flush

public domain

1843: on a used envelope, the poet Elizabeth Barrett (not yet married to Robert Browning) makes a quick sketch of her cocker spaniel, Flush.  The next year she would write a long, ardent poem "To Flush, My Dog" with sentiments like these:

Like a lady's ringlets brown, 

Flow thy silken ears adown 

Either side demurely, 

Of thy silver-suited breast 

Shining out from all the rest 

Of thy body purely. 

If you've never read the poem before, or would like to again, here it is. Flush was later the subject of his own fictionalized biography by Virginia Woolf.

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library. "Original pencil sketch of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, Flush. " The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1764 - 1973. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c69fcf3d-dbe9-ff39-e040-e00a1806027d