ROYAL PETS

It has often been remarked that persons of the most rough and unfeeling disposition have displayed extraordinary tenderness towards their favourite animals, illustrations of which are of frequent occurrence in the pages of history. And perhaps one of the most touching pictures of animal love is that given by Homer, who tells how, unrecognised by his wife, the way-worn monarch Ulysses, though disguised in squalid rags, is at once remembered by his noble hound, even in the last moments of existence. Cautioned by his guide at the palace entrance of the wrong and insult he might encounter, Ulysses pauses at the door, but only to see his faithful dog perishing in want, misery, and neglect, yet still remembering his long-lost master, and making one final effort of expiring nature to give a sign of joy at his return:—

It has been remarked that dogs, like men, have their different ranks, and that “Fortune showers her gifts among them with just as uneven a hand as she uses when busying herself with their masters:—

Thus, during the middle ages the greyhound came in for such stars and blue ribands as are to be enjoyed in the canine world. A certain breed of them had the privilege of appearing with their masters whenever they pleased in the presence of the Emperor Charlemagne; and as a mark of this privilege the hound’s right paw was closely shaven, “a less oppressive distinction,” it has been remarked,[111] “than the richly damasked corselets and back-plates which were fastened about the best greyhounds when about to take part in the boar-hunt.”

In this country animals have in many cases shared the fame of their royal owners, and many an interesting anecdote has been handed down of pets that, through their associations with the Court, have gained a place in history.

Henry I.’s love of animals induced him to form an extensive menagerie at Woodstock during the life of his first queen, Matilda of Scotland, who was in all probability well acquainted with natural history. It was the first zoological collection ever seen in this country, and it is thus described by Stowe: “The King craved from other kinges lions, leopards, lynxes, and camels, and other curious beasts of which England hath none. Among others there was a strange animal called a stryx or porcupine, sent him by William of Montpelier, which beast,” he adds, “is among the Africans counted as a kind of hedgehog, covered with pricking bristles, which they shoot out naturally on the dogs that pursue them.” But Henry’s second wife, Adelicia of Louvaine, evidently knew nothing of zoology previous to her marriage; but in order to adapt herself to his pursuits, she turned her attention to that study, for Philippe de Thuan wrote a work on the nature of animals for her special edification, thus alluding to the personal charms of his royal patroness in his dedication:—

Richard II. had a favourite greyhound named Math, “beautiful beyond description,” writes Froissart, “who would not notice or follow any but the King. Whenever Richard rode abroad the greyhound was loosed by the person who had the care of him, and that instant he ran to caress his royal master by placing his two fore-feet on his shoulders. It fell out that as the King and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke were conversing in the courtyard of Flint Castle, when their horses were preparing, the greyhound Math was untied, but, instead of running as usual to King Richard, he passed him and leaped to Henry’s shoulders, paying him every court, the same as he used to his own master.

“Henry, not acquainted with this greyhound, asked the King the meaning of his fondness.

“‘Cousin,’ replied Richard, ‘it means a great deal for you and very little for me.’

“‘How?’ said Henry, ‘pray explain it.’

“‘I understand by it,’ added the unfortunate king, ‘that this my favourite greyhound Math fondles and pays his court to you this day as King of England, which you will be, and I shall be deposed, for that the natural instinct of the creature perceives. Keep him therefore by your side, for, lo! he leaveth me, and will ever follow you.’ Henry treasured up what King Richard had said, and paid attention to the greyhound Math, who would no more follow Richard of Bordeaux, but kept by the side of Henry, as was witnessed by thirty thousand men.”

