XXXI
[271]
THE BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF A LITTLE BEAR
1. EARLY DAYS
It was in 1899 and in Upper Burma that two little bears were brought, by villagers who had caught them, to an officer still flourishing as a magistrate in Burma, but averse to fame for himself, though willing that his pets should have their place in history. “They were at first no bigger than that,” he said, as he held his hands about a foot apart, “and I took a fancy to them and decided to bring up both.”
It was as interesting as if they had been babies, and easier. Indeed the bear has a certain primeval claim upon us, having perhaps been humanity’s oldest acquaintance. It is not a mere accident that the Greeks made him a king of the woods and sacred to Diana, and the Red Indians of America made elaborate respectful speeches to excuse themselves for eating him, as if it were a [272] kind of cannibalism. It can hardly be doubted that men and bears became friends at first in much the same way as men become friendly among themselves at college and elsewhere, because they chanced to be neighbours and of similar habits. Nuts were nuts to bears and men, and fruits and eggs were appreciated by both alike. For thousands of years our arboreal ancestors and the bears must have hobnobbed together, both finding it awkward to have to be at home upon the trees and yet move about upon the ground. Ah! how we both did envy the birds! We have risen a great deal in the world since then, and the bears have been stationary, but we need not be proud. While we watch the clumsy gait of the bear as he brings his forelegs to the ground, if he has far to go, and hobbles along, not very nimbly perhaps, but better than we could go on all fours, his very clumsiness should give us food for thought. As he is now, so once were we, that is to say, our ancestors, meaning our arboreal ancestors, not long ago, that is to say, probably less than a million years ago.
When he is young and only learning to walk, his toes being turned in so as to suit his arboreal movements, the bear trips on his own paws and at times rolls over in a ludicrous way, as if turning [273] an unwilling somersault. After such a collapse, his next impulse naturally is to move backwards, as the safer way. But then, his eyes being set in his head like our own, he soon finds that the universe is too complex to allow indefinite blind retrogression; and so he tries again, and makes another cautious step or two forward, with a continuous effort to avoid tripping on his own toes. At last, though not without many a sad catastrophe, he does learn to go forward and follow his nose like other people. This is natural history, an account of how a little bear learns to walk, and it is not an allegory of the Russian empire, as readers might suppose. That was how these two little ones learned, while growing in size and in favour with man and woman. They were in their native climate, and too young as yet to see any difference between humanity and themselves.
It was pleasant to watch them and share their feelings, and escape for a moment from the narrow limitations of humanity.—
I have another friend, who has also been foster-father to bears, and who is fond of illustrating the distinction between instinct and reason [274] by their infantile habits. However small the cub, he never needs to be taught how to bend and arrange the twigs, so as to give himself a convenient resting-place upon a branch. That, I am told, is instinct; and so, I suppose, is licking his paws, which comes as easy as breathing. But once two baby bears were attracted by the smell of honey to a wild bees’ nest up a tree. The bees came out with angry buzz and stings. The assailants were young, and had neither bee-hats nor aprons, and they retired, discomfited. Their kind master gave them, as consolation prize, some spoonfuls of honey on a plate. They licked it all up, and then looked at each other with surprise and animation, as men do who are realising something strange, as if saying to each other, and each to himself, “So that was the meaning of the smell we went to investigate.”
When the “brutality of instinct,” as the French call it, was thus reinforced by knowledge, they did not hesitate. “They did not pause to parley or dissemble.” Straight back to the tree they went, and up it, swiftly, steadily, right to the nest of the bees, and tore it open, heedless of the stings, brushing the bees aside as carelessly as if they were flies. They guzzled the honey, and came down slowly, licking their lips, only when it was [275] finished. Surely their foster-father might well be proud of bears like these, and say that they could draw inferences as well as an undergraduate.
In case any reader is led by this history to bring up a cub, let him remember to leave plenty of water in his tub in the bathroom. It is sure to be much appreciated in the hot weather. There is no prettier sight than a little bear enjoying himself in that way, with his two little hands—I mean forepaws—hanging over different sides of the tub, as he leans back. It should, however, be remembered that, not being equal to the use of towels, he likes to go to a bed and roll himself on the bedding when he comes out of the water. So unless there is someone standing by, there should be a waterproof sheet over any accessible bed.
