by CLAIRE TOMAL
Charles Dickens was amused by dogs and also enjoyed controlling them. PHOTO/Cine Text/Allstar
Early in Beryl Gray’s long and detailed study of Charles Dickens’s relationship with dogs both real and fictional, she points out that the first dog he owned, Timber, a white spaniel given to him in 1843 and much written about in his letters, was “invested with more life and presence than his master accords his wife … Catherine is mentioned far more often than Timber, yet … Dickens manages to convey the impression that his company is more fun than hers.” This even in spite of Timber’s bowel problems, which became chronic during a journey across France in a carriage with five children, three nurses, a maid, a courier and Mr and Mrs Dickens.
Catherine’s habit of producing babies was evidently less entertaining than Timber’s willingness to jump over a stick or run into the corner of the room and stand on two legs. Dickens took an interest in Timber’s sex life, too, and had dark thoughts of killing him when he was brought back from an arranged encounter in a state of “disgrace and mortification”, having failed to perform. Only at the advanced age of seven did poor Timber begin to show interest in a “drivelling, blear-eyed little tame rabbit of the female sex”, for which Dickens “whopped him” – surely puzzling Timber by his inconsistency. Just belonging to Dickens took most of Timber’s energy: Dickens ascribes “great uneasiness” to the dog as he was struggling with the early chapters of a new book. By June 1852, Timber had “given up all idea of handing down his name and race”. Gray suggests that he preferred food, and grew fat. She is too kind to draw the analogy with Catherine, who also ate for comfort (“Mrs Dickens nearly killed herself,” her husband told a friend after they had eaten together in a Paris restaurant). Timber died in Boulogne in 1854. He was remembered with affection, and Dickens never had another dog like him.
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