History has many pathetic traditionary stories of this kind, one of which Southey has painted in poetic colours. Roderick, the last king of the Visigoths, having escaped from the battlefield in the guise of a peasant, where he had been defeated by Count Julian and his Moorish allies, finally returned to his shattered kingdom after a hermit life of twenty years. His dog Theron alone knew him, yet not even he at once, but only after eyeing him long and wistfully, did he recognise at length his master—

Queen Mary was a lover of birds and animals, allusions to which occur in the entries relating to her household expenditure. Thus, in the year 1542, Boxley, a yeoman of the king’s chamber, was given by the princess 15s. for bringing her a present of a little spaniel. Sir Bryan Tuke sent her “a couple of little fair hounds,” evidently white Italian greyhounds, which we find frequently introduced in her portrait, and in those of her contemporaries. Then a woman of London had a present of 5s. for bringing her a bird in a cage; and the woodman of Hampton Court took charge of a white pet lark which the Princess had left there, and he was paid 3d. for bringing it to her at Westminster in April 1543.

Elizabeth, too, was very fond of singing-birds, apes, and little dogs; and there was the favourite lap-dog of Mary Queen of Scots, connected with which there is the well-known incident in the last tragic scene at Fotheringay. After the headsman had done his work, it appeared that the dog had followed its mistress, and was concealed under her clothes. When discovered it gave a short cry, and seated itself between the head and the neck, from which the blood was still flowing.

James I., as is well known, had a miscellaneous taste for all kinds of pet animals—Virginian spaniels, a cream-coloured fawn, the splendid white gryfalcon of Ireland, an elephant, five camels, and naturally dogs of every description forming his menagerie. His Majesty had a favourite dog Jewel, or Jowler, “his special and most favourite hound.” One day, seeing his favourite lie dead, no one dared to tell him who had done the deed. At last one of the Queen’s attendants ventured to break the matter to him, saying that “the unlucky shaft proceeded from the hand of her Majesty,” which news at once pacified his Majesty’s anger. He sent word to her “not to be concerned at the accident, for he should never love her the worse,” and on the next day he gave her a jewel worth £2000, intimating that it was a legacy from his deceased dog.

Greyhounds, spaniels, and hounds are classed by Sir Philip Sidney—the first as the lords, the second the gentlemen, and the last “the yeomen of dogges.”[112] The gentlemen, in the opinion of Charles I., were the more courtly, though not for this reason the better companions. “Methinks,” writes Sir Philip Warwick, who was in attendance on the King at Newport, “because it shows his disesteem of a common court vice, it is not unworthy the relating of him that, one evening, his dog scraping at his door, he commanded me to let in Gipsey, whereupon I took the boldness to say: “Sir, I perceive you love a greyhound better than you do a spaniel.” “Yes,” replied the King, “for they equally love their masters, and yet do not flatter them so much.”

Charles II. was constantly followed by a number of small spaniels wherever he went. Indeed his fondness for these animals was extraordinary, for it is said that he even permitted them to litter in his own apartment; and, according to Evelyn, “neither the room itself, nor any part of the Court, was rendered more savoury from the King’s fancy.” His Majesty’s liking for dogs is alluded to in more than one lampoon of the period, and in a rhyme sung at the Calve’s Head Club we are told:—

And, in another pasquinade, we read:—

In the early numbers of the London Gazette we find numerous instances in which rewards are offered for dogs stolen or strayed from Whitehall, many of which were undoubtedly the King’s. On the 12th of March 1667 a dog is notified as having been lost by Charles, the advertisement running thus:—

“Lost out of the Mews on the 6th of this present month, a little brindled greyhound bitch, belonging to his Majesty; if any one has taken her up, they are desired to bring her to the Porter’s Gate at Whitehall, and they shall have a very good content for their pains.”

And again, on the 17th of May following, a reward is offered for “a white hound bitch of his Majesty’s, with a reddish head, and red upon the buttocks, some black spots on the body, and a nick in the right hip.” Advertisements of this kind were constantly, it is said, attracting the public gaze, and were from time to time the cause of considerable excitement.

And one of the favourite hobbies of Charles II. was to saunter into St. James’s Park, and to feed with his own hand the numerous birds with which it was stocked; constant allusion to which practice are made by contemporary writers.

