This sort of paradox is pronounced in Deerbrook by
Harriet Martineau (1872 [1839]). In the “rich country region” (1) are
the gentry with their peacocks and Borzois, their foxhunts and fine
horses; the country is a “pretty situation” (1). But the lower-class
country people believe in druids and witches; then the country is
primitive, ignorant, and uncouth. Control versus being controlled was
the difference. Additionally, as Keith Thomas (1983) so astutely
remarked, the menagerie of the aristocracy “symbolized its owner’s
triumph over the natural world; some medieval rulers even
demonstrated their valour by fighting against their captive beasts.
Later the zoo became a symbol of colonial conquest as well as
wealth and status” (277).
Although possessing and controlling animals showcased one’s
status, one did not always have to do that with live animals: The
Victorians decorated with animal motifs. The peacock is the perfect
bird to describe the Victorians. Exotic—from the Congo and India—
colorful, proud, flaunting—the peacock (Ruhling and Freeman 1994:
149, 161) and his feathers accessorized clothing as well as homes.
Lion paws (50) and other animal parts were carved in furniture.
Animals were stuffed and then exhibited in homes and museums.
Taxidermy had become a veritable, lucrative profession, with 247
men and 122 women in London earning their living this way (Cowie
2014: 2). In 1861 Walter Potter began exhibiting his stuffed animals
that he posed in anthropomorphic tableaux. He opened his Museum
of Curiosities in 1880 in West Sussex (Morris and Ebenstein 2014: 4–
6). The frontispiece to this book is a photograph of his The Kittens’
Tea and Croquet Party.10 Potter’s museum was so popular that the
village of Bramber had to lengthen its train platform to
accommodate the crowds that came on weekends (Ketteman n.d.).
Sculptures, paintings, and other artistic media of animals
abounded. One of London’s most famous landmarks is Edwin
Landseer’s four bronze lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in
Trafalgar Square. As for paintings of animals, no doubt the first
image that comes to mind is one of Landseer’s paintings, especially
his Queen Victoria and Her Family at Windsor Castle, c. 1842, which
portrays Victoria and Albert with only one child, but no fewer than
four dogs (Figure 0.1)

Figure 0.1 Windsor Castle in Modern Times: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,
with Victoria, Princess Royal by Edwin Henry Landseer (1841–1843).
Credit: Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018.

Most of the depictions of animals in the arts “informed the

Victorian world view and dictated, often unconsciously, codes of
conduct” (Amato 2015: 7). William Lauder Lindsay’s definition of
Victorian “domestication” “implies perfect resignation to man’s power
and sovereignty, as well as free and full companionship or
fellowship” (Lindsay 1879: 271). He wrote about the “Happy
families,” a traveling animal show that exhibited a variety of species
living in harmony together though some of them were natural
enemies. The exhibit is “most instructive and suggestive as showing
man’s power for good or evil over other animals, the force of
discipline, their capacity for education, and their power of control of
their natural propensities or passion” (31–32).
The Landseer painting seems to convey that Victorian
domestication produces a happy family. Eos, a greyhound, was
Prince Albert’s favorite dog, a breed that was considered an emblem
of masculinity (Amato 2015: 78), as he perches like a phallus
between Albert’s legs. The Queen stands coyly, demurely, and
quietly while holding a nosegay given to her by her charming
husband. Islay, her favorite Skye terrier, is begging for the Queen’s
attention.
The portrait shows a prospect outside a window where nature has
been subdued and controled. Everything in the painting suggests
tranquility and harmony, observes Keridiana Chez (2017: 28–29).
This sounds like a plausible interpretation, except for the little
princess’ holding a dead kingfisher in her hand as if it were some
sort of toy. Kingfishers may have been good eating insofar as their
major diet consisted of crabs and perch. But mostly they were shot
and stuffed and displayed in glass cases because of their beautiful
plumage. Their feathers were also used to decorate ladies’ hats, and
they were popular to put on flies for fishing (Smith 1904: 788).
The painting reflects the ambivalence that the Victorians had with
animals. In his lecture to the Mechanic’s Institution at the Music Hall
in Chester (1859), Major Leigh Egerton declared: “The love of Pets is
one of the flowers of civilization” and “on the whole there is
something humanizing in a Pet, which makes the heart open to
genial warmth and kindness, like the rose bud expanding its long
folded leaves when kissed the sunbeam” (Egerton 1859: 6). He may
be right; his encomium for pet lovers is apparent in Landseer’s
painting, but how does one explain the contrast between that and
the cavalier, callous distribution of dead birds that are strewn about
in the painting as if they had been massacred? These are the kind of
questions that Victorians and Their Animals will raise in its
investigation of the incongruous attitudes that the Victorians held
toward animals that will dispel some of the assumptions that have
been published previously and will help the reader arrive at a clearer
understanding of the historical relationship that humans have shared
with animals.
Besides those questions about the relationship between man and
beast during Victoria’s reign, the notion of the happy, harmonious
nuclear family was an ideal but rarely a reality. This is one of the
reasons that Monica Flegel (2015), in her book on pets and
domesticity, applies queer theory to her study. Pets, like servants,
were considered family members, but like servants, they were
prohibited from reproducing or creating families of their own.
Furthermore, a pet could disrupt the ideal domestic household by
being a “de facto child” (1–2). This was a complaint that Mary
Wollstonecraft (1793 [1792]) made several times in A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman, that women often paid more attention to their
lapdogs than they did their children.11 Laura Brown’s analysis of
lapdogs in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture led her to
conclude that many women were anti-female and treated the lapdog
as “both an inappropriate or perverse sexual partner” (Brown 2010:
72).
Whether one accepts Flegel’s, Wollstonecraft’s, or Brown’s
interpretation, the pampered pet contributed to a “non-normative
familial arrangement” that represented “failed sexuality,” which was
particularly apparent (to Flegel 2015) when so many spinsters and
widows coddled their lapdogs as if they were children (10). In
supporting this argument, Flegel quotes Donna Haraway, who wrote
the foreword to Hird’s and Giffney’s Queering the Non/Human.
“Queering has the job of undoing ‘normal’ categories,” Haraway
(2008) notes, “and none is more critical than the human/nonhuman
sorting operation.”12 Animals in Victorian literature “stretch our
narratives of family and domesticity in ways that acknowledge
alternate sexualities, power structures, and ways of understanding
time” (Flegel 2015: 6).
Alongside idealizing domesticity, albeit problematically so,
Landseer’s painting also promoted nationalism, which formed the
basis of most activity and attitudes toward animals (and other
humans perceived as animals) that prevailed in the nineteenth
century. Civilized people like the Britons were intentional about
taming the beasts around them and inside themselves and inside
their fellow humans. Therefore, a reason why Landseer might have
painted so many dead wild birds in stark contrast to the live but
domesticated dogs was to say that the royal family can rule the
“disorderly kingdom” of the world outside their home (Chez 2017:
35).
The dogs in this painting are significant in other ways as well. The
portrait has three Skye terriers, a breed from Scotland who hunted
fox but preferred to stay indoors. The most famous Skye terrier was
the one that legend tells hid under the petticoats of Mary, Queen of
Scots, when she was being executed. He was there to comfort her.
The unconfirmed story that follows is that the little fellow refused to
eat afterward and thus died. The other famous Skye terrier is
Greyfriars Bobby, who spent fourteen years guarding the grave of his
master until he himself died. Famous for their loyalty then, of course
they would have been a favorite of Queen Victoria and would appear
in the portrait.
Another very loyal dog was the greyhound, and he was a hunter
as well. Ritvo (1987) believed that an index of an advanced
civilization is that its people do not eat dogs (20–21). Instead they
domesticate them and breed intelligent dogs, although pugs from
China, to the Victorians, were considered stupid (20–21). The
greyhound is an extremely intelligent and obedient dog. Landseer
asks the eye to draw parallels between Prince Albert and his
greyhound; the dog’s coat is shiny black with a white spot similar to
the shiny black jacket and white shirt worn by his master.
Darwin (1905) himself found no record of “bloodhounds, spaniels,
true greyhounds having been kept by savages,” concluding that they
were the ontogeny of a “long-continued civilisation” (41). Most
certainly the greyhound has been an emblem of nobility; the breed
was a favorite of former empires such as the Persian, Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman. Greyhounds were part of the history of England,
having been in great demand by the Celts and then Anglo Saxons,
and were valued so highly by the Normans after they invaded Britain
that they imposed a tax on these dogs, which meant that only the
nobility could possess them (Low 1845: 715–23). Sarah Amato
(2015) noted that dogs were “a source of national pride,” and of all
breeds, “the bulldogs and greyhounds have long been associated
with the English because they epitomized loyalty, strength and
nobility of the English character” (25).
An additional outcome of Darwinism and theme of Landseer’s
painting was the perception that those who are truly superior rule
with kindness and self-control instead of brute force; however, this
was not an ideology that was consistently practiced even by the
upper classes, as also illustrated by Albert’s dead game birds. No
doubt the birds would be served for dinner and the shooting was not
senseless killing. Still, a national icon that one often associates with
the Victorian aristocracy is foxhunting. In Anthony Trollope’s Eustace
Diamonds, Lord George explains “the theory and system of fox-
hunting” to Lizzie. The hounds draw out the fox, the “field” gives
chase, and then the dogs “chop him;” that is to say, they tear him to
pieces. Lizzie innocently asks why the fox didn’t run away, considers
him “a stupid beast,” and then asks, “Do they liked to be chopped?”