These things are common to adolescent bears. The uniformity of Nature is an old discovery, and one of them is like another. As this is not a treatise on Natural History but a biography of an individual, I must restrict myself to what was peculiar to our heroine and her companion, and leave others to dilate upon what may be generally seen in her fellow-creatures of the same species.
2. UP THE CHIMNEY [276]
In writing as in living, it is easier to see what is right than to do it. The biographers of Europe would agree that their proper concern was only what was characteristic of their heroes, and not the details of human life in general. “In the abstract,” they would all agree to this; yet which of them does it? The difficulty is to discover what is distinctive.
If that is hard for a man who is writing about a man, it is still harder for the historian of a bear. If I were a bear, I would not have been puzzled to know whether the great adventure in the chimney was a thing to tell, or only what any bears would have done. Not being a bear, the writer could not ask his inner consciousness. He had to ask his friends who had bred bears; and when he found that our heroine’s master was the only one of them all who had a house with a chimney, the problem had to be abandoned as insoluble. So he has decided, like a certain great author, to take the risk of being tedious rather than elliptical.
The open-brick fireplace with a chimney was for heating, not for cooking; and stood in the [277] hall, near the front door. “I could never discover why it was there,” said the unfortunate tenant of the house. The building was an achievement of the Public Works Department, which is surrounded by mysteries and has ways past finding out in Burma.
That fireplace and chimney perplexed the two little bears as well as their master; and once, when there was no fire, they sat down together on the hearth, and meditated; and as they meditated they lifted up their eyes and saw the sky! How their hearts did burn within them, as they gazed upon that light in darkness; and their instinctive propensity to climb made them get up on their hind legs and gape at each other, and rub their eyes and look up again. Like the juvenile hero of Longfellow, they felt the impulse of “Excelsior!” Up they started, to reach that sky. At first, they were quite composed—it seemed little harder than going upstairs; and there was no hurry or flurry. They helped each other. But a chimney that grows narrower as you go up is disconcerting to the aspiring climber without hands. It disturbs the centre of gravity in an unusual way. They fell back, first one and then the other, and again, and again, and again; and ever, like the spider whose persistence cheered the Bruce, they tried [278] again, and again, and again; and still they fell. They became individualistic, but not all at once desperate. There was a sublime fixity upon their countenances, significant of the primeval elemental forces which impelled them, yet nevertheless pathetically human. After all, they were “seeking the light,” be it remembered, honestly “seeking the light.” Their blind impulsiveness made them all the better symbols of humanity. Think of the European scholastics in the Middle Ages. What were they doing for many centuries but trying to climb to the sky through a sooty chimney?
Smile if you will and must, but do not laugh.
You would have had no heart for laughing if you
had seen the agonies of the bears when strength
failed them, and their falls and bruises were—enough!
They flung themselves upon the ashes
of the hearth in a despair that was equal to that
of any man. From nose to tail they covered
themselves with ashes—to say nothing of the soot
already there.
However, as Byron sings, and psalmists and fakirs have experienced, “the heart may break, yet brokenly live on.” When they had had enough of the ashes and the soot, they emerged; and naturally, desiring above all things to be clean [279] again, they rubbed themselves upon the freshly painted walls and nice clean furniture; and when the servants ran to remonstrate, they made for the bedrooms, amidst a general alleluia!
I abstained from asking their master what he
said when he came home; and he seemed to
appreciate my forbearance.
3. AT A RAILWAY STATION
The next remarkable incident was on a railway journey, on the way to Ye-U. The guard had charge of them, and kept them in their basket in his own van, where he “could have an eye upon them.” This would have been enough if they had been common wild bears, newly caught; but these were civilised animals, and while the guard kept an eye upon them, they kept two pairs of eyes on the guard.