At Oatlands the Duchess of York passed much of her time when the Duke was in Flanders. Her Royal Highness had an eccentric taste for keeping pet dogs, and near the grotto might be seen between sixty and seventy small upright stones inscribed with the names of an equal number of dogs, which were buried here by her direction. She supplied their epitaphs, one of which was as follows:—

The Duchess of York extended her kindness even to the rooks which, when driven from the neighbouring fields, experienced a sure protection in this demesne, where, finding themselves in security, they soon established a flourishing rookery, to which Lord Erskine alludes in his little poem commemorative of this humane trait in the character of the Duchess:—

One of the most charming traits in Queen Victoria’s character was her love for animals, and it is pathetically recorded that when she lay dying she sent for her favourite little Pomeranian dog, Marco, and caressed it as it jumped on her bed.[113] She always had a large number of dogs of different breeds, and she raised the Scotch collie to its present proud position—her collies, Sharp and Noble, being the daily companions of her rides among the mountains. At Windsor, we are told that her dogs, instead of being kept in cold kennels in some sunless court of the castle, were all housed in a cosy part of the Home Park, where she could, if so disposed, have them under personal observation. Among the anecdotes recorded of the Queen’s early domestic life, a pleasing one is told of Prince Albert, who being delayed for a day by some formal business when coming to England in 1839—on the visit to Windsor which ended in his betrothal—sent his greyhound “Eos” in advance, as a token that he himself would shortly arrive. The effigy of this faithful companion—which with its two puppies was afterwards painted by George Morley and by Landseer—is carved on the Prince’s tomb. Her Majesty’s love for animals prompted her loyal subjects in distant lands to send her specimens of foreign dogs, whilst Indian Rajahs and African Chiefs presented her with a large collection of animals, from lions to Thibetan mastiffs, some of which she kept at the Windsor farms. There, we are told, she kept the great bull bison brought over from Canada by the Marquis of Lorne, and the fine zebra sent by the Emperor Menelek.

But the Queen, it seems, had in early life a dislike of cats, in connection with which prejudice an amusing story is told of the Princess Royal as a very little girl, who, in order to attract attention when no one else would take notice of her, called out, “There’s a cat under the trees.” Every one looked up, but there was no cat to be seen. She had achieved her purpose, and remarked demurely, “Cat come out to look at the Queen, I suppose.” As the Queen did not allow cats, there was evidently an inner meaning in her remark.

Marie Louise, wife of Charles II. of Spain, had two parrots which talked French, and these with her spaniels were her chief companions. Disappointed, as it seemed she was likely to be, in the hope of children, which, however, the King persisted in looking for, she concentrated all her affection on these pets. The Duchess of Terra Nueva, hating all things French, and trusting to the King’s dislike of things French likewise, one day when the Queen was out for a drive, twisted the parrots’ necks; but on her return the Queen as usual called for her birds and her dogs.

At the mention of her birds, the maids of honour look at each other without speaking, but the truth was told. Accordingly, when the Duchess of Terra Nueva appeared to kiss the Queen’s hand as customary, the meek spirit of Marie Louise could endure no longer, and she gave her two or three slaps on either cheek. The rage of the Duchess was unbounded, and collecting all her four hundred ladies, she went at the head of them to the King to ask for redress. Thereupon the King betook himself to the Queen, and demanded an explanation.

“SeÑor,” she maliciously replied, “this is a longing of mine—an antojo,” for not only in the case of a royal lady, but in that of the humblest woman of Spain, the antojo had a prescriptive right to be satisfied. So Charles II., whose soul was bent on having children, to save the succession of the crown from passing out of the House of Austria, was delighted with the antojo and its significance, and declared to his queen that if she was not satisfied with the two slaps of face, she should give the Duchess two dozen more; and he checked the remonstrances of the Duchess, exclaiming, “Hold your tongue, you; these slaps on the face are daughters of the antojo.”

