Grip (raven)

Grip was a talking raven kept as a pet by Charles Dickens. She was the basis for a character of the same name in Dickens's 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge and is generally considered to have inspired the eponymous bird from Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem "The Raven". Grip lived with the Dickens family in their home at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone. She could repeat several phrases, she buried coins and cheese in the garden, and she often bit people, including the coachman and the children. Following an incident where Grip bit one of the Dickens children, she was banished to the shed. Grip died in 1841, possibly from lead poisoning after consuming a large amount of lead paint. After a necropsy, Dickens had her stuffed and mounted. She was displayed above the desk in his study and he replaced her with another raven he also named Grip. Her remains passed through the hands of several collectors after Dickens's death and are now on display in the Rare Book Department of the Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia.

Life in London Grip was a female common raven (Corvus corax), hatched in England c. 1839. Charles Dickens may have been considering including a raven as a character in his novel Barnaby Rudge as early as 1839. After he announced to his neighbours that he had a fancy for ravens, Grip was discovered in a "modest retirement" in London by Frederick Ash and given to Dickens.

Dickens named the raven Grip and she lived with the Dickens family at 1 Devonshire Terrace, in Marylebone near Regent's Park. The earliest mention of Grip was in a letter from Dickens to his friend Daniel Maclise on 13 February 1840 in which he joked, "I love nobody here but the Raven, and I only love him because he seems to have no feeling in common with anybody." Grip was treated as a family pet in the Dickens household, allowed to roam freely like a cat or a dog. She grew to be 18 inches in length and her wingspan was at least 25 inches. She was a talking bird and knew several phrases, her favourite being "halloa old girl". She may have also used some of the phrases that were used by the character Grip in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, including "Polly, put the kettle on, we'll all have tea"; "keep up your spirits", and "Bow, wow, wow". She buried halfpence and cheese in the garden outside the house. In a letter to Angela Burdett-Coutts, Dickens related how the bird had also buried several raw potatoes, a brush, and a large hammer that was thought to have been stolen from a carpenter. Grip was known to "hector horses, pets and children in the Dickens household". She terrorized the Dickens family dog, a Newfoundland, stealing his dinner from under him, and once gave a "nasty bite" to the man who tended the horses. Grip also bit the ankles of the children. After an incident where Grip bit one of the children, Catherine Dickens insisted that the raven live in the shed. Thereafter, Grip slept in the carriage house, "generally on horseback". Grip used her beak to rip off sections of painted surfaces - typical corvid behaviour. The family's carriage was among her targets.

Lead poisoning and death Sometime in 1840, the stable where Grip slept was freshly painted. Grip noticed the careful attention that the painters had given to their paint, and after they went to dinner, she drank the white paint they had left behind. The paint was lead-based and, according to Dickens, Grip ate "a pound or two of white lead". Grip recovered, but became ill in March 1841. A veterinarian was summoned who gave "a powerful dose of castor oil" to the raven. Dickens initially thought the medicine had worked, as Grip bit the coachman, which indicated that she had been restored to her usual personality. While Grip was able to ingest warm gruel the next morning, her recovery did not last and she died on 12 March 1841. Dickens recalled Grip's death in a letter to Daniel Maclise:

"On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl' (his favourite expression) and died. He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was play." Dickens himself entertained suspicions that Grip had been a victim of intentional poisoning, singling out a "malicious butcher" and the publisher Charles Knight. He had a post-mortem examination of the raven done at the school of anatomy of one Mr Herring.

As a literary inspiration Dickens wrote about his notion to portray Grip as a character in his book Barnaby Rudge in a 28 January 1841 letter to the artist George Cattermole. Dickens relayed, "Barnaby being an idiot, my notion is to have him always in company with a pet raven, who is immeasurably more knowing than himself. To this end I have been studying my bird, and think I could make a very queer character of him."

Edgar Allan Poe wrote two reviews of the serialised novel for Graham's Magazine, first in May 1841 after three instalments had been published and then in February 1842 following the conclusion of the novel. Poe enjoyed the character of Grip, but considered Barnaby Rudge to be a failed murder mystery and characterised the denouement as "exceedingly feeble and ineffective". He wrote:

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