(Trollope 1873 [1871]: 138–46).
Another irreconcilable conflict between Victorians and their
humanity toward animals has to do with medical research. Even in
the nineteenth century, experiments on animals created intense
ethical dilemmas, prompting a flurry of antivivisection writing by
Vernon Lee, Anna Kingsford, Frances Swiney, Florence Dixie,
Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Ouida, and Frances Power Cobbe.
Kerdiana Chez (2017) recounts a story from an 1890 issue of
Scientific American, complete with illustration, of a procedure in
which physicians grafted a dog’s bone to a boy’s bone, while keeping
the dog alive. The dog’s vocal chords were removed so as not to
disturb the boy. The dog was permanently attached to the boy’s leg
and unable to move (18–19). One can be amazed at the loyalty of a
dog like Greyfriars Bobby, but can one be anything but appalled at
such an anthropocentric act as physically affixing a dog to a boy’s
leg and preventing that poor creature to move or utter a sound of
pain or protest?
Perhaps arguments can be made—and have been made—as to the
unavoidable pain inflicted on animals because they are a necessary
source of meat and labor. However, there are countless stories of
heinous cruelty to animals in nineteenth-century England as well,
like boys skinning cats alive, men pulling wings off live birds for the
feathers, men working horses and dogs to death in pulling carriages
and carts, and the like. Elizabeth Heyrick’s description of the
atrocities committed on livestock in the open market of Smithfield
can be reduced to only one phrase that she uses, “a very hell upon
earth!” (Heyrick 1823: 9). Most animals eat other animals, but only
the human animal is capable of such base depravity as to be
senseless to, or even worse, entertained by the pain of other
animals, human, or otherwise.
The first animal protection bill to be debated in Parliament was
introduced by William Johnstone Pulteney in 1800. A Scottish
Member of Parliament, he asked for bull-baiting to be made illegal.
George Canning, who would one day be Prime Minster, led the
opposition, arguing that “the sport” allowed the lower classes to
expend frustrations that might otherwise be directed at the upper
classes. Furthermore, bull-baiting gave “an athletic, vigorous tone to
the character of the class engaged in it.”13 Two years later the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded, and in
1840, with the patronage of the Queen, it became the Royal SPCA.
Nearly every year throughout the nineteenth century, Parliament was
asked to pass some act to prevent cruelty to animals. The very fact
that so many bills had to be proposed indicates that neither humane
treatment nor the conviction that human treatment should be shown
to animals was universal. The ambivalence that the Victorians had
about animals and what constitutes civilization and superiority is
best illustrated by Amato’s ironic statement in her introduction to
Beastly Possessions: “As Victorian Britons go about their daily
routines, we watch them fuss over their pets and express concern
about the arrangement of taxidermy” (Amato 2015: 5).
Seemingly oblivious to their own complicity (such as ladies injuring
animals at London Zoo by poking them with their parasols
[Schomberg 1957: 35]), many of the parasol women perceived that
only the lower classes and the uncivilized were cruel to animals.
Such behavior was not only a violation of noblesse oblige—a code
that demanded the highest, most upright behavior of humans—it put
human beings “back in the jungle” (Turner 1980: 69). “Nowhere are
the brutish passions of man more displayed than in cruelty,” an
article in Animal World pronounced.

Just so far as a man is cruel does he show less of the human

nature and more of the animal nature which exist together in him
—just so far does he show that he has forgotten that it is the
glory of the human to control the animal nature.14

Not all Victorians accepted Darwin’s theory of animal hierarchy

and struggle for survival of the fittest. In his 1871 Primitive Culture
Sir Edward Tylor coined the term “animism” and defined it as “the
doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general” (Tylor 1871:
1:21). It is an

idea of pervading life and will in nature far outside modern limits,
a belief in personal souls animating even what we call inanimate
bodies, a theory of transmigration of souls as well in life as after
death, a sense of crowds of spiritual beings, sometimes flitting
through the air, but sometimes also inhabiting trees and rocks
and waterfalls, and so lending their own personality to such
material objects.
(1:260)

Since he and others like him disparaged the doctrine as being

primitive and as being held only by the ancients or uncivilized, his
definition has since become designated as “old animism” (Harvey
2006: vii). Instead of being critical or condescending, “new animism”
holds more respect for animist views and is more critical of
modernity, engaging in debates on ethics concerning environmental
issues (vii).15
New Animism is a broad canopy or net (depending upon one’s
vantage point) of ideas that boil down to one metaphysical question:
What does it mean to be living? Like any other metaphysical
question, before one can tackle it, one must define terms and
question what it means to be alive. Are rocks alive? Are waterfalls
alive? Derrida (2002) asked what it means to be “living” (and
“dying”) in his The Animal That Therefore I Am (380) and concluded
that “speciesism” is all wrong. He traced the history of the “chain of
being” and came to reject a long-standing assumption that humans
have been given dominion over the animal kingdom by God.
There are still those who are convinced that there is an animal
that exists inside all of us, a theory held by many Victorians, or that
we are human animals, as many posthumanists assert. David
Abram’s Becoming Animal expresses his concern that by subjugating
the animal within ourselves and prioritizing the rational, the
scientific, and the technological, we have “cut our lives off from the
necessary nourishment of contact and interchange with other shapes
of life” (Abram 2011: 7). Our “animal body,” he insists, is our
“primary instrument of all our knowing, as the capricious earth
remains our primary cosmos” (8).
In a similar vein, Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature, written in 1986,
insists that all individual living beings have intrinsic moral worth. His
theory is that humans are not a superior species, and he argues for
equating the “killing of a wildflower” as “biocentric egalitarianism”
(Taylor 1986: 217). An advocate of biocentrism, he claims that “all
living things [possess] inherent worth—the same inherent worth.”16
He goes so far as to equate the “killing of a wildflower” with the
“killing of a human” (Taylor 1983: 242), which has come to be
widely quoted with the suggestion that Taylor’s biocentrism is too
extreme. However, in his defense, he does say that “this is no way
entails that humans must never kill or harm a wild animal or plant,
must never swat a fly or step on a wildflower,” as long as humans
have an “adequate moral reason that outweighs the wrongness of
the act” (242).
Most current theories of posthumanism argue against the
marginalization of animals and resist anthropocentrism. To the
contrary, arguably most Victorians did believe that “man” was the
center of the universe, either divinely ordained to be so or else
naturally placed there simply by sheer “survival of the fittest.” Most
Victorians perceived themselves as teetering at the top of the chain
of being, or perhaps, just a bit below God and maybe above or
below the angels. Not only did they accept that humans were
superior to all other species and thereby had the right to make
animals serve them, they—who thought about such things—
accepted an obligation to dominate the animal within themselves
and others. This is one reason, but not the only one, that most
Victorians were extremely strict with their children, especially
teachers in schools: They were committed to putting a leash on the
beast; suppressing the animal in children, in animals, and in adults
“could be seen as an index of the extent to which an individual had
managed to control his or her lower urges” (Ritvo 1987: 132).
Animal biographies, animal nursery rhymes, animal fables, animal
fairy tales, and animal stories indoctrinated children with morality,
and they were often imbued with political persuasions that spoke to
adults as well, such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, Ouida’s Dog of
Flanders, Brodie Cowie Watson’s Little Black Sambo, Rudyard
Kipling’s books set in India, and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking
Glass. Anna Sewell’s classic Black Beauty, once published in the
United States, evoked such an outcry against the abuse of horses
that in 1876 the U.S. passed the Cruelty to Animals Act.
Fiction writers were critiquing humans’ treatment of animals,
reflecting their domestication of them, recording their fascination of
them, and questioning “man’s” capacity to be humane to other
creatures, both great, small, and equal, both animal and fellow
“man.”
Clearly, the Victorians were immersed in an animal culture. Real,
live animals interacted with human lives; dead animals appeared on
their plates, in museums, and in books. Metaphorical animals
delighted children in fairy tales and inculcated adults in novels and
other books how to be behave. Paradoxically, the synergy of beast
and man did not always result in humane treatment of the animal.
This book, Victorians and Their Animals: Beast on a Leash, does
iterate the notion that most Victorians did see themselves as a
naturally dominant species over other humans and over animals.
They conscientiously, hegemonically determined to rule those
beneath them and the animal within themselves with varying
degrees of success and failure.
Domination within or over the animal kingdom, domination of the
animal within, and anthropomorphism are common enough themes
analyzed by critical articles on Victorian literature. The work of
Martin Danahay and Deborah Denenholz Morse, first published in
2007, has definitely prompted us to reconsider Victorian literature
through posthuman theories. This study—Victorians and Their
Animals—invites additional considerations that have thus far eluded
scholarly investigations of Victorian perspectives and treatments of
animal, beginning with Ayres’ chapter on “Activism and Animal
Agency” in the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. The term “Animal
Agency” and posthumanism are perspectives that have stimulated
interdisciplinary scholarship since the 1990s, spawning hundreds of
books and articles that resist an anthropomorphic worldview. This
chapter explores the interrelationships between Gaskell’s animals
and humans as agents that mutually mediate for each other in an
environment in which neither has hegemony. It identifies where and
how Gaskell’s animals “stimulate readers’ sympathy” for women and
other underdogs, who like animals were often marginalized in their
societies and were regarded as “others.” Gaskell’s novels illustrate a
mutual capacity for animals to animalize humans and for humans to
humanize animals. Such agency can only relieve the suffering of
both humans and animals and was championed by Gaskell for
creating a better world.