It was a single line of railway, and there were long pauses at every station, during which the guard was on the platform. In one of these intervals, the bears made a united effort, “with a pull, and a push, and a push altogether,” and then the shrieks of a stampeding crowd drew the [280] eyes of the guard and the station-master and everybody else to the unusual sight of two fine young bears enjoying a walk on the station platform.
The panic was not unreasonable. If they had been wild young things, their own terror would have made them dangerous. Fear is the cause of cruelty, as Sir Charles Elliot (Odysseus) has aptly remarked, in explaining the reciprocal atrocities of Greeks and Turks. But the bright little bears of this history had never known fear, secluded as they were in a happy home. They only wanted to stretch their legs, as other passengers were doing. When that was seen, the shrieks of terror turned to shrieks of laughter; and people made reverent way for them, and followed them with admiring looks, crowding respectfully, without pressing close upon them, as if they had been royalties or popular idols. The railway officials were not teased by any more impatient questions as to when that train would start. It must have been more than a quarter of an hour after the starting signals had been given, before anyone thought of showing the bears and their admirers the need of resuming their places and continuing the journey.
The rest of the life of the bigger of the two, the leader in this adventure, was short, and like the [281] records of common humanity, where “to be born and die, of rich and poor makes all the history.” He was wandering about with his chain loose, in his master’s garden, and went up a tree. The chain became entangled round his neck; and, when next he was seen, it was the dead body of a half-grown bear that was hanging from the end of his chain. Nobody saw how it happened; but there the beast was—dead!
4. A BREAKFAST AT YE-U
“Life belongs to the living,” say the wise. Whoever survives, must be prepared for changes; and there is no misfortune so great that a person of sense cannot draw some benefit from it. That is true at times of bears, as well as of men. For the surviving bear in this instance, the sad death of her companion was not without a pleasant result. She was delivered from her chain, and rejoiced in her liberty, like a suffragette. That is why the story of her life is interesting—and short. Incidentally, it might be a lesson and a warning to her sister-mortals in petticoats and running loose; but, to be perfectly candid, that is not why it is written. I do not wish to claim any [282] merit, undeserved. I tell her story just because I liked it.
It is often a pleasure to remember sorrows past, as Æneas reminded his shipwrecked companions, by way of comforting them. But it may be doubted whether our heroine ever took much pleasure in the recollection of the breakfast at Ye-U.
Three officers came to breakfast with her master; and her usual place at table being filled, she moved about, like a privileged child at a party, suspecting no harm and intending none to any living creature, when one of the men at table gave her the end of a cigarette. She ate it. Whatever else she scrutinised, she had always eaten without hesitation whatever was offered by the hand of man. So she swallowed the end of the cigarette, and became very unhappy.
There may have been moral as well as physical nausea. Who can read what passes in the brain of a bear? Or feel what is in her heart? She may have felt, in a dumb, instinctive way, what Schiller has articulated—
She went and lay near the wall of the dining-room, with unconscious dignity averting her eyes [283] from the merry party, and making them laugh by her look of patient helplessness, as she rubbed her stomach with her two forepaws.
A pony was the next performer that morning. The dining-room was on the level of the ground, and the pony, running loose, came to the table as usual for a tit-bit. “Send the beast away,” was the impatient wish of a guest—let us hope he was the hero of the cigarette. The host, who might otherwise have gradually given some bits of fruit, handed the happy quadruped a whole pineapple, and bade him go away, intending thus to please his guest and yet not disappoint his pony. Pineapples are cheap in Burma. They are likewise very juicy and good. The lucky pet, who also had the easy confidence of a privileged person, began to roll the big pineapple in his mouth, and was in no haste to depart.
The mischief-maker, if it was he, as we hope, made a gesture to quicken him; and the obedient animal in turning raised his nose above the head of the impatient man; and then there flowed down upon the man a torrent of mingled froth and pineapple juice, all churned together into a sticky milk. He howled, and tried to dodge it, but was unlucky in his movements. The only result was that he received the torrent in two directions. While one [284] stream ran down his face, and anointed whatever took the place of a beard, the other ran down the back of his head and neck, even to the uttermost skirts of his garments.
