THE WORD “BUMBLE.”

Evening Star, Issue 3476, 14 April 1874, Page 3

THE WORD “BUMBLE.”

At a late trial for libel, a learned counsel was placed in the witness-box to give a definition of the word “ Bumble,” which he interpreted according to his idea of what Dickens meant to imply by it. In Forster’s life of Dickens, that lamented author’s own idea of its import is given, from which it will be seen how ehsy it is for jurors to be misled by legal fallacies. Mr Forster, desoribing the “Every-day life of Dickens,” says :

His dogs were a great enjoyment to him; and, with his high road traversed as frequently a* any in England, by tramps and wayfarers of a singularly undesirable description, they were also a necessity. There were always two, of the mastiff kind, but latterly the number increased. His own favorite was Turk, a noble animal, full of affection and intelligence, whose death by a railway accident shortly after the Staplehurst catastrophe caused him great grief. Turk’s sole companion up to that date was Linda, puppy of a great St. Bernard brought over by Mr Albert Smith, and grown into a superbljr beautiful creature. After Turk there was an interval of an Irish dog, Sultan, given by Mr Percy Fitzgerald; a cross between a St. Bernard and a bloodhound, built and colored like a lioness and of splendid proportions, but of aurii indomitably aggressive propensities, that after breaking his kennel-chain’and nearly devouring a luckless little sister of one of the servants, he had to be killed. Dickens always protested that Sultan was a Fenian, for that no dog, not a secretly sworn member of that body, would ever have made such a point, muzzled as he was, of rushing at and bearing down with fury on anything in scarlet with the remotest resemblance to a British uniform. Sultan’s successor was Don, presented by Mr Frederic Lehmann, a grand Newfoundland brought over very young, who with Linda became parent to a couple of Newfoundlands, that were still gambolling about their master, huge, though hardly out of puppydom, when they lost him. He had given to one of them the name of Bumble, from having observed, as he described it, “ a peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to mount guard over the yard when he was an absolute infant,” Bumble was often in scrapes. Describing to Mr Fields a drought in the summer of 1868, when their poor supply of ponds and surface wells had become waterless, he wrote : Ido not let the great dogs swim in the canal, because the people have to drink of i?* j x w T len , t'key get into the Medway it is hg.rd to get them gut again. The other day son > Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some floating timber, and became frightened, Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the wet and looking on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived something amiss, and went in with a bound and brought Bumble out by the ear. The scientific way in which he towed him along was charming.”

We may add our own knowledge of the weaning of the word as accepted in Yorkshire long before Dickens wrote Oliver Twist where everyone understood Bumble to mean merely a parish beadle.