Saint Philip Howard and His Dog

Faithful old dog, do you recall
The days of frolic and fun?
When walls were trees,
Stone floors were earth and
Low ceilings sky and sun?
When you and my other hounds
Sighted the deer and coursed?

But captive now, your eyes follow me
As I pace and pray, and wait
And wait in this cell for death.

If you so dumb, can be so true,
And trusted to carry words
To him whom my dearest love doth know—

If you, so strong can be so meek,
What else can I do—?
But bear affliction in this world for
Glory with Christ in the next

—but Oh!—

How I long to see you course
And run as you once did run,
Chasing the deer and finding him in the glorious sun! (c) Stephanie A. Mann, 2017

Five years ago (!), the National Catholic Register posted my blog story about St. Philip Howard and his greyhound. Way down in the story was the bit of verse I wrote about the young nobleman and his hound. Please read the rest of the post here, including information about the artists who created the image of Howard in the Tower of London with his dog.

[I'm reading a book right now titled The Dog by Kerstin Ekman, trans. from the Swedish by Linda Schenck and Rochelle Wright. It's about a puppy lost in the wild and the man who brings him into domestication.]

I knew that a poem about the ruins of Walsingham has been attributed to Saint Philip Howard, but recently I noticed this poem about the saints has also been attributed to him:

No eye hath seen what joys the saints obtain,
no ear hath heard what comforts are possessed,
no heart can think in what delight they reign,
nor pen express their happy port of rest,
where pleasure flows and grief is never seen,
where good abounds and ill is banished clean.

Those sacred saints remain in perfect peace
which Christ confessed, and walked in his ways;
they shine in bliss, which now shall never cease,
and to his Name do sing eternal praise.
Before his throne in white they ever stand,
and carry palms of triumph in their hand.

O worthy place, where such a Lord is chief,
O glorious Lord, who princely servants keeps,
O happy Saints, which never taste of grief,
O blessed state when malice ever sleeps.
No-one is here of base or mean degree,
but all are known the Sons of God to be.

Here's a suggested tune for the poem as a hymn. Since our Lovers of Newman just read and discussed a Newman sermon about saints' feast days, and since All Saints Day is fast approaching, it seemed appropriate to end this post with it!

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

Saint Philip Howard, pray for us!

Jerome K. Jerome, RIP--To say nothing of the dog

Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), died on June 14, 1927. His most famous work is the story of a trip along the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford:

The only one who was not struck with the suggestion was Montmorency. He never did care for the river, did Montmorency.

"It’s all very well for you fellows,” he says; “you like it, but I don’t. There’s nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I don’t smoke. If I see a rat, you won’t stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I call the whole thing bally foolishness.”

We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried.

Montmorency, of course, is the dog. He's rather special:

To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and- nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is what will happen to him.”

But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

And Montmorency has his purposes, too:

Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.

To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.

He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.

Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.

Jerome wrote one of my favorite lines: I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

Jerome published G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades in 1905. And another J.K.J. connection to G.K.C. is that they were included on J.M. Barrie's literary cricket team. Only Arthur Conan Doyle could really play cricket.

G.K. Chesterton also died on June 14, in 1936. Perhaps someday we will be celebrating his feast day today!

Yet Another Victim of Henry VIII: Anne Boleyn's Lapdog!?

Now, I'm really upset with Henry VIII! It isn't enough that he beheaded two queens, a saintly bishop and a holy layman, dissolved the monasteries, friaries and convents of England, sent many hundreds to their deaths in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, martyred the Carthusians of the Charterhouse in London and Observant Friars of Greenwich, mistreated his first wife and daughter, etc, etc,--he defenestrated Anne Boleyn's dog!

According to this blog:

On a December day in 1534, an often-overlooked victim of Henry VIII met a sad end. But this was no overblown nobleman, crowing about his claim to the throne, no broken-hearted wife, turning over the past to see where she had gone wrong, and no devoted councillor unable to fulfil the King’s latest scheme. The death of little Purkey, or Pourquoi, Anne Boleyn’s beloved lapdog was to prove a foreshadowing of her own tragic decline. In the beast’s quaint tilted head and appealing eyes, Anne’s own dark orisons were echoed. In its plaintive bark, Henry heard shades of her winning laugh, and when the creature begged, elegantly dancing on his hind legs, it brought the King to mind of Anne’s graceful steps. So why exactly did the canine have to die?

Purkey was the gift of Honor, Lady Lisle, to the new queen in the winter of 1533. Having remarried to Arthur Plantagenet, illegitimate son of Edward IV, Honor was keen to advance her daughters from her first match. She accompanied Anne to France in the autumn of 1532 and was hopeful that such a gift would encourage the queen to place Katherine and Anne Basset in her household. Anne however, accepted the gift but kept the pretty girls at arm’s length, perhaps recalling her own rise to power from within the service of Catherine of Aragon. Anne adored little Purkey, keeping him often at her side and feeding him titbits from her plate; she was heart-broken when she learned of his death. A year later, in December 1534, he supposedly fell from a window and the King was charged with breaking the terrible news to his wife. In fact, this was because Henry himself was responsible for the animal’s execution. Imagining the scandal if he sent a dog to the block, let alone the practical difficulties, Henry solved the problem with a simple act of defenestration.

Henry VIII determined that Pourquoi or Purkey was a trained spy and thus had the dog destroyed by having it tossed out the window. Obviously, Anne Boleyn was upset:

Anne grieved Purkey’s loss. She had been preparing a special gift for him for New Year, a silver collar hung with dog biscuits fashioned from gold and studded with pearls. In the intensity of her emotion, she ruled that when New Years’ Day arrived, it should be devoted to the memory of her pet, requiring all her ladies in waiting to wear a similar collar and even insisting that Henry too should sport such an item. At first, Henry complied out of guilt, but by the following year, his relationship with Anne had changed so completely that he did not feel obliged to. On January 1 1536, Anne’s ladies wore the silver collars for the second time running, while the Queen spent the day on her knees, as masses were said for the soul of the beast. She was reunited with Purkey a few months later and Henry ordered the silver collars to be melted down and returned to the royal treasury. This was one New Years’ Custom he was not prepared to continue.

There might be some issue with that story, however, since England at that time celebrated the New Year on Lady Day, March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation following the Julian Calendar. More about poor Pourquoi here.