Wednesday
Congratulations to the University of Georgia for winning the national football championship Monday night, holding back Alabama’s “Crimson Tide.” In other words, they did what King Canute was unable to pull off. (Let me know if you get this reference, which I explain below.) I’ve written in the past about Alabama’s impressive run of championships (here), applying the Lord Byron’s line, “Roll on though deep and dark blue ocean roll,/Ten thousand ships sweep over thee in vain.” Saying something about the Georgia Bulldogs is a little tougher.
That’s because I can’t find any literary references to bulldogs. Now, I have a personal story about one: when I was growing up in Sewanee in the 1950s, a bulldog named Hrothgar (Beowulf alert!) roamed the campus, sometimes entering classrooms and once my family’s apartment. I guess he felt that every mead hall was his. There are stories of classroom doors being slammed left and right when professors heard Hrothgar’s snuffling in the hall. I also remember Hrothgar being painted purple once (Sewanee’s team color) during Homecoming weekend. Anyway, it was years before I learned that he was named after a fictional Danish king.
But back to Georgia. The closest I can get to a bulldog in literature is a bull terrier. They’re not the same but indulge me because this dog, like the team, is truly fearsome. His name is Bull’s-eye and he belongs to the brutish Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist. Sykes at various times uses Bull’s-eye to terrify Oliver. In one episode he serves as an accessory in the boy’s kidnapping:
“Give me the other [hand],” said Sikes, seizing Oliver’s unoccupied hand. “Here, Bull’s-Eye!”
The dog looked up, and growled.
“See here, boy!” said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver’s throat; “if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him! D’ye mind!”
The dog growled again; and licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he were anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.
“He’s as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn’t!” said Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious approval. “Now, you know what you’ve got to expect, master, so call away as quick as you like; the dog will soon stop that game. Get on, young’un!”
Bull’s-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually endearing form of speech; and, giving vent to another admonitory growl for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.
At another point Nancy, Sykes’s lady friend who assists in the kidnapping, unexpectedly reveals a soft side as she protects Oliver against the dog:
“Keep back the dog, Bill!” cried Nancy, springing before the door, and closing it, as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in pursuit. “Keep back the dog; he’ll tear the boy to pieces.”
“Serve him right!” cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself from the girl’s grasp. “Stand off from me, or I’ll split your head against the wall.”
“I don’t care for that, Bill, I don’t care for that,” screamed the girl, struggling violently with the man, “the child shan’t be torn down by the dog, unless you kill me first.”
And then there’s the scene where Bull’s-eye actually goes after his master, which Dickens observes doesn’t happen often:
Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them by their masters; but Mr. Sikes’s dog, having faults of temper in common with his owner, and laboring, perhaps, at this moment, under a powerful sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed his teeth in one of the half-boots. Having given in a hearty shake, he retired, growling, under a form; just escaping the pewter measure which Mr. Sikes levelled at his head.
“You would, would you?” said Sikes, seizing the poker in one hand, and deliberately opening with the other a large clasp-knife, which he drew from his pocket. “Come here, you born devil! Come here! D’ye hear?”
The dog no doubt heard; because Mr. Sikes spoke in the very harshest key of a very harsh voice; but, appearing to entertain some unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where he was, and growled more fiercely than before: at the same time grasping the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like a wild beast.
This resistance only infuriated Mr. Sikes the more; who, dropping on his knees, began to assail the animal most furiously. The dog jumped from right to left, and from left to right; snapping, growling, and barking; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed; and the struggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other; when, the door suddenly opening, the dog darted out: leaving Bill Sikes with the poker and the clasp-knife in his hands.
Unlike the Georgia Bulldogs, however, Bulls-eye comes to a bad end. After Sykes, in a strange turn of affairs, accidentally hangs himself in an attempt to escape, the dog fatally seeks to rejoin his master:
A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring, jumped for the dead man’s shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went; and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.
Many in the past have dashed out their brains—metaphorically—against Alabama’s fabled teams. Not this time.
Canute episode: Legend has it that the 11th century English king Canute, piously worried that his courtiers were worshipping him as a god, had them place him on the beach. When, despite his commands, the tide kept rolling in, he had made his point that earthly power is vain compared with God’s supreme power.