The second chapter investigates the efficacy of social restraints, in
particular regarding animal ethics. Liam Young studies nineteenth-
century attitudes toward meat-animals and its “modern” system of
managing animal life. He details the arguments and logic put
forward by Household Words to allay the consciences of middle-class
readers who could not bear the sight of suffering oxen but wanted to
eat them anyway. Ultimately, in advocating the rationalization of
slaughter, Dickens’ journal arrives at a biopolitical relationship
between human and nonhuman animals, a relationship in which
humans ruled over their nonhuman “stock” not with the whip but
with biopower, “a power bent on generating forces, making them
grow, and ordering them” (Foucault 1990: 136). In an era of
biopolitics, humanitarianism, and liberal governmentality, violence
and domination over nonhuman animals could no longer be taken
for granted as a natural right but had to be justified as a political
relationship based on mutual recognition, a relationship through
which animals were conscripted into the social contract: In exchange
for their obedience and their lives, cattle were “rescued” from a state
of nature. Household Words did raise moral questions about the
practice of killing animals, but it later responded by defending the
principle. It provided an ideological reasoning that, in the face of the
meat trade’s logistical and ethical problems, allowed readers to look
their oxen in the face in good conscience.
A novelist devoted to aesthetics and ethics was George Eliot. In
Chapter 3, the first of two chapters on Eliot, Constance M. Fulmer
quotes Eliot as having said that every aspect of her writing would be
“the highest art … consciously devoted to the deepest moral
problems” (Haight 1955: 4:220). Eliot felt that the effectiveness of
her living legacy to coming generations lay in her ability to inspire in
her readers the moral growth that leads to a feeling of universal
solidarity. She intended that not only the theme, structure, and
setting but also every object, every circumstance, and every
relationship in her novels would convey moral truths. Her use of
horses is one example of the way she gives her moral principles a
tangible representation. She treats horses in consistent ways in all of
the novels, from Adam Bede to Daniel Deronda. Her characters are
compared to horses in order to indicate the degree to which they are
morally mature or immature. The way both men and women relate
to their horses indicates their degree of pride, selfishness,
arrogance, cruelty, and the desire to control, as well as their social
status and their level of sexual awareness and responsiveness. A
study of George Eliot’s employment of horses provides significant
insight into her novels and her moral aesthetic.
Despite the Victorians’ propensity to feel certain that they
rightfully took their place at the top of some chain of being including
a hierarchy for the species of humans, Jessica Kuskey argues in
Chapter 4 that Dickens’ pigs reject a human/animal hierarchy and
emphasize instead a network of oppression that exploits humans
and animals alike. Kuskey’s analysis contributes to an ongoing study
of the cultural meanings of animals in Victorian literature while also
mobilizing recent Marxist theorizations to argue for increased
attention to class within the field of animal studies. Her chapter
begins by tracing links between pigs and class struggle in Thomas
Spence’s Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude (1793–
1796) (Spence 1794) and other contemporary replies to Burke’s
remarks on “the swinish multitude” in Reflections on the Revolution
in France (Burke 1790). This history explains Carlyle’s later use of
the pig in Latter-Day Pamphlets (Carlyle 1850), especially his caustic
critique of “Pig Philosophy” (i.e. political economy) for replacing
paternalistic social relations with the “cash-nexus.” These earlier
texts use pigs to represent the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, a
logic that implies rehumanization is achieved through the assertion
of humanity’s “rightful” position in the human/animal hierarchy.
Great Expectations (Dickens 1861) avoids this difficulty by
depicting the exploitation of humans and animals in overlapping
systems of oppression. Without denying nostalgia for some mythical
time before the exploitation of workers and animals (e.g. the “larks”
of labor at Joe’s forge and the domestic cheer desired by Wemmick’s
pig), the novel’s ultimate position on class is undoubtedly
problematic, as its representations of pigs do emphasize the parallel
subjugation of workers and animals under industrial capitalism.
Whereas the eighteenth-century pig lived in the family home, the
nineteenth-century pig was industrially produced and processed, a
development that parallels the spatial relocation of many labor
processes from the home to the factory from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth centuries.
In Chapter 5 Anna West explores notions of ant culture, insect
emotion, and animals (including human ones) as automata in
Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. After the widespread
acceptance of the theory of evolution, the way Victorians organized
and viewed the natural world shifted. Traits that were considered to
be uniquely human—possession of culture and the ability to feel
emotion, for example—were traced to their roots in the animal world
in works like Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) and The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) and George
Romanes’ Animal Intelligence (1882) and Mental Evolution in
Animals (1883). At the same time, assumptions about the animal
world were being extended to the human, notably in Thomas
Huxley’s 1874 lecture that reconsidered Cartesian dualism by
applying the argument of animals as automata to humans.
While Darwin’s awe at the mind of an ant may seem difficult to
reconcile with Huxley’s view of humans as automatons, The Return
of the Native (Hardy 1922 [1878]) offers the concept of “creature”
as a way to approach the “whole conscious world collectively,” as
Hardy phrased it in a 1909 letter (Hardy 1984: 373).17 Throughout
his novels, Hardy uses the word “creature” to highlight kinship
between the human and animal worlds—a kinship he extends even
to the insect world, as his personal writings and his poem “An
August Midnight” indicate. Classification requires boundaries:
indicators of distinction, difference. Hardy’s creatures—like Darwin’s,
Romanes’, and Huxley’s—complicate categorical hierarchies and
inverse Victorian attitudes toward not only the human but also the
animal, pointing toward what Derrida (2002) names as the
“unsubstitutable singularity” (378) of the individual.
Categorizing, ranking, and safeguarding hierarchies as if they were
sacred were modus operandi for most Victorians, and thus novels
often reflected, endorsed, promoted, and perpetuated gender and
class divisions. George Eliot’s works, however, frequently challenged
and thwarted such hegemonic ideologies. Her erosion was rarely
overt; instead, encoded narrative conveyed palatable yet intelligible
social protest. One of her strategies was to use animals to symbolize
the unspeakable in Victorian society, producing a subtext that
functioned as a palimpsest underlay of criticism and social
subversion. Instead of horses, this second chapter on Eliot (Chapter
6 by Ayres) deconstructs the narrative agency of felines and canines
in Scenes of a Clerical Life, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda,
Romola, and Silas Marner as social censure.
Chapter 7 is interested in the representation of animals to signify
human gender dynamics in Anglo-Jewish literature. Fish has long
been a staple of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, and the fish has achieved
iconic status in Jewish culture, inevitably appearing at holiday meals
throughout the Jewish religious year. Historically, poor Ashkenazi
families have relied on fish as a cheap and ready source of protein.
Aside from fish as food, Jewish literature has always had a penchant
for fish stories. From biblical stories like “Jonah and the Whale,” to
the children’s legend “Joseph and the Sabbath Fish,” to Larry David’s
Fish in the Dark (2015), the image of fish has long permeated
Ashkenazi Jewish cultural consciousness. Lindsay Katzir’s chapter
analyzes images of fish in a select few London ghetto stories by two
of the most prolific Anglo-Jewish writers of the late Victorian period:
Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) and Benjamin Farjeon (1838–1903).
Specifically, this chapter looks at fish as both a metaphor for
femininity and as a signifier of Jewish women’s social class. Not only
are fish symbols of fertility in Jewish culture, but in Zangwill and
Farjeon’s ghetto stories, fish symbolize a woman’s potential
marriageability.
Whereas Katzir’s chapter argues that a Jewish woman’s facility
with fish illustrates her value as a wife and her elevated status in the
relatively circumscribed community of lower middle-class, late
Victorian Jewry; Pandora Syperek’s Chapter 8 on beetles identifies
attitudes toward the New Woman through jewelry. Syperek notes
that much interest has arisen recently in Richard Marsh’s 1897 novel
The Beetle (Marsh 1917) as an exemplar of fin-de-siècle Gothic
literature’s manifestation of anxieties over the Imperial Other.
However, there has been little attention paid to the figure of the
insect in relation to these anxieties and in the surrounding culture.
Her chapter examines the significance of insects and their
morphologies and life processes in The Beetle via an analysis of
natural history display and related material culture. Unidentifiable in
ethnicity or gender, Marsh’s shape-shifting and abject eponymous
villain seems a far cry from the static, orderly insect cabinet.
However, Cannon Schmitt (2007) attributes “Victorian Beetlemania”
to insects’ “alluring alterity” (36). Rosi Braidotti (2002) connects the
“simultaneous attraction and repulsion, disgust and desire” to
monstrous femininity and thus a “women-insects nexus” (149).
