Mementos of Mat, Eliza Jane Nicholson’s dog
Eliza Jane Nicholson was a pioneering New Orleans journalist who loved her dog so much, she memorialized him in photo, verse, and even jewelry.
Around 1880, a little white mixed-breed dog sat patiently in John Hawley Clarke’s photographic studio on Canal Street, between Chartres Street and Exchange Place. His mismatched features reflect diverse heritage: a Chihuahua’s eyes look out from a bearlike face with tippy ears on a spaniel’s rough-coated body. He is not beautiful in the physical sense, but his world-weary gaze conveys a sense of dignity and wise old age that compels the viewer to look into his eyes. Looking at his nearly 140-year-old portrait, I understand what prompted the grief-stricken owner to write about her dog’s unusual gaze, which “looked at me so wistful and so wise. Trying to know.” This is Mat.
For many years, Mat was journalist Eliza Jane Nicholson’s steadfast confidant and companion. Through good times and bad, Mat was there for Eliza Jane, who wrote under the pen name Pearl Rivers. Her poem “Only a Dog,” written after Mat’s death, in 1885, memorializes the canine friend whose name was her child’s first word. Memorializing him in verse was not enough, though. Nicholson also had one of Mat’s tiny paws taxidermied and mounted on a pin as a piece of jewelry.
I first learned of Mat soon after I began working at HNOC in January 1998. A colleague had shown me Mat’s collar and the brooch made from one of his front paws. However, it is Mat’s photographic image, not his disconsolate owner’s grisly keepsake, that conveys to me his inner spirit and preserves this faithful little dog’s memory for posterity.
Learn More about Eliza Jane Nicholson
A newspaperwoman of the 19th century, Nicholson not only had a career but also founded important charitable organizations. Read more about her life and work in this section of the virtual exhibition Voices of Progress: Twenty Women Who Changed New Orleans.
By M. L. Eichhorn, senior reference associate
Related Virtual Exhibitions
Voices of Progress: Twenty Women Who Changed New Orleans
Portraits of women who fought for equality, justice, and charity
“Yet She Is Advancing”: New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878–1970
The story of women’s suffrage, leading up to and beyond the passage of the 19th Amendment
Related Stories
Beauty and the Ballot
Whickam was a beautician, community leader, and national civil rights organizer who helped thousands of Black Americans access their right to vote.
Related Exhibitions
“Yet She Is Advancing”: New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878–1970
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
