A bear was already the protagonist of one of our stories – the Voytek bear – But our bear today is less bellicose and much more educated… he attended Trinity College, Cambridge.
The English Lord Byron , 6th Baron Byron In addition to being a great poet, a prominent figure in the romantic movement, eccentric, anorexic, promiscuous bisexual, spendthrift, controversial, controversial... he was a great lover of animals. It is known that throughout his life he had horses, dogs, monkeys, cats, an eagle, a raven, a falcon, peacocks, a fox, a badger, geese, an Egyptian crane, chickens... and a bear. All except the horses resided inside the houses where Byron resided.
As a child he was given a Newfoundland puppy – although according to the pictures it could be a Border Collie – which Byron called Boatswainand and who became his inseparable companion. When in 1805 he moved to Cambridge to study at Trinity College he took Boatswainand with him but College rules prohibited the presence of dogs. Faced with that refusal, Byron decided to follow the legal causes and sent a letter to the management to reconsider his position... he was again denied. At Trinity College they shouldn't have known about the poet's eccentricities because his response was to buy a bear and take it to college. The management tried to prevent him from entering but Byron demanded that they show him the rule where bears were prohibited… since it did not exist, they had to accept it. And, to make matters worse, he sent a letter to the address in which he requested a scholarship for the bear .
Boatswain
A good example of his love for animals was the death of Boatswainand. In 1808, a stray dog bit Boatswainand and gave him rabies, Byron was with him all the time until he died a few days later. Despite the many debts he owed, he commissioned an impressive marble funerary monument for his canine friend on which this epitaph was engraved:
Here rest
the remains of a creature
who was beautiful without vanity
strong without insolence,
brave without ferocity
and had all the virtues of man
and none of its flaws.