Indeed, as the Natural History Museum, London, increasingly
featured displays of metamorphosis, and other, menacing insect
processes, including parasitism and wood destruction, the fashion for
beetle jewelry marked the encroachment of otherness: associated
with the New Woman and savagery, beetle jewels were called
Cleopatra ornaments. Of Egyptian origin, the literary Beetle is of a
“lower” biological order and race, its transgressions interspecies as
well as interracial and transgender. An invasive species, its
monstrous hybridity was only imaginable in light of evolutionary
descent. Its mesmeric powers signify an alternative, permeable
consciousness redolent of social insects. Metamorphosis, whether
biological or fantastical, constituted a strong metaphor for radical,
often threatening social changes taking place within Imperial Britain
by the end of the century.
In Animal Studies, perhaps no other genre has been analyzed as
much as animals in children’s fiction, especially Victorian.
Nevertheless, in Chapter 9, Christie Harner offers some refreshing
insights to nonhuman theory in her postcolonial focus on Rudyard
Kipling’s The Jungle Books. Some animals, like the human Mowgli
and the White Seal, speak a variety of languages; other animals, like
the bear Baloo, act as translators. The stories ask not only what
linguistic communities exist, but to what extent those groups would
or would not be able to claim kinship. What divisions exist between
tongues? What enables or prevents one group from communicating
with another? What is language? This last question probes the
relevance of dialect, cultural difference, anatomical restraints, and
social groups. Existing scholarship on these questions points only to
Mowgli’s human speech acts, using postcolonial criticism to argue
that he masters language and serves as an ideal subaltern for the
British colonizers. Harner reads this text instead through the
Derridean “animality” of speech, meaning: First, speech should be
understood as posthuman or post-extrahuman—it belies efforts to
contain or govern it. Second, multi-species dialogue points to the
porous boundaries between response and reaction, terms that Lacan
uses to distinguish between human and animal capacities. She
argues that speech acts in this text challenge pre-set language and
species hierarchies: It is the speaking animal, perhaps surprisingly,
that asks us to rethink our definitions of the postcolonial.
The love/hate relationship that the Victorians bore to animals is
one of the most fascinating paradoxes of the nineteenth century. It
was one that permeated the culture.
Although most Victorians believed that they had “the beast on the
leash,” this collection of articles suggests that this was an unrealistic
aspiration, but it was definitely an aspiration. As to how noble, how
natural, how plausible it was for humans to act humanely, it was an
illusion. Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “The greatness of a nation
and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are
treated” (quoted in Keyes 2006: 74). Despite earlier published
efforts to do so, to arrive at a normative as to how and why the
Victorians treated animals and human animals as they did would be
utterly impossible because there was no consistency in ideology,
theory, or practice; however, that very inconsistency is a critique.
The fallacy of control in itself is very revealing not only toward a
more accurate understanding of the Victorians, but also of our
modern-day efforts to behave appropriately as members of a global
humanity.

Notes
1 Of course this is a quote from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, referring
to Kurtz’s report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage
 Customs. The “brutes” to which he refers are the African native humans
(Conrad 2002 [1896]: 155).
2 See Brian Herne’s book (Herne 2014).
3 Hundreds of women found freedom from traditional Victorian restraints by
writing travelogues. Since there was a growing market of readers who wanted
to learn about other countries, women found themselves in a position of
increasing power from writing these books: It gave them employment. Book
sales gave them money. The traveling gave them an extraordinary measure of
independence. See Shirley Foster and Sara Mills’ An Anthology of Women’s
Travel Writing (Foster and Mills 2002). Also see Precious Stearns’ Women
Rewriting Boundaries: Victorian Women Travel Writers (Stearns 2016). Jane
Robinson’s Wayward Women (Robinson 2001a) recounts the travels of over
400 women. See also her Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women
Travellers (Robinson 2001b). For a study of female travelers to the Ottoman
Empire, the Balkan states, Russia, and other European countries, see
Evguenia Davidora (2018). For an overview of critical study of female
travelogues, see Olivera Popović (2016).
4 Dickens (1841) describes the famous Astley circus in The Old Curiosity Shop
(ch. 39) and refers to it in Chapter 21 of Bleak House (Dickens 1852). Astley
was also the source for his creation of Sleary’s circus in Hard Times (Dickens
1854).
5 As was learned during his necropsy, when he was dissected by the College of
Surgeons (Thornbury 1865: 184).
6 His information came from the Annual Register (1825) Chronicle, 153–58.
7 George Cruikshank, Destruction of the Furious Elephant at Exeter Change, c.
1826.
8 The famous Victorian actress Ellen Terry (1911 [1908])—she of the Beetle
Wing Dress pictured in Chapter 8 of this volume—recounts Rossetti’s woeful
negligence toward his menagerie in her autobiography The Story of My Life:
Recollections and Reflections.
9 Besides a pet bear and his famous Newfoundland dog named Boatswain,
Byron had four Greek tortoises, a hedgehog, and three Italian geese (Kenyon-
Jones 2001: 33). Shelley wrote to Thomas Love Peacock that Byron’s “Circean
palace” in Ravenna included “besides servants,” “ten horses, eight enormous
dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these,
except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds
with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it” (quoted in
Kenyon-Jones 2001: 30).
10 Photograph used by permission by Phil Brown (3D Phil). See his film, The
Curious World of Walter Potter at https://youtu.be/6MUo8PtHBHw.
11 The strongest objection she makes is in Chapter 12: “she who takes her dogs
to bed, and nurses them with a parade of sensibility, when sick, will suffer her
babes to grow up crooked in a nursery” (Wollstonecraft 1793 [1792]: 227).
12 Quoted in Flegel (2015: 10) from Haraway (2008: xxiv).
13 Quoted in Phelps (2007: 97.
14 Quoted in Turner (1980: 69) from Animal World 5 (1874): 6.
15 For a thorough, but controversial rebuttal of early theories, read Nurit Bird-
David’s article “‘Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational
Epistemology,” but also be sure to read the criticism that follows his article
that is included in JSTOR (Bird-David 1999).
16 This is a statement that Taylor asserts frequently throughout his book. See
Taylor (1986) 146, 155, 158, 257, 261, and 267. See also his third section of
Chapter 2 titled “The Concept of Inherent Worth,” 71–80.
17 In a letter written in 1909 that was republished in “Vivisection: From the
Viewpoint of Some Great Minds” for the Vivisection Investigation League of
New York and was later reprinted in Life and Work of Thomas Hardy (Hardy
1984).

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 But a threatening cloud, the more dangerous because unseen,
hung over this gorgeous festival, which seemed to promise a long
life of honor and renown to the recipient of a nation’s applause and
gratitude. Three days after his triumph Ismail lay a corpse in the
palace of the Alhambra.
Among the captives taken in the campaign of Martos was a girl of
dazzling beauty. Her possession was disputed by several soldiers,
whose hands, bloody with the carnage of a city taken by storm, were
about to sacrifice her, when she was rescued by Mohammed-Ibn-
Ismail, a cousin of the Emir. No sooner had the latter learned of the
occurrence and of the extraordinary charms of the captive than he
despatched the eunuchs to conduct her to the royal harem. The just
remonstrances of Mohammed were treated with contempt. Not
satisfied with the injury he had inflicted, Ismail ordered his cousin to
leave the precincts of the court, and curtly informed him that his
proper place was with the enemies of his sovereign. The
exasperated prince, who had already signalized his valor in many a
campaign, whose blood had been shed in defence of his country,
whose birth exalted him to a level with the throne itself, and whose
sense of justice revolted at the unprovoked outrage he had endured,
had no inconsiderable following among the dignitaries of the palace
and the officers of the army.
A few hours sufficed to mature a plot; the support of Othman,
commander of the royal guard, was obtained, and the conspirators
only awaited a moment favorable to the execution of their design.
The Emir, walking with his vizier in the gallery of the Alhambra and
wholly unsuspicious of danger, was stabbed by Mohammed; the
resolute defence of the minister availed nothing in the face of
superior numbers, and he perished by the side of his master, while
the assassins, who had previously provided means of concealment,
escaped in the general confusion.
The wounded monarch was borne into the palace, where he soon
expired. His death was concealed—his injuries were even
represented as trifling—until, in anticipation of a fatal result and to
secure the succession, allegiance was sworn to his son, a youth of
twelve years, who ascended the throne under the name of
Mohammed IV. The diligence of the second vizier apprehended a
number of the conspirators, whose heads were exposed on the
battlements of the castle. The treacherous Othman was foremost in
protestations of loyalty and devotion to the new ruler. The chief
assassin fled to Malaga, and the ill-concerted and bloody enterprise
dictated by wrong and accomplished by cowardice was productive of
no other result than a change of rulers and an increased public
attachment to the family of the murdered king.
The character of the latter was worthy of the great place he
occupied and of the glorious traditions of his dynasty. His personal
courage and success in war won for him the affectionate admiration
of his people. His intervals of peace were diligently employed in the
construction of mosques and palaces, of baths and fountains. He
exercised with liberality and discrimination the distribution of alms, as
enjoined by the Koran. The hanging gardens planted under his
supervision were copied from those of ancient Babylon. The police
regulations inaugurated by him established the safety of the streets
and suburbs by day and night; for the better apportionment and
collection of taxes the cities were divided into different quarters, and
the alien tributaries designated by distinctive costumes. He sternly
repressed the fanaticism of the theologians, ever a prolific source of
public anxiety, disturbance, and confusion. The leisure moments of
Ismail were passed in the society of the learned, in the tournament
and the chase, in the pleasures of horticulture, in the construction of
magnificent edifices.
