Margaret's Bench -- January 2008
Our first dog, Jackie, was a tri-color basset
hound named in honor of Jack Benny, one of David’s all-time
favorite show biz personalities.
Here’s Jackie along with a few of her
siblings.
I’m not sure which one is Jackie. The cute one, I guess.
Whenever we introduced Jackie to someone new, the conversation
might go something like this:
Me or David: And this is our hound dog, Jackie.
New person: He’s so cute!
Us: Actually, she’s a girl.
New person: Really? Did you name her after Jackie Onassis?
At which point I’d think, What?!?
I respected Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Yet, to me,
the idea of naming a dog after Jackie O. feels a little
insulting. To the dog as well as to the lady. In contrast,
naming a basset puppy after Jack Benny feels just fine. An honor
in both directions.
After Jackie died in 2002 at the ripe old age of 17, I made some
drawings and paintings of her, using photos for models. This one
shows Jackie surrounded by dream images of her favorite things:
shoes, dog biscuits, bones, hot dogs, and her square green
pillow, which over the years developed a faint brown
discoloration in the middle that wouldn’t wash out.
We still miss Jackie. I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately.
Our second dog, Katie, already had her name when we adopted her
from the animal shelter in 2003. Katie died earlier this year.
You can read more about her and see a picture in the
October
Bench.
Then on December 11, 2007, David and I rode the ferry across
Admiralty Inlet to pick up Bingo, our new cockapoo puppy. This
photo was taken on an earlier visit, when we rode over to meet
the breeder and look at puppies. It shows Bingo and two of his
brothers being held by Deb Mitchell, who operates
D’Tresor Kennel.
I’m not sure which one is Bingo. The cute one, I guess.
After we plunked down a deposit and arranged to pick up one of
the male puppies in a few weeks time, David and I returned home,
our hearts beating high. We’d already started to jot down
potential puppy names on pieces of scrap paper. Now our lists
rapidly grew. For some reason these lists abounded in two-syllable
names starting with “B.” Boffo, Buster, Bosco, Bunky, Boofer,
Bowzer, Bucko, Bingo, Beppo, Bonkers. As a change of pace, David
also proposed “Phlymph.”
Since David had named Jackie after one of his favorite people,
he suggested I name our new puppy after one of mine—or maybe a
favorite character from fiction. The character names that came
to mind—Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, Emma Woodhouse—just didn’t
feel right.
Every time I looked at our lists, “Bingo” rose up to me. Then,
suddenly, I thought of Bingo Little, a character created by P.G.
Wodehouse in his series featuring Bertie Wooster and his
gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves. Written from the 1920’s to the
1970’s, the stories are set in London, on English country
estates, and in New York City. They are told from Bertie’s
point of view. They’re funny on the first read and on the
twenty-first read. I confidently expect them to be funny on
the hundred-and-first read.
I can’t say that Bingo Little is my all-time favorite character
in the Wodehouse novels. That honor would have to go to either
Aunt Dahlia or Gussie Fink-Nottle. But I like Bingo fine. An old
school-chum of Bertie’s, his main characteristic is that he’s
always falling in love, often with the first girl he sees on
any given day. His romantic entanglements get him in trouble,
and then he’s rescued by Bertie and Jeeves. In the course of one
slim volume of loosely-connected stories, Bingo Little falls in
love with the following array of young women:
 Mabel (a waitress at a tea shop)
Honoria Glossop (daughter of the famous loony-doctor, Sir
Roderick Glossop)
Daphne Braythwayt (Honoria’s best friend)
Charlotte Corday Rowbotham (whose father makes soapbox
speeches in support of the downtrodden worker and hopes to bring
the Russian Revolution to England)
Lady Cynthia Wickhammersley (daughter of Lord Wickhammersley
of Twing Hall)
Mary Burgess (niece of the Rev. Mr. Heppenstall, residing at
Twing Vicarage.)
and finally, coming full circle, another waitress, this time
at a gentleman’s club in London where Bertie is standing Bingo
to lunch.
An excerpt from
Chapter 17 of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, ©, 1923 George H. Doran
Company.
“How would this do you, Bingo?” I said at length. “A few
plovers’ eggs to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold
salmon, some cold curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and
cream with a bite of cheese to finish?”
I don’t know that I expected the man actually to scream with
delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his
pet dishes, but I had expected him to say something. I looked
up, and found that his attention was elsewhere. He was gazing at
the waitress with the look of a dog that’s just remembered where
its bone was buried.
She was a tallish girl with sort of soft, soulful brown eyes … I
didn’t remember having seen her about before, and I must say she
raised the standard of the place quite a bit.
“How about it, laddie?” I said.
“Eh?” said young Bingo absently.
I recited the programme once more.
“Oh yes, fine!” said Bingo. “Anything, anything.” The girl
pushed off, and he turned to me with protruding eyes. “I thought
you said they weren’t pretty, Bertie!” he said reproachfully.
“Oh, my heavens!” I said. “You surely haven’t fallen in love
again—and with a girl you’ve only just seen?”
“There are times, Bertie,” said young Bingo, “when a look is
enough—when, passing through a crowd, we meet somebody’s eye and
something seems to whisper…”
At this point the plovers’ eggs arrived, and he suspended his
remarks in order to swoop on them with some vigor.
Bingo actually marries this waitress. Later, it’s revealed that
she’s not a waitress at all, but Rosie M. Banks, author of soapy
romances, including “All for Love,” “Madcap Myrtle, “Only a
Factory Girl,” “A Red, Red Summer Rose, “Woman Who Braved All,”
and “The Courtship of Lord Strathmorlick.” She was only
pretending to be a waitress while doing research for her new
book, “Mervyn Keene, Clubman.” She falls in love with Bingo when
she realizes that he loves her not for her fame as an author,
which he knows nothing about, but for herself alone.
So I proposed that we name our puppy Bingo, in honor of a
character who falls in love and gets in a mess, and falls in
love and gets in another mess, and again, and again,
until finally he falls in love with one who makes love her
business and her craft. Bringing home a puppy means bringing
home love—love with all its messes, crazy unpredictability,
disguises, deceptions, revelations, altered plans, ruined routines, fears, heartaches, and sudden
joy.
In the Wodehouse stories, the marriage
between Bingo Little and Rosie M. Banks was a success. Here at
home, David, little Bingo, and I are hoping for the same. Each
new day is a new creation, complete with fresh expectations,
uncertainties, and giggles.
Wishing you the blessings of the season and a new year filled
with adventure and joy.
-- Margaret
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