Then the bear was forgotten; and the other men began to laugh at the man who sat under the pony. They laughed the more when he lost his temper. Even the host did laugh; and let us, who can congratulate ourselves that we have never been guilty of such a breach of courtesy, be candid enough to consider—did we ever encounter such temptation?
What enhanced the fun, and his affliction, was that instead of frankly facing the situation and going to a bathroom, he tried to clean himself at table. After exhausting the resources of civilisation in the shape of handkerchiefs and napkins and finger-bowls, he used towels—big bathroom towels; and still he found purification as difficult as ever did Macbeth.—
But it was not a troubled conscience that dimmed his eyes. His bodily eyes saw perfectly. The trouble was the real adhesiveness of the mixture saturating his garments and his skin. The [285] language of Macbeth, too, was refined in comparison to his; for, as he glared at the laughers around him, he said ... what I would not repeat, not even in an affidavit.
Our heroine said nothing. She did not join in the laughing. She was generally fond of fun; but on this particular occasion, she seemed to be completely self-absorbed, as sufferers are apt to be. There are times when one craves to be alone. She turned her face to the wall and her back to the company.
5. THE BEAR AND THE PERAMBULATOR
Her master loved her as dearly as ever any man loved a dog; and so, when he was transferred from the north of Upper to the south of Lower Burma, he took her with him. This was lucky for her. She had made a bad impression on the man who came to relieve him, although, as himself a father of children, he might have been expected to appreciate her. It was all a misunderstanding.
The new man had come in advance of his family, but brought with him a perambulator, nicely upholstered; and when the gentleman went upstairs to [286] bed, and the servants to their quarters, our heroine naturally proceeded to examine the perambulator, which was exactly the right size for her. There was nobody else in the house whom it suited at all. How could she know, without being told, of the impending arrival of another little thing? Everything thereabouts had been at her disposal hitherto. How could she suspect that this might not be?
Of course she was too young to understand distinctions of property; but, even if she had had a mature human intellect, she might easily have made the mistake she apparently did.
At any rate, what is certain is that, next morning, the fine leather was torn to tatters, and the horse-hair spread about, while she contemplated the work of her paws with complacency. The new magistrate was as unable to express his feelings as our heroine to explain her thoughts. They gaped at each other, I believe. Presumably, she had found the stuffing hot, and wished to make her new toy suit the climate and her taste. But she could not explain all that; and the new magistrate said....
Suffice it for the purpose of this history that he made no objection when her own dear, original [287] master declared that he would take her with him wherever he went. So they departed together.
P.S.—While the biographer of the bear is correcting the
proofs of this book at Toungoo, Burma, in June, 1910, he
meets the owner of the perambulator, who not only confirms
what is here recorded, but even becomes bitter again against
the bear, and, warming at the recollection, rhapsodies in his
wrath.—“She was a wicked beast. She tore out the insides
of my pillows, too. She was eternally meddling. She
went everywhere. Nothing was sacred to her at all. I
never was gladder to see any pet begone.” “But did not
N. love her?” it was asked, naming her owner. “O yes,
he did, he thought nothing too good for her.” What a happy
little bear!
6. LIFE IN A COUNTRY TOWN
Their destination was Kyauktan, a Burman name that means a “ridge of rock.” As you go up the river to Rangoon a low ridge is visible, inland, on the right, almost parallel to the muddy bank, and not very far from it. It is a ridge of rock; but, in that benignant land, there seems to be something indecent, or at least savouring of skeletons, in bare rocks like those of more desolate countries; and in this instance, as usual there, you may know the rock is below, but you see only the elevated greenery. Towards the seaward end of the ridge is Kyauktan, a little [288] country town on a tidal creek, invisible from the ocean steamers. There was the new home of our happy heroine. There she lived in her master’s house, amid abundance infinite to her, because she could not measure it. Milk and rice she tolerated, as other children do; but even of these she took only what she wanted; and she had an embarrassing choice of riches of other kinds, enough to make any honey-bear quite happy.