The youth and inexperience of Mohammed IV. were supplied by
the political sagacity of his vizier Al-Mahruk, a man of ability but of
inordinate ambition, and absolutely unscrupulous in the means of
gratifying it. His policy, solely directed to the centralization of power
in himself, was the ultimate cause of his destruction. He lost no
opportunity to humiliate the nobles. The brothers of the Emir were, in
turn, removed from the court; one, upon some frivolous pretext, was
imprisoned in Almeria, where he died; another was exiled to Africa; a
third was forced to seek concealment in a remote village on the
frontier. The jealous intolerance of the vizier endeavored to remove
every possibility of a successful rival. The possession of eminent
talents and virtues was a provocation of oppression; the most able
and experienced statesmen and commanders, apprehensive of
violence, left the capital, and a feeling of alarm and discontent
became general in every quarter of the kingdom.
This state of affairs, so dangerous to the stability of government
and the maintenance of peace, lasted until the young prince arrived
at the age of sixteen years, when Moslem custom permitted his
assumption of the reins of government. One of his first acts was the
degradation and imprisonment of the obnoxious minister. In his place
was appointed Ibn-Yahya, who enjoyed the respect and confidence
of all classes, and whose judicious counsels were well calculated to
guide the career of a young, ambitious, and inexperienced
sovereign. Othman, the former commander of the royal guard, whom
disappointed ambition, a consciousness of guilt, and the fear of
detection had driven from Granada, now planned a new enterprise to
retrieve his fallen fortunes. At his instigation the peasantry of the
rugged district of Andarax rose in rebellion. The insurgents were
defeated by the forces of the Emir, but the mountainous region they
infested, and whose fastnesses the royal troops were unable to
penetrate, prevented their dispersion. The intrigues of Othman
obtained at once the interference of the Castilians and of the Emir of
Morocco. Again the aid of foreign enemies was invoked to revive the
hopes of a defeated faction; the patriotic ardor which might have
preserved the declining empire was sacrificed to the gratification of
private resentment; and the ablest of the Moors, unwilling to profit by
the melancholy lessons taught by the history of the khalifate,
renounced every noble impulse for the sake of avenging their private
injuries.
In the vicinity of Cordova the army of Mohammed sustained a
disastrous defeat; the survivors retreated to Granada; and the Emir,
infuriated by the reflection that the imprisoned vizier Al-Mahruk was
indirectly responsible for the misfortunes which afflicted the
commencement of his reign, commanded his immediate execution.
The efforts of Mohammed to counteract the African influence
enlisted by the rebels met with no better success. Algeziras was
stormed and taken, and the vizier Ibn-Yahya was killed in the
assault. Ronda and Marbella fell into the hands of the rebels, who
soon threatened the city of Granada itself. Consternation seized the
inhabitants of the capital; and Mohammed, assembling the remains
of his defeated army and attended by the principal cavaliers of the
court, went forth to meet the enemy. Gallantly seconded by his
nobles, at the head of a force insignificant in numbers but
remarkable for courage and resolution, he speedily recovered his
prestige and his influence. All the cities captured by the Africans
were retaken. The stronghold of Baena surrendered. The walls of
Casares were destroyed by artillery. Within sight of the latter city the
Moslems, in a bloody encounter, destroyed a Christian force sent to
relieve it. Thus, within the space of a few months, Mohammed
counteracted the effect of the recent disasters to his arms, restored
to his dominions the territory of which treason had deprived him, and
acquired new renown by a victory gained over an army superior in
numbers and thoroughly versed in all the stratagems and resources
of regular and partisan warfare. These military exploits firmly
established his reputation. No prince of the Alhamares, of his years,
ever achieved such celebrity. Nature had bestowed upon him every
gift of mind and person which could elicit the approbation of the wise
or arouse the enthusiasm of the multitude. His face was handsome,
his stature above the middle height, his limbs models of athletic
symmetry. Skilled in every exercise, he delighted in those passages
of arms so popular among the Moorish chivalry. Prominent in a
nation of bold and dexterous horsemen, he was universally
accounted the finest lance in the Moslem army. Grave in demeanor,
pleasing in address, elegant in manners, his attractive exterior only
served to enhance the noble traits of a virtuous and enlightened
mind. He was a friend of letters; and learned men accompanied him
during his expeditions, who could observe the course of events and
perpetuate the remembrance of such facts as might contribute to the
profit of the country and the glory of its king.
In the ever-changing panorama of the Reconquest there
frequently appears the Moslem of Africa, descendant of the
Almoravide or the Almohade dynasties; proud of the fame of his
ancestors, and perpetual claimant of the legacy of their valor; as
ambitious of the regaining of Cordova and the purification of its
desecrated temple as were his contemporaries, the crusaders, of the
conquest of Jerusalem and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The
Emirs of Fez, of the family of the Merynites, had risen to great
distinction among the rulers of Africa. Their dominions included the
entire northern portion of that continent. Their capital was the resort
of all that was intelligent and accomplished among the Mussulman
nations. In the incessant political disorders of the Peninsula,
hundreds of merchants, scholars, philosophers, had sought amidst
the quiet and security of distant regions that refuge from incessant
revolution and Castilian conquest no longer to be enjoyed at
Granada. Not a few of these found their way to Fez. Picturesque in
its situation, the taste and liberality of its rulers had made it a
beautiful city. Its gardens, planted with every variety of tropical plants
and flowers, and refreshed by innumerable fountains, offered a
vision of Paradise to the tired and thirsty wayfarer who had toiled for
many leagues through the stifling heat and drifting sands of the
desert. A high degree of civilization had been attained by the people
of Morocco, who, with the natural inclination of the Arab mind to
scientific investigation and mathematical studies, had made
considerable progress in astronomy, chemistry, botany, and
medicine. Their efforts were materially aided by the precious
manuscripts once part of the great library of the khalifs, and the
treasures of private collections rescued from barbarian ignorance
and Christian bigotry during the destruction of the Ommeyade
empire. To Fez, where it was revered as a priceless relic, and where
perhaps to this day it is still preserved, was transported by the
Almohades the famous Koran, partly written by the hand of the
martyred Othman, which was formerly exposed for the veneration of
the faithful in the Kiblah of the Great Mosque of Cordova. Heedless
of the change in national conditions, of the decline of religious
enthusiasm, of the decay of that martial spirit which renders the
fanatical soldier invincible, the Emirs of Morocco never lost sight of
their favorite project, the recovery of Spain. Their repeated efforts for
that end were rendered inoperative by the religious feuds between
their subjects and the Andalusian Moslems; the resources of both
kingdoms, which might have been profitably exerted against the
infidel, were wasted in the infliction of mutual injuries; and the
Castilian sovereigns, taking advantage alternately of the animosities
of either faction as best suited their purposes, directed their arms
against each other for their common ruin.
In the year 1333, a body of Moorish cavalry, seven thousand
strong, under command of Abd-al-Melik, a prince of the blood,
disembarked at Algeziras. Invited by the rebels of Granada, and
expected to unite with the Castilian forces against Mohammed, their
operations were begun in an unexpected quarter. With a celerity that
indicated the previous arrangement of a well-conceived campaign,
the invaders and their countrymen of Algeziras invested Gibraltar.
Considering the defences of that fortress, greatly improved since the
Castilian occupation, the enterprise seemed hopeless. But either
through the peculations of the governor or from neglect of the court
to provide the garrison with supplies, the place was in a few weeks
reduced to the greatest distress. Deprived of all ordinary means of
sustenance, the hungry soldiers devoured the leather of their belts
and bucklers. When too late, the difficulty of the situation was
realized. The selfish and tyrannical policy of Alfonso XI. had
alienated the attachment of his subjects. The voluptuous King had
lingered too long in the arms of his mistresses, and the pugnacious
nobility were engaged in gratifying their hereditary grudges in the
congenial occupation of private war. Official incompetence and delay
had prepared the way for great disasters. The African fleet
commanded the sea. No force available by the Christians could
dislodge from its intrenchments the well-appointed army of Abd-al-
Melik, with success within its grasp. The Castilian princes, as well as
the nobles, listened with haughty indifference to the patriotic appeals
of their sovereign. So low had the royal authority fallen that some
cavaliers of the highest rank disregarded the peremptory messages
of the crown; others demanded compensation for contributing to the
defence of their country. Alfonso, abandoned by the nobles, found
his only reliance in the uncertain and selfish adherence of foreign
soldiers of fortune, attracted to Spain by the expectation of plunder;
and in the co-operation of the grand-masters of the military orders,
who, compelled by their vows, furnished a lukewarm and reluctant
support to the throne. Long before the Castilian army could arrive at
Gibraltar, messengers brought the unwelcome news of its surrender.
The standards of the Prophet were raised, amid the acclamations of
the soldiery, upon the highest point of the citadel, and the African
vessels occupied the harbor. The garrison was suffered to retire with
the honors of war, and the exultant Moslems, intoxicated by victory,
already pictured to themselves the speedy recovery of the seats of
their ancestors and the revival of the ancient glories of the khalifate.