The rigid etiquette of the Spanish Court was carried to such an absurd extent that whatever the King had used or touched became sacred. Hence a horse he had once crossed could never be used by any one else, on which account Philip IV. declined the gift of a fine animal, he had admired, from a Spanish nobleman, saying it would be a pity so noble a beast should ever be without a master.

It is impossible to say how much not his master alone, but all Europe, owed to the spaniel whose marble effigy lies crouched at the feet of William the Silent, the great founder of the Dutch Republic, on his tomb in the church at Delft. It was this dog which saved the Prince’s life by springing forward, barking, and scratching his master’s face with his paws, when, in the night attack on the camp before Mons, a band of Spanish arquebusiers were on the point of entering the tent of William. His guards and himself were in profound sleep, and there was but just time for the Prince, after the spaniel had roused him, to mount a horse which was ready saddled, and to make his escape through the darkness. His servants and attendants lost their lives. To his dying day, Mr. Motley tells us, “the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same race in his bed-chamber.”

Alfonso VI. of Portugal, despite his wild and savage nature, had an affection for mastiffs. Hearing, by accident, that the Jesuits kept some fine specimens of those animals, he once rode over at night to the convent where the fathers resided. He had alighted from his horse, and was waiting for torches to be conducted to the kennels, when, impatient of waiting, he strolled into the streets and almost immediately he got engaged in a quarrel, whereby, instead of seeing the mastiffs, he was carried to bed wounded.

Charles XII. of Sweden, when scarcely seven years old, was handing a piece of bread to his favourite dog, when the hungry animal, snapping at it too greedily, accidentally bit the Prince’s hand. But the young Prince, sooner than betray his dog, which he knew intended no mischief, kept the matter a secret to himself, until an officer who attended at table perceived what had happened, for the Prince had grown pale with the pain and loss of blood, and he could not but admire his nobility of character.

Frederick the Great’s greyhounds had quite a standing at Court, and supplied the place of the monkeys which, as Crown Prince and for a short time after his accession, he kept in his room strangely dressed. His dogs were his constant companions at home, in his walks, in his journeys, and in the field. Of these animals, Biche and, above all, Alcmene were the favourites, and with the former he once concealed himself from the Pandours under a bridge, where she crouched close to him without betraying him by the least sound. But, alas! “poor Biche died,” as Frederick said, “because ten doctors were trying to cure her.”

About 1780, when his Majesty went to the review in Silesia, he left Alcmene very ill at Sans Souci, and every day a courier was sent with the latest news of its condition. When informed of the poor animal’s death, Frederick gave orders for the dead body to be placed in a coffin in the library, and after his return he would for two or three days look at it “for whole hours, in silent grief, weeping bitterly,” after which he had it buried.

Frederick’s favourite dogs and their companions had for their attendant one of the so-called royal “small footmen,” who fed them and led them for exercise on fine days in the garden, and on wet ones in a large hall. For their amusement small leather balls were provided, and two dollars a month were allowed for the keep of each dog. One evening in 1760 the Marquis d’Argens found the King in his winter quarters at Leipzic, sitting on the floor with a dish of fricassee before him, from which the dogs made their repast, and holding a small stick in his hand with which he kept order, and pushed the best bits towards his favourites.

In addition to his dogs, his Majesty took great interest in his horses, one of his favourites being “the long Mollwitz Grey” which had belonged to his father, on which he retreated from the battlefield, and which he never afterwards rode, but kept till its death. Then there was CÆsar, a roan, that walked freely about in the garden of the palace of Potsdam, and was so accustomed to Frederick that it followed him to the parade, where his Majesty would occasionally order a different movement rather than disturb his old steed. Another pet horse was CondÉ, which was almost daily brought out before the King, who fed it with melons, sugar, and figs; other favourites being Choiseul, Kaunitz, BrÜhl, and Pitt. Another very fine horse, writes Vehse in his “Memoirs of the Court of Prussia,” was Lord Bute, and when the English minister had discontinued the subsidies, revenge was taken on the horse, which had to help the mules in drawing orange trees.