The deep black of her fine fur was relieved by beautiful white lines on her bosom, meeting in the middle, like a necklace with a pendant on the breast. As she squatted on her haunches her nose was little above the edge of the table; but when she stood up to help herself, as she was continually doing, the natural decoration on her bosom was conspicuous, and she almost seemed as if quite nicely dressed.
Table manners she had none. How could she have manners when she had no hands? The word “manners” comes from the word for hand (main, manus). Manners mean a dexterity that hands make possible for men and monkeys, but not for bears. If they had had the hands and we their paws, the evolution of species would have taken a different turn, and the course of the world’s history changed indeed! Our heroine had [289] to adapt herself, and did it with great dexterity, but she could not grow hands. Her method at table was to reach forth both her paws, and scoop in towards herself whatever she wanted; and then she would lift things to her lips with both paws, using her nails almost as the Chinese do their chopsticks. It was not her fault that she had to break glasses and upset dishes and make many a mess.
Her master could deny her nothing. It was therefore lucky for him that her tastes were not expensive. She liked fruits best, and the fresh kinds too, which are cheap, not the tinned things. But she was not bigoted. Her appetite was eclectic. Sweet jam was appreciated, and honey in a high degree; but she did not altogether refuse marmalade if she saw nothing better.
Occasionally she was utterly unreasonable, and became troublesome, not by pulling the tablecloth, as did another Burman bear of my acquaintance, but by a peculiarity equally characteristic of a pet that was spoiled. Or it might be attributed to her temperament. It consisted in being so absorbed in what she saw that she forgot everything else, just like the ordinary doctrinaire or idealist or athlete or any other kind of common person, able to see only one thing at a time. For example, if [290] she saw plantains on the table, and wanted them, but did not then want any of the milk or sugar or other things intervening, she ignored what she did not want, and leaned over far enough to include the plantains in her magnificent embrace, and pulled the plantains to her, unheeding all the rest.
No man is perfect. Her master has confessed that he once or twice was so provoked at such a performance as to give her a tap on the nose, whereupon she went and “sulked in a corner,” as he expressed it; but how could he tell what she was thinking?
Some said she whimpered for her mother on such occasions. The Burmans say, “When the child trips, it cries for its mother”; but it is not certain that she remembered her early days, for she was but a young thing when she was caught and taken to a man’s house. Her master may well have been an indifferent substitute for an indulgent parent; but he was all she had, and his jam was very good.
He was not allowed to monopolise her young affections. She had not been long in Kyauktan before she had explored the town and even found her way to the bazaar or market, where the stall-holders, male and female, welcomed her with open arms.
[291] To tell Europeans of a bear running about loose and being welcomed with open arms in the markets may seem a fairy tale; and though in a narrative of fact it is permissible to tell what is stranger than fiction, still it may be as well to explain a few things that Europeans cannot easily know. The Kyauktan bazaar was a retail market, where people were never in a hurry, quite different from Covent Garden; and the bears of Burma have different habits from those of Europe. They are smaller too; but that is the least of the difference.
In Europe, if we mean to be rude and impute rudeness, we call a man a bear. To torture bears was a familiar sport, not long ago—bear-baiting. We still use the word; and big bears ignominiously led captive may still be seen, bemocked to make a foolish holiday. All this implies a hostile attitude which is never seen in Burma.
Perhaps a grim passage in Gibbon’s History may be quoted to show the contrast. It is in chapter xxv, and concerns the great Emperor Valentinian (A.D. 364–375). He had put his brother Valens on the throne at Constantinople, and taken charge of the rowdier end of the world himself.
