First published in the Athenæum of 22 July 1843 (670-71), “To Flush, My Dog” appeared in all editions of EBB’s collected poems. When it appeared in her first collection (1844), it was one of those singled out by critics as a favorite (for examples, see John Forster, the Examiner, and Sarah Flower Adams, the Westminster Review; BC 9: 348, 375-76). The dog was a gift to EBB at a time when she needed to be distracted from grief over her closest brother’s death by drowning in the summer of 1840. Flush was a gift from Mary Russell Mitford, then a frequent correspondent and occasional visitor, who often wrote about dogs (see the stories “The Ground-Ash” and “The Widow’s Dog”) – thus, in EBB's note to the poem, he could be called one of a “celebrated” line of dogs. In December of that year, Mitford promised EBB the first offspring of her own spaniel named Flush, which idea EBB greeted with joy. But EBB then demurred, saying such a dog is too valuable to be given away and, as a hunting dog, would be unhappy living closed in a room with her (BC 4: 305-6, 310-11). Nevertheless, in January 1841, the pup arrived in Torquay in a basket addressed to her.

Flush’s adventures are charmingly documented in subsequent letters to Mitford and other correspondents; Virginia Woolf’s biography of him, Flush (1933), focusing on his role in the courtship, is equally charming (for an image of him, see BC 5: 238). The other poem in which Flush figures prominently, the sonnet “Flush or Faunus,” which was published in the 1850 collection, makes the same argument as seen here but in quite a different style. Alethea Hayter regards the series of sonnets with which it appears as a working through of the “gradual conquest of grief and resolution to face life” (Mrs. Browning 70). Perhaps addressing this theme in a light way, as EBB does in “To Flush, My Dog,” was a necessary step in writing and publishing on a sobering experience that is common to all of us.

“To Flush, My Dog” figures in the courtship correspondence as well. RB writes an imitation of the poem in an attempt to convince EBB of the depth and sincerity of his love for her, saying “I treat these things lightheartedly, as you see – instead of seriously,” hoping this way will be persuasive. He follows this playfulness, however, with the assertion “you are entirely what I love [. . .] all about you is ‘to my heart’—(to my mind, as they phrase it).” In his version he imagines that, like Flush, he is “called loving friend and praised for not preferring to go ‘coursing hares’ – with ‘other dogs’ (postmark: 26 March 1846, BC 12: 182). And of course Flush accompanied the couple on that September day in 1849 as they headed off for the Continent after their marriage. Life in Italy for this beloved dog, as for everyone else, was far less cloistered than before -- he even was allowed to be outside by himself, “whenever he likes, to run in the piazza (never farther) & enjoy the best society of the Florentine dogs. The Grand duke’s palace, he looks upon himself as having a claim to, & salutes the guards with a graceful familiarity” (ca. 10 Feb. 1848, Letters To Anabella 1: 151). He died in Florence in June 1854.