Peter the Great had a favourite monkey, which was allowed to take all kinds of liberties. During his Majesty’s stay in this country, William III. “made the Czar a visit to his lodgings in York Buildings, in which an odd incident happened. The Czar had his monkey, which sat upon the back of his chair,” writes Lord Dartmouth, and “as soon as the King was sat down the monkey jumped upon him in some wrath, which discomposed the whole ceremonial, and most of the time was spent afterwards in apologies for the monkey’s behaviour.”[114] Alexander III. was much attached to animals, and would tramp for miles through forest and marsh with his favourite setters—Spot and Juno—for sole companions. The imperial kennels and stables were models of order and propriety.

After children, dogs and animals in general were a great delight to Catherine II. of Russia, in connection with which many anecdotes have been recorded. In 1785, we are told how she took a fancy to a white squirrel, of which she made a pet, and about the same time she became possessed of a monkey of whose cleverness she would often boast. “You should have seen,” she writes to Grimm, “the amazement of Prince Henry one day when Prince Potenkin let loose a monkey in the room, with which I began to play. He opened his eyes, but he could not resist the tricks of the monkey.”

Her Majesty also had a favourite cat, which seems to have been a wonderful animal—“the most tomcat of all tomcats, gay, witty, not obstinate.” In one of her letters she writes: “You will excuse me if all the preceding page is very badly written. I am extremely hampered at the moment by a certain young and fair Zemire, who of all the Thomassins is the one who will come closest to me, and who pushes her pretensions to the point of having her paws on my paper.”

Henry III. of France was never happy unless a whole kennel of puppies yelped at his heels; and Dumas has given an amusing sketch of his Majesty as he travelled with his fool Chicot in the same litter drawn by half-a-dozen mules. “The litter,” he writes, “contained Henry, his physician, his chaplain, the jester, four of the King’s minions, a couple of huge hounds, and a basketful of puppies, which rested on the King’s knees, but which was upheld from his neck by a gold chain. From the roof hung a gilded cage, in which there were white turtle-doves, the plumage of their necks marked by a sable circlet of feathers. Occasionally two or three apes were to be seen in this ‘Noah’s Ark,’ as it was called.”

Henry IV. was fond of dogs, and when King of Navarre, was found one day in his cabinet by his great minister, Sully, with his sword by his side, his cloak on his shoulders, carrying in a basket suspended from his neck two or three little pugs.

Even in his sports, one of the early exploits of Louis XV. gives a painful impression of his wanton character. He had a pet white doe at Versailles, at which one day he fired in mere mischievousness. The poor creature came wounded towards him and licked his Majesty’s hand, but the young King drove it away from him, and shot it again and again till it died.

Alfred de Musset’s dislike of dogs was intensified by unfortunate experience, for more than once a dog had nearly wrecked his prospects, one occasion being when at a royal hunting-party he blunderingly shot Louis Philippe’s favourite pointer. To Goethe, too, dogs were an abhorrence, and a story is told of the poet’s troubles as theatrical manager at Weimar, when the cabal against him had craftily persuaded the Duke Carl August—whose fondness for dogs was as remarkable as Goethe’s aversion to them—to invite to his capital Karsten and his poodle, which had been performing at Paris the leading part in the melodrama of “The Dog of Montargis.” But Goethe indignantly replied, “One of our theatre regulations stands, ‘No dogs admitted on the stage,’” and dismissed the subject. But the invitation had already gone, and the dog arrived. After the first rehearsal Goethe gave his Highness the choice between the dog and his Highness’s then stage manager; whereupon the Duke, angry at his opposition, sent a most offensive letter of dismissal. He quickly regretted the act, and wrote to Goethe, whom no entreaty could ever induce to resume his post.