“In the government of his household, or of his [292] empire, slight, or even imaginary offences, a hasty word, a casual omission, an involuntary delay, were chastised by a sentence of immediate death. The expressions which issued the most readily from the mouth of the emperor of the West were, ‘Strike off his head’; ‘Burn him alive’; ‘Let him be beaten with clubs till he expires’; and his most favoured ministers soon understood that, by a rash attempt to dispute or suspend the execution of his sanguinary commands, they might involve themselves in the guilt and punishment of disobedience. The repeated gratification of this savage justice hardened the mind of Valentinian against pity and remorse; and the sallies of passion were confirmed by the habits of cruelty. He could behold with calm satisfaction the convulsive agonies of torture and death: he reserved his friendship for those faithful servants whose temper was the most congenial to his own. The merit of Maximin, who had slaughtered the noblest families of Rome, was rewarded with the royal approbation and the prefecture of Gaul. Two fierce and enormous bears, distinguished by the appellations of Innocence and Mica Aurea, could alone deserve to share the favour of Maximin. The cages of those trusty guards were always placed near the bedchamber of Valentinian, who [293] frequently amused his eyes with the grateful spectacle of seeing them tear and devour the bleeding limbs of the malefactors who were abandoned to their rage. Their diet and exercises were carefully inspected by the Roman emperor; and, when Innocence had earned her discharge by a long course of meritorious service, the faithful animal was again restored to the freedom of her native woods.”
Unlike those occidental savages, the heroine of our history, if asked to eat the flesh of men or even butchers’ meat, would have felt as much insulted as Bernard Shaw himself. I do not mean that either she or “the Shaw” would rather starve than nibble a chicken; but that their tastes were delicate, and they preferred cereals and vegetables and fruits and sweets to any kind of carcasses.
The Burmans call the bear “wetwun,” the governor or minister of the pigs, the “gentleman pig”; and sometimes say, between jest and earnest, that pigs and bears are good Buddhists. That is because they are not murderous, though strong. It is only in self-defence that they ever do hurt. They live in general without taking life; and a nice she-bear that was sleek and tame was a treat to see, especially as she was not proud, the [294] unpardonable sin in Mongolian eyes. She was ever willing to accept little tit-bits of fruit and to stand and be caressed by anybody.
The woods were near. No doubt she often lifted up her eyes in that direction; but the sweet things of the table and the excitements of the bazaar—all the comforts of Charing Cross, so to speak—kept her from trying to escape.
I once knew a pet that did run away, and after some days’ absence came back again; but in this instance, the bear did not worry her master in that way. Servants are not partial to pets. She could go wherever she liked, and perhaps they would not have been sorry if she had departed altogether. But she always came back. Perhaps it was because she could escape at any time, as easily to-morrow as to-day. There was no hurry. She may have intended to go off to the woods at some time or other, and always postponed it. As Goethe admirably says, “We love to walk along the plains, with the summit in our eye.”
Whatever her feelings or thoughts, when she took her walks abroad, that is to say, outside her master’s little park or compound, she generally went to the bazaar.
7. THE WONDERFUL SUCKLING [295]
One of the most amusing of European ways in Burma and India is the habit of adhering to hours of work and fashions of garments that suit London. In the heat of the day the whites and their direct employees are supposed to be working hard. This leaves the best hours of the twenty-four for amusement, which is not exactly what was intended. The fashion is set by men who live in the hills. That is the secret.
You cannot really ignore the sun in the Tropics, however; you can only pretend to do it. Go into many a native quarter or bazaar in the middle of the day, as the bear used to do at Kyauktan, and you behold life honestly relaxed. The customers in the bazaar are country cousins from a distance, if there are any customers. The buzz of an occasional sewing-machine is like the drone of bees in summer, harmonious enough in the ears of the bazaar-sellers, many of whom are taking a siesta.
When she wanted fun or fruit or to see the crowd—when she was on business, so to speak—the bear went to the bazaar like other Kyauktan people, in the morning, or perhaps the late [296] afternoon. When she went in the middle of the day, it was just because master was busy at court and it was dull at home, and a rest seemed likely to be more enjoyable in company.
When once she was sauntering towards it at this mid-day hour, she passed an Indian cottage, in front of which, upon a “charpoy” or bedstead, used also as a couch, and now set upon the ground in a shady spot, a young Indian mother lay sound asleep, with baby in her lap, it may be guessed. At any rate the baby had had enough for the time, while mamma lay back upon the couch, breathing peacefully. Her plump and healthy breasts were full of milk; and as the little bearess looked, the instinct of childhood returned upon her, and she went up softly and laid her lips to the nipple which the other baby had abandoned. “She milked the woman dry,” said people afterwards; but nobody saw it being done. Nobody noticed anything till the street rang with female shrieks. “Ayāh! Ayāh! Ayāh! Mother! mother! Help, help! Come, all! Come, all! Come! Come! Come, all! Come, all! Help! help! Ah, mother, mother, mother, mother! Ayāh! Ayāh!” The bear pushed her way through the gathering crowd and hurried home unhurt. One does not readily lift a hand against [297] an old favourite; and she was home before people realised the terrible event.