The King of Castile, convinced that the Moors were not firmly
enough established in their new conquest to maintain a siege,
pushed forward to Gibraltar. Harassed by the enemy’s cavalry, his
force reached its destination after many conflicts of doubtful issue
and unimportant results, and the Africans were, in their turn,
besieged. In their exposed situation, with a vigilant enemy in their
rear and the sea patrolled by the African fleet, the Castilians endured
unspeakable hardships. The day was one incessant conflict, the
night a succession of alarms. The convoys were intercepted.
Famine, with its attendant horrors, stalked through the wretched
camp. The faltering loyalty and insufficient discipline of the troops
encouraged desertion, and the numbers of those spared by want
and disease began to be sensibly diminished. Many who fled from
their standards encountered a more deplorable fate, for none
escaped the vigilance of the Moorish scouting parties; and captives
were so numerous that in the market of Algeziras the choice of
Christian slaves could be obtained for a doubloon of gold. To add to
the general distress, the Emir of Granada was approaching at the
head of a numerous body of troops with the design of effecting a
junction with Abd-al-Melik. At this critical moment, when the Christian
cause seemed all but lost, the course of events was changed by one
of those unexpected occurrences which, while common in the annals
of those times, is apparently inexplicable unless attributed to the
influence of the chivalrous instincts that during the prosecution of the
Moslem wars often changed ferocity into courtesy and enmity into
friendship. The narrow space which separated the hostile camps
was, according to the practice of the age, the scene of many knightly
encounters. As the result of one of these, proposals of peace were
offered and accepted, a truce of four years was signed, and the
enemies, who but a few hours before had fiercely contended for
each other’s destruction, now mingled together upon terms of
familiar intimacy. An interchange of presents took place between the
monarchs of Castile and Granada. The different degrees of
civilization existing in the two kingdoms, and the marked superiority
of the Moors in the knowledge and adaptation of the mechanical
arts, are disclosed by the accounts that have descended to us
concerning this exhibition of royal courtesy. The articles presented
by the King of Castile are scarcely alluded to by the ancient
chroniclers. Had they been objects of curiosity, elegance, or value,
Castilian pride would not have been silent concerning them. On the
other hand, the gifts of the Emir of Granada, their intrinsic worth, the
excellence of their workmanship, the number, variety, and setting of
the jewels with which they were adorned, are the subject of minute
and accurate description. They included splendid arms and armor;
among them a helmet enriched with rubies of extraordinary size, and
a sword, with a damascened blade of the finest temper, whose
scabbard, formed of overlapping plates of gold, was studded with
magnificent topazes, sapphires, and emeralds. Not the least
remarkable of these articles of elegant luxury were beautiful silks of
many colors and pieces of cloth of gold. In Granada, the
manufacture of silk had long since reached perfection, a
considerable portion of the great bazaar of the capital was reserved
for its merchants, and the superior quality of its product had brought
it into great demand in every port accessible to commerce. In
Castile, distant scarcely a day’s journey, this fabric, not beyond the
reach of persons in moderate circumstances under the advanced
civilization of the Spanish Arabs, was practically unknown, and so far
from being an article of merchandise was an object of curiosity, and
worth far more than its weight in gold.
The ceremonies of the treaty ended with a banquet, and
Mohammed, forgetful or regardless of the prejudices of religion,
accepted the hospitality of the King of Castile. This concession to a
Christian misbeliever offended the bigotry of the Africans; the fancied
partiality shown to the Emir of Granada by his host was resented as
a national affront; and the ill-concealed mutual jealousy of the rival
sectaries of Islam was again emphasized by a bloody tragedy. On
his return to the camp, Mohammed was waylaid and slain by his
fierce and treacherous allies, who had so greatly profited by his aid,
and who could neither comprehend nor suffer the generous courtesy
which recognized the virtues of good faith and toleration even in an
hereditary foe. The Emir had scarcely breathed his last when the
vizier Redwan, by a bold stroke characteristic of the crooked
methods of Oriental politics, secured at the same time the public
tranquillity and the continuance of his own power. Hastening to
Granada, he caused Yusuf, the younger brother of Mohammed, to
be proclaimed Emir, and conducted him with a magnificent escort to
the Moslem camp, where allegiance was at once sworn to him by the
army.
The year 1339 opened with extensive preparations for another
African invasion, whose object was avowedly the conquest of the
entire Peninsula. Every means to insure success was taken by the
shrewd and active Abul-Hassan, Sultan of Fez, whose talents had
raised his empire to the first rank among the Moslem powers of the
West. Fanatical and eloquent missionaries were despatched to
preach the Holy War among the wild tribes of the Desert. A treaty of
alliance was concluded between the Sultan and Jaime III., King of
Majorca. The friendly relations interrupted by the murder of an emir
were resumed with Granada. For the moment, the instinct of self-
preservation and the interests of a common faith outweighed
national jealousy and the bitterness of theological hatred. An
innumerable army was raised and equipped. The African navy,
already more formidable than that of the enemy, was greatly
strengthened. The possession of Gibraltar and Algeziras invited an
enterprise which Moslem fanaticism easily persuaded itself was
practicable, and, in case of failure, afforded means of security and
retreat. Daily, for months, soldiers accompanied by their families
crossed the strait. The sagacity of Abul-Hassan convinced him that
by the presence of their wives and children the fidelity of the troops
would be confirmed, their valor animated, and their confidence in the
success of an undertaking, conducted with the sanction of religion,
fully assured. Great numbers of these armed colonists entered
Granada, where they were received with every evidence of
consideration by Yusuf, who saw, with great satisfaction, this
important addition to the military strength of his kingdom.
 Information of these events, serious enough in themselves, and
doubtless much exaggerated by fear and ignorance, spread terror
through the realms of Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. The rivalry of
the monarchs, the enmity of the nobles, the ambition of the clergy,
were, for the time, laid aside in common apprehension of the
approaching deluge. The naval forces of the three kingdoms were
united under the command of the Castilian admiral, Don Geoffrey
Tenorio. His fleet consisted of but thirty-six vessels, ill-manned,
imperfectly equipped, and wholly unfitted to cope successfully with
the swift and well-appointed galleys of the Sultan of Fez. In the
general consternation, and to counteract the religious fervor of the
Moslems, the sanction of divine aid was solicited through the Pope,
and the Holy Father issued from Avignon a grant of plenary
indulgence to all Christians who should participate in the impending
contest.
The commencement of hostilities, near the close of the year 1339,
was marked by a series of predatory expeditions, undertaken in turn
by each nation, and characteristic of the disorderly and indecisive
conflicts so popular in those times. After the capture of considerable
booty, the African general, Abd-al-Melik, encamped with the bulk of
his army in the plain of Pagana. The Christians, hastily assembled at
the summons of their lords and commanded by the heads of the
noble houses of Guzman and Ponce de Leon, names subsequently
famous in the conquest of Granada, by a forced march surprised the
enemy’s camp. Attacked in their tents, stupefied by slumber, and
confounded by the din of combat, the Moslems, incapable of either
resistance or flight, perished by thousands. Abd-al-Melik, pierced
with many wounds, died among the reeds of a neighboring stream
where he had concealed himself. The loss of the invaders exceeded
ten thousand men, and a multitude of captives were led away in
chains. A treasure of great value was secured by the victors; and the
booty acquired in the last campaign, composed principally of cattle
and sheep, was retaken and appropriated for the use of the Castilian
army.
The effects of this brilliant exploit, in which were exhibited alike
the skill and prowess of the Castilian soldiery, were, as usual,
nullified by aristocratic jealousy and court intrigue. The signal
advantage obtained was not pursued; and the Moors, encouraged by
the want of spirit displayed by the enemy, were aroused to fresh
exertions by the consciousness of power and the mortification of
defeat. Bent on revenge, the Sultan, Abul-Hassan, redoubled his
preparations for the coming invasion. Every man subject to his
authority throughout his vast dominions was enlisted. The ports of
Northern Africa resounded with the din incident to the repairs and the
equipment of the fleet. The Sultan himself superintended the
embarkation of the troops at Ceuta, and assumed command of the
expedition. The Moorish armament, comprising two hundred and ten
vessels, of which more than seventy were galleys of war, finally
sailed from Ceuta; and the Moorish host, nearly two hundred
thousand strong, landed without accident at Gibraltar and Algeziras.
Every resource at the command of Abul-Hassan had been employed
to collect, and to provide with munitions of war, this immense body of
men. All the most powerful motives which actuate the human mind
had united to further the project of invasion,—royal ambition, private
vengeance, the admonition of religious duty, the thirst of empire, the
hope of Paradise. For nearly two centuries so formidable a force had
not threatened the Christian domination in the Peninsula. It was not
without reason that the number of pilgrims to famous shrines was
quadrupled; that the intervention of local saints was invoked in every
hamlet; that the terrified inhabitants of Andalusia asked themselves if
the inheritance of their fathers, won foot by foot from the infidel, was
to be wrested from their hands at one blow by the barbarians of
Africa; if the cathedral of Cordova, that priceless trophy of conquest,
still existing in all its pristine beauty and consecrated to the worship
of God, should once more be occupied by the slaves of the Arabian
Prophet.
