[ Parr / "Madame Freschon's" ]
Harriet Parr (1828–1900) was an English novelist, biographer, and historical writer who sometimes published under the pseudonym "Holme Lee."
"Madame Freschon's" was published in the April 26, 1856 issue of Household Words, a weekly literary magazine edited and partly owned by Charles Dickens.
This is the story (either fully or partly autobiographical) of a young English girl's time in a French boarding school. As she departs England the young narrator is feeling rather lonely, sitting by herself on the deck of the ship bearing her to France, unable even to see the homeland she is leaving because of dense fog. Lamenting her situation, she is struggling to hold back tears . . .
. . . when fortunately there came diversion for my thoughts in the shape of a large Newfoundland dog. A noble fellow he was; — tall, and with a feathery, black tail, and curls all over him, and beautiful, beseeching, brown eyes, full of intelligence and generosity. He first paid his respects to the man with the mop, and then trotted up to me in a friendly and cordial manner which opened my heart to him at once. I asked him what his name was; an inquiry which he perceived as an overture towards a more intimate acquaintance, and which he answered by sniffing at my little basket, wherein lay a parcel of delicate sandwiches, intended to sustain me during the voyage. He rose majestically, planted one paw on my lap and flourished his majestic tail, which I thought so nice of him that I instantly opened my store, intending to regale him with one of those dainty parallelograms of bread and ham, as a reward for his prettybehaviour.
I suppose his appetite must have been keen that morning, for I am sure he was an honest dog; but somehow, in his haste to thank me, he knocked the parcel out of my hand upon the wet deck, and while I said, pathetically, "O! naughty dog! how could you do so?" he quietly munched up every sandwich, and then deliberately asked for more. I showed him the empty paper and shook my head, and suffered him to put his nose into the basket, whence he withdrew it with a plaintive expression of disappointment and regret, in which it was impossible not to sympathise. He then sat down beside me and listened, while I drew a touching picture of the extremities to which I might possibly be reduced by his conduct; "I may even have to eat my boots," I was saying, when a loud laugh close behind me, which the wren at the top of St. Paul's might have heard, caused me nearly to tumble off my perch. It was the captain, into whose care Cousin Jack had consigned me; a great rubicund man, and the master of the thief. The paper, rolled up into a bâton, with which I was mildly enforcing my argument on the dog's mind, told the story of my loss.
"Never mind, little one, you shall have your breakfast with me;" he said kindly. (XIII: 353 - 354)
That is the story's only mention of Newfoundland dogs.