Luckily for everybody, Kyauktan was, and still is, blessed with that most useful of men—an honest lawyer. He was a barrister-at-law; but the queer convention of some parts of Europe, which restricts the best lawyers to talking in court, and allows them to be consulted only through another lawyer, is as unknown in Burma as in America. At Kyauktan, as in Boston, you do not need to be “lathered in one shop and shaved in another.” You choose your lawyer, and go to him, straight.
The Kyauktan barrister had been an official once; but, as people said, he had retired and reformed. In sober truth, he had been one of the best Commissioners ever known in Burma; and now his mere presence at Kyauktan made life more bearable to honest men, for many miles around.
To him the husband of the unhappy young mother, just milked dry, went running, a score of women probably shrieking instructions after him, and half the women in Kyauktan standing ready to advise. But, wonderful to tell, there were many of them on the side of the bear, poor harmless orphan; and when, after a while, the obedient husband [298] slowly returned to his wife, and did not announce a suit or anything else to be done, some praised the lawyer, and others said that the man had only pretended to go and consult him. The strangest thing of all, significant of much, was that nobody then complained to the bear’s master or even told him of the matter. He was left to learn it later from the bantering of the honest lawyer. Was there ever a pet so popular before?
8. HARUM-SCARUM
There were many other freaks of the bear which a kind conspiracy of silence concealed from her master as long as possible. Like other bachelors who live alone, he was not always punctual in sitting down to table. His pet had the healthy appetite of youth, and was hungry at times before dinner was ready, and then, being at home everywhere and not troubled with false pride, she naturally went to the kitchen and helped herself.
It is likely that she burned or scalded herself in that way, for it is known that another little Burman bear, who frequented the kitchen, had that experience. But we have only probability to go upon in this instance. She made no [299] complaints, and returned regularly, and the cook would not tell tales. Indeed, he seems to have taken great pains to protect her, thrusting himself between her and danger so often that, at last, not knowing what he would be at, she either misunderstood his intentions or lost patience, and recollecting how strong she was, she turned to claw that affectionate but too meddlesome cook.
The upshot was all her master was allowed to know. It could not be concealed. The cook had to bolt. Alone in the kitchen, with unfettered discretion, she behaved like the reasonable, civilised animal she was. She merely took what she wanted and did what she liked, and allowed the cook to return. She had never meant to hurt him, only to remove him out of her way.
She used to travel about with her master, when he went on tour. Being unable to ride a pony, she sat in a cart. The ideal method would have been for her to sit in a box or basket on such occasions, and journey as Gulliver did in Brobdingnag; but it was useless to argue with her. She could burst any wickerwork, as easily as Samson burst his bonds, and she saw no need for anything but a convenient seat. She liked to joke with the driver, like a passenger on an old-fashioned bus or coach; but gradually it came to [300] her master’s knowledge that, only too often, the driver and anybody else in the cart had to jump down to avoid her—she was so rough in her horseplay. There was a rumour that she once knocked down a driver; but he made no complaint and it was probably an accident. I was once nearly knocked down by a bear that cannoned against me by inadvertence, hurrying to greet me in a friendly way.
When left alone in the cart, she never attempted to touch the reins. She gazed at them and the bullocks, serenely unconcerned, as the passengers in a steamer look at the machinery. When the driver went to the bullocks’ heads and stopped them, and gathered up the reins and climbed back into the cart, she seemed to consider his behaviour a matter of course, and looked as if anything else would have surprised her. Nevertheless, when these transporting adventures became known, her master insisted on leaving her at home.