The enemy’s fleet had passed the strait during the night,
apparently through the supineness of the Spanish admiral, whose
inferior force, however, could not have even delayed its progress;
but, from this apparent neglect of duty, a rumor arose that Don
Geoffrey Tenorio, one of the most honorable and high-spirited of
men, had betrayed his trust for a bribe. Stung to the quick by the
unjust imputation, the brave soldier ordered his ships to prepare for
battle. His adversaries outnumbered him three to one, and no
courage or dexterity could compensate for the disadvantage of
position or the disparity of numbers. The conflict was short and
bloody. The Christian admiral, after a desperate struggle on the deck
of his ship, fell sword in hand; the majority of the Christian vessels
were taken or sunk; and only five succeeded in reaching the harbor
of Tarifa. Abul-Hassan, from the loftiest minaret of Ceuta, witnessed
the victory which established his maritime supremacy in the Western
Mediterranean, and destroyed for nearly a generation the naval
power of the kingdom of Castile.
In September, 1340, the Sultan of Fez formally assumed
command of his troops at Algeziras. Not long afterwards the army of
Granada, commanded by Yusuf, arrived, and the long-expected
campaign began in earnest. The chronicles of the time differ greatly
in their numerical estimates of the allied host. That it was very large,
however, does not admit of doubt, and, even after due allowance for
priestly exaggeration and Castilian gasconade, it would seem to
have exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand men. Of these,
nearly a hundred thousand were Mauritanian and Granadan
horsemen, the finest light-armed cavalry in the world. The military
skill which disposed of this great force corresponded in no degree
with the irresistible power it was capable of exerting if intelligently
directed. The most obvious course would have been to advance
rapidly into the country of the enemy, already paralyzed with fear at
its approach, and bring about an engagement before the Christians
were fully prepared. The capture of Tarifa was, however, in the eyes
of the two sovereigns, a more certain advantage than the precarious
issue of a pitched battle on their own ground with the redoubtable
chivalry of Castile, and, in consequence of their determination, a line
of intrenchments was drawn around that city. It is uncertain whether
any incentive other than mere caprice influenced the Moslem
commanders in their decision. Tarifa was a place of comparatively
small strategic value. So long as the more important fortresses of
Gibraltar and Algeziras remained in the hands of the Moslems,
affording ready communication with the shores of Africa, no material
advantage could result from its possession. Its harbor was neither
extraordinarily safe nor commodious. While the country in its vicinity
was rich and fertile, its extent was not great enough to justify the
expenditure of any large amount of blood and treasure for its
subjection. And finally, the formidable character of the defences of
Tarifa, which had, upon more than one occasion, demonstrated that
a garrison insignificant in numbers could readily maintain its position
against an immense army, should have convinced the Moorish
princes of the difficulties to be encountered in its reduction, in
addition to the probabilities of ultimate disaster. The siege of the city,
once decided upon, was pushed with the utmost energy. Quantities
of munitions of war, provisions, the ponderous engines used in
military operations, and a few pieces of rude artillery were
transported from Ceuta. The Castilian galleys which endeavored to
intercept these supplies were wrecked by a tempest, and the sailors
were killed by the enemy or captured and compelled to renounce
their religion. The apathy of the Christians, partly the result of
constitutional indifference, but largely due to royal oppression,
seemed about to abandon their country to ruin. Alfonso XI., reduced
to despair, convoked an assembly of the grand masters of the
military orders, the most eminent prelates, and such of the principal
nobles as he had not degraded, exiled, or put to death. After a
pathetic appeal to their patriotism, he deposited upon a table his
sword and crown, and, leaving with them these insignia of royal
dignity as mute representatives of his honor and distress, he retired
from the room. In the deliberations which followed, it was resolved to
at once attempt the relief of Tarifa, an undertaking which, if
successful, would avert a national misfortune. Every effort was
exerted to assemble an army. The nobles summoned their retainers
and vassals. The clergy proclaimed a crusade, raised the holy
banner blessed by the Pope, and inflamed the religious zeal of their
audiences by all the artifices of bigotry and all the powers of
eloquence of which they were masters. Appeals were made to the
Kings of Aragon and Portugal. A fleet of galleys was obtained from
the Republic of Genoa, a proceeding which utterly exhausted the
already bankrupt treasury of the kingdom, while the well-known
duplicity of these mercenaries caused no little apprehension lest
their power might yet be turned against their allies through the
machinations of a rich and unscrupulous adversary.
 After an investment of several weeks, after numerous assaults
and many stratagems, all of which were repulsed or foiled, the
undaunted garrison of Tarifa still maintained unimpaired the honor
and reputation of the Castilian arms. To this handful of heroic
soldiers the prospect was indeed discouraging. From the battlements
of the castle, as far as the eye could reach, could be descried the
countless tents of the besieging army. Amidst the coarse brown
shelters of camel’s hair, the home of the migratory Arab, appeared
the more pretentious quarters of the various division commanders,
indicated by pennons of gaudy colors and by patrols of heavily
armed sentinels. On a slight eminence, in the centre of the vast
encampment, stood side by side the royal pavilions of the Sultan,
Abul-Hassan, and Yusuf, Emir of Granada. Embellished with every
adornment procurable by the boundless resources of wealth and
power, they were conspicuous from afar. Their material was blue and
crimson silk, profusely and elaborately embroidered. Globes of silver
surmounted the stakes which sustained their folds. Before the tent of
the Sultan of Fez waved the great standard of the Holy War,—of
green silk inscribed with passages from the Koran, and with the
name of Allah repeated hundreds of times in characters of gold. With
armor and weapons glittering with jewels, a numerous guard
watched over the safety of their sovereigns,—fierce warriors of the
Zenetah, and of the Beni-Saraj, those “Sons of the Saddler,”
destined in after-years to play a prominent part in the history of
Granada, and whose valor, amidst the sinking fortunes of the
Moslem empire, sustained in many sanguinary battles the reputation
of their ancestry and the terror of their name. Outside the harbor was
ranged the hostile fleet, covering the sea with its snowy sails; its gay
ensigns emblazoned with the devices of the commanders or with the
mottoes of the Koran assumed as their peculiar insignia by the
princes of the House of Fez.
Well might the hearts of the little band of Christians in the
beleaguered city of Tarifa sink within them. To all appearances, they
were abandoned by their sovereign. No tidings of approaching relief
could reach their ears. The din of incessant battle resounded through
the streets. The walls were crumbling under the blows inflicted by
formidable engines of war. More than once had scaling-parties
obtained a foothold on the ramparts, only to be repulsed by
superhuman efforts. Even in capitulation there was little prospect of
safety, for such of their comrades as had fallen into the enemy’s
hands were tendered the alternative of apostasy or death. For in this
Holy War, waged more earnestly for the extension of religious faith
than for the acquisition of territory or the spoils of conquest, the
humane rules which ordinarily governed the surrender of enemies or
the treatment of prisoners were either suspended or abrogated.
Their stubborn and prolonged resistance had exasperated the
besiegers, and there was slender hope of quarter in the event of
submission or capture. The Moslem army was largely composed of
barbarians, ignorant of the laws and usages of civilized nations; and,
whether taken by storm or surrendered, the city would inevitably be
sacked and would probably be destroyed. In the last moment of
extremity and despair the Christian banners were discovered from
the battlements. In the organization of the approaching army the
efforts of the Spaniards had been absolutely exhausted. Castile, in
the fourteenth century, could not command the men, the funds, the
military resources, which had been under the control of the grim old
warrior Ferdinand III. The population was diminished by wars,
sedition, famine, disease. Agriculture was impossible where life and
property were constantly unsafe. Articles which in the contiguous
kingdom of Granada were in the hands of every peasant were
unknown to most Castilians. The flocks, once the chief source of
Estremadura’s and Andalusia’s wealth, had been swept away by the
alternate incursions of friend and foe. The extravagance of
mistresses, the peculation of officials, the exactions of the clergy, the
rapacity of the nobles, had drained the public treasury. The
administration of the finances was mainly in the hands of Jews and
churchmen, who thwarted each other whenever possible, and
always at the expense of the state; who, not unjustly, regarded each
other with suspicion; and who, in turn, were cordially hated by those
on whom were imposed the onerous burdens of tribute and taxation.
Successive regencies organized for plunder; the flagrant abuse of
power, and the prostitution of justice to the gratification of personal
revenge; the insolence of royal concubines; the sanguinary tyranny
which disgraced the throne; the invasion of private rights and the
insecurity of private property; the impunity of crime; the omnipresent
evidences of distress and penury; the degradation of labor, and the
distinction attending the prosecution of successful rapine, had
embittered public sentiment, and alienated the allegiance of a gallant
and romantic people who formerly held the royal dignity of Castile as
second only to the omnipotent authority of God. It was a momentous
crisis in the history of Spain. The existence of an extensive
monarchy, the integrity of a religion hoary with the venerable
traditions of thirteen hundred years, were at stake. The numerical
superiority of the Moslems was overwhelming. In the Christian ranks,
on the very eve of battle, dissension still reigned, and princes of the
royal blood were suspected of treasonable correspondence with the
enemy. Under such circumstances, when every hand was needed,
the publicity of such rumors, giving rise to mutual distrust, greatly
impaired the efficiency of the army. The importance of the contest
was evinced by the rank of those who followed in the train of the
sovereigns of Castile and Portugal. The Primate of Spain; the
Archbishops of Santiago, of Seville, of Braga; the bishops of
Palencia and Mondoñedo; the grand masters of every martial
brotherhood in both kingdoms; the representatives of every noble
house from the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean, from the frontiers of
France to the shores of the Atlantic, rode in the train of the monarch.
The duties of these belligerent prelates were not restricted to the
celebration of masses, to the invocation of saints, to the shriving of
sinners. Nearly all of them had laid aside the sacred habiliments of
their profession, and appeared sheathed in mail at the head of
companies of well-appointed retainers. No contemptible adversaries
were they, these sturdy champions of the Cross, equally at home
before the quiet altars of magnificent cathedrals or surrounded by
tumult and carnage in the very front of the line of battle. Such had
been the custom of members of the Christian hierarchy even before
the battle of the Guadalete. The crusading character of the Moorish
wars, undertaken for the spread of religion, indorsed by the infallible
authority of the Pope, assisted by the generous piety of foreign
princes, had imparted a martial cast to every ecclesiastical
organization in the Peninsula. There were more military orders in
Spain than in any other country in the world. Not only were the
Templars and Hospitallers represented there by wealthy priories and
commanderies, but no less than four powerful bodies of monastic
knights owed their origin to the wars of the Reconquest. The
influence of these military monks in politics and war was extensive
and formidable. They appointed regencies. They made and unmade
sovereigns. Their counsels directed the measures of great
principalities and kingdoms. Under the cloak of religious austerity
they concealed many odious vices, ambition, venality,
licentiousness, cruelty, avarice. In conjunction with the Church, they
absolutely controlled the policy of the monarchy of Castile. To no
class of its subjects was that monarchy so greatly indebted for its
origin, its extension, its glory, the consolidation of its power, the
formation of its manners. Ecclesiastical domination, established
during a crusade of seven hundred years, made possible the
atrocities of the Inquisition. It placed its seal upon the national
character, noticeable in the grave and haughty demeanor, the
taciturn disposition, the suspicious nature of the modern Spaniard. It
was not without far-reaching results that the iron grasp of episcopal
despotism was placed upon a people at its formation, and continued
through long and eventful centuries of alternate success and
disaster. As no caste contributed so much to the greatness of Spain
as the clergy, none profited so much by its opportunities. Theirs was
the most opulent branch of the Catholic hierarchy in Christendom.
Their primate, first in precedence among prelates of corresponding
dignity, ranked next to the Pope. No other country could boast such
rich benefices, such vast domains, such princely revenues; religious
houses like palaces in their variegated marbles and mosaics;
cathedrals which even after ages of neglect are still matchless
specimens of grandeur and beauty, filled with works of art of
unapproachable excellence, furnished with sacred vessels of massy
gold and sparkling gems, lighted by windows whose gorgeous tints,
mellowed by age, offer to the admiring and awe-stricken worshipper
a veritable glimpse of Paradise. Notwithstanding all these evidences
of opulence and splendor, with its boundless possibilities for human
happiness and human progress, the country did not advance. Its
subsequent acquisitions cursed instead of benefiting it. The present
degeneracy and weakness of the Spanish monarchy afford a
melancholy example of a country founded upon, sustained by, and
destroyed through the influence of superstition.
On the morning of the thirtieth day of October, 1340, upon the
banks of the Salado, an insignificant stream, but one destined to
immortality in the annals of the Spanish Reconquest, the two great
armies prepared for battle. The first intelligence of the enemy’s
approach was the signal for the abandonment of the siege. The
outposts were recalled. The lines of circumvallation which for so long
had enclosed the suffering and famished city were deserted. The
cannon and catapults whose projectiles had opened many breaches
in the walls were broken up or burnt. With the first light of dawn the
King of Castile and his entire army received the communion
administered by the Archbishop of Toledo, whose sacerdotal robes
were thrown over his armor. The decimated garrison of Tarifa,
leaving its defences, took up a position in the rear of the Moslems.
The left wing of the latter was commanded by Abul-Hassan; in front
of him was the great standard of the Faith; in his hands the open
Koran. At the right was posted Yusuf with the chivalry of Granada. In
the mighty host of the invaders there was little knowledge of tactics
and still less of discipline, each tribe fighting independently under the
banner of its chieftain, and relying on the impetuosity of the first
attack; in case of repulse equally unable to rally or by skilful
evolutions to take advantage of the errors or the momentary disorder
of an enemy. At this distance of time, it is impossible to even
correctly approximate to the numbers of the opposing forces, as
each was interested in magnifying the strength of the other, either to
increase the credit of victory or to diminish the ignominy of defeat.
The numerical preponderance of the Moors was, however,
unquestionable. Their superiority in this respect was largely modified
by the character of their adversaries. The Christian knight, sheathed
with his horse in steel, was more than a match for a score of ill-
armed, half-naked barbarians. A few resolute cavaliers, acting in
concert, could rally many thousands of fugitives; to an undisciplined
mob, once stricken with a panic, numbers were only an impediment.
Thus, upon the opposite banks of the Salado were ranged the
hostile armies whose respective success or misfortune was to
decide the fate of the Peninsula. After a few skirmishes the
Christians succeeded in crossing the stream. A body of nobles, by a
flank movement, entered the enemy’s camp and destroyed it.
Alfonso XI., advancing with the main body, encountered Abul-
Hassan and was at once enveloped by the entire left wing of the
Moslem army. The Castilians were almost overpowered; the royal
guards were struck down by a hail of missiles; and the King, in
despair, was with difficulty restrained from rushing almost alone upon
the lances of the enemy. At this moment the flanking party and the
garrison of Tarifa fell suddenly upon the rear of the Africans. Taken
by surprise, the ranks of the latter were thrown into disorder, and, the
confusion spreading on all sides, they broke into flight. In another
part of the field the King of Portugal was engaged with the Emir of
Granada. The troops of the latter, now forced to sustain the
onslaught of the entire Christian army and dispirited by the retreat of
their allies, abandoned their position. Their retirement became a
rout, and the immense multitude, defenceless, and crowded together
in an unwieldy mass, fell an easy prey to their merciless pursuers.
Nothing is so remarkable in this decisive battle as the short time it
took to gain it. But a few hours sufficed to destroy that gigantic
armament which required the combined efforts of two powerful
kingdoms many months to organize and bring into the field. Frightful
slaughter ensued. The plain, slippery with blood, was strewed with
tens of thousands of corpses. A crimson torrent rushed through the
narrow and precipitous channel of the Salado. The dead far
exceeded the prisoners in numbers, but the greater part of the
defeated army escaped to Granada. Both the Emir and Abul-Hassan
regained their capitals by sea. The harem of the Sultan of Fez, and
several of his sons, who, in the vain confidence of victory, had
accompanied him, fell into the hands of the Christians. The
implacable character of the struggle is shown by the treatment of
these helpless unfortunates, whom the savage Castilians butchered
in their tents. Since the memorable day of Las Navas de Tolosa, no
such a display of booty had regaled the eyes of a victorious soldiery.
The quantity of gold and silver bullion was so great that the
commercial value of those metals was, in consequence, decreased
one-sixth throughout the kingdoms of Spain and France. The wealth
represented by bracelets and necklaces, by jewelled scimetars and
enamelled daggers, by spurs whose material of massy gold was
entirely concealed by their sparkling settings, by heaps of gems of
unusual size and dazzling brilliancy, by precious ingots, requiring the
united efforts of many men to lift them, was beyond all computation.
To these attractive objects were added others of less interest,
perhaps, but of more utility,—magnificent saddles and housings set
with sapphires and topazes; pavilions of silk brocade; garments
curiously embroidered with texts from the Koran; robes stiff with cloth
of gold and silver; thousands of Arabian horses renowned for
swiftness, gentleness, beauty, and endurance. The money
subsequently obtained from the ransom of illustrious captives formed
no inconsiderable amount of the spoils of this great victory. One
hundred of the finest chargers, fully caparisoned, each led by a Moor
of rank in splendid apparel, the royal standard of Castile, and the
captured arms and armor of the Sultan of Fez were sent to the Pope
at Avignon, as evidences of the power of papal intercession and as
trophies of Christian triumph.
With the defeat of the Salado disappeared the active interference
of the Sultans of Africa in the affairs of the Peninsula. They no longer
seemed to possess either the capacity or energy to conduct great
military enterprises to a successful issue. Henceforth defensive
warfare alone exercised the talents and wasted the resources of the
kings of Granada, the sole representations of Saracen power in
Europe, in a conflict which, protracted for nearly two centuries longer
by the suicidal feuds of Spanish princes, was destined to exhibit
features that seem to belong rather to the fabulous realms of
romance than to the rugged domain of history; while the royal line of
the Alhamares, preserving from destruction the remnants of Moorish
civilization transmitted from the Western Khalifate, by the protection
of the arts and the encouragement of letters, for a time seemed
about to restore the glories of Cordova and to render instinct with life
and vigor the fast-vanishing phantom of Moslem greatness.
Abul-Hassan justly imputed the calamity which had overtaken him
to the cowardice of his allies, who fled almost before they had
crossed swords with their adversaries; and, henceforth, the