9. ALL THE REST
It was not altogether disagreeable to the bear to be left alone in the house, with only a servant or two, and nobody to correct her; but [301] she made herself unpleasant to other people. Her master found her, after every absence, “more and more savage” upon his return. These are his own words; and yet, and yet, however imperious to others or contemptuous of humanity, she was always amenable to him, and to him she was always dear.
At this point, as is common in biographies, the historian who would be faithful must face a divided duty. In order to please the friends and relatives, one has to heed nothing but what they choose to tell; and if one does that, then the biography is merely an unreadable fiction. As a satirist cynically puts it,—
One of the things that make this biography worth writing is the freedom from conventional restraints. So readers shall have the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The bear’s master has long been a friend of mine, and I hope will so continue, but truth is dearer than anybody. So I will not suppress the remarks of the honest lawyer at Kyauktan, who is also an old friend, and has read the first draft of this work. He sent me [302] a letter on the subject, containing the excruciating words that the bear at Kyauktan had become “a nuisance.” The expression is his. My responsibility is limited to quoting it. I desire to express no opinion of my own.
What her own master could not help seeing was the contrast between her behaviour and that of a very respectable bear at Syriam, a place at the other end of the ridge, nearly a day’s walk from Kyauktan, just across the river from Rangoon. The bear living there belonged to Mr Brand of the Burma Oil Company, and he and our heroine’s master often compared notes, and discussed the problem of her higher education. Mr Brand seemed to think she had good natural gifts, but had come to a difficult age when she needed daily supervision. He never went on tour himself, and was willing to take charge of her. She would be sure to benefit by the company of an older and well-behaved bear, and the two together would be happier at Syriam than either was alone. At last her owner was persuaded, and, when every preliminary had been settled, our heroine set out for her new home (A.D. 1900).
She went in a slow cart, and the day was hot. It is not so well known as it should be that bears and elephants and tigers, too, are almost as [303] sensitive to the sunshine as white men. In this instance, though every possible precaution was taken, the bear was decidedly unhappy on the way. We have to remember that she was an adolescent female and a fully emancipated one, who had lived exclusively for her own amusement, and never had anything particular to do or to suffer in this world. Her sensations, therefore, must have been remarkably like those of the American family, immortalised in Ruskin’s letter to Norton of 1869.
“I ... was fated to come from Venice to Verona with an American family, father and mother and two girls—presumably rich—girls 15 and 18. I never before conceived the misery of wretches who had spent all their lives in trying to gratify themselves. It was a little warm—warmer than was entirely luxurious—but nothing in the least harmful. They moaned and fidgeted and frowned and puffed and stretched and fanned, and ate lemons, and smelt bottles, and covered their faces, and tore the cover off again, and had no one thought or feeling, during five hours of travelling in the most noble part of all the world, except what four poor beasts would have had in their den in a menagerie, being dragged about on [304] a hot day....” (Letters of John Ruskin to C. E. Norton, I, pp. 218 and 219.)
The longest road has an end, and Syriam was reached at last. The cart stopped, and the bear came down from it with every sensation smothered in one irresistible craving for coolness “Anything to be cool!” A pleasant-looking tank of water was near, and into it she plunged.
The details of what followed are variously reported. Eyes she had and ears of the best; but she used them to avoid people. It was only after a long time that it pleased her to emerge, quite shivering now, cool enough at last.
Fever came on and pneumonia; and, next day she died, and that is the end of the story. When you think of it, that is how every story would end if it went on long enough.
10. HER EPITAPH
It is now 1910: and already Mr Brand himself is dead; and, spinning in the official whirligig, “like the wind’s blast, never resting, homeless,” [305] the bear’s old master has long ago left Kyauktan, and been in many places. So it is natural that no monument has been put up to her memory; and, maybe, none ever will be. But the things of the spirit are so wonderfully made that words on paper may endure longer than marble or brass; wherefore, though it has not been engraved, let her epitaph be printed. If it is remembered till there is another as long and equally free from falsehood, it may endure for centuries; and, in the far forward dark abysms of time, this little bear may be associated with the constellation of that name, the constellation containing the Polar star. Far stranger things have happened in this wonderful world.