Philobiblon

Buying a dog was, it seems, a dodgy business in mid 19th-century London. I’m back with George Augustus Sala (as I was recently) in 1859 and he’s reporting on the scene in the West End at about 3.30pm,

p. 160 “Thick-necked and beetle-browed individuals, by courtesy called dog-fanciers, but who in many case might with as much propriety answer to the name of dog-stealers – forbidding-looking gentry, in coats of velveteen, with large mother-o’-pearl buttons and waistcoats of the neat and unpretending moleskin – lurk about the kerbs of the purlieus of Regent Street and Waterloo Place (the police drive them away from the main thoroughfares), with the little “dawgs” they have to sell tucked beneath their arms, made doubly attractive by much washing with scented soap, and the further decoration of their necks with pink and blue ribbons.

Here is the little snub-nosed King Charles – I hope the retrousse appearance of his nasal organ is not due to the unkind agency of a noose of whipcord – his feathery feet and tail, and his look silky ears, sweeping the clean summer pavement. Here is the Newfoundland pup, with his bullet head and clubbed, caudal-appendage, winking his stupid little eyes and meeding, seemingly, an enormous amount of licking into shape.

Here is the bull-dog, in his full growth, with his legs bowed, his tail inclining to the spiral, his broad chest, thin flanks, defined ribs, moist nozzle, hare lip, bloodshot eyes protruding fang, and symmetrical patch over one eye; or else, in a state of puppyhood, peering from his proprietor’s side-pocket, all pink and white like a morose sucking-pig become permit. … the accomplished French poodle, with his peaked nose, woolly wid, leggings and tail band, and his horrible shaved, salmon-coloured body. He can dance; he can perform gun-drill; he can fall motionless, as though dead, at the word of commend; he can climb up a lamp post, hop over a stick, hop on one leg, carry a basket in his mouth, and run away when told that a policeman is coming. You can teach him to do anything but love you.

These, and good store of mongrels and half-breeds that the dealer would fain palm upon us as dogs of blood and price, frisk and fawn about his cord-trouser covered legs, but where is the toy-dog par-excellence, the playful, snappish, fractious, facetious, charming, utterly useless little dog, that, a quarter of a century since, was the treasure of our dowagers and old maids? Where is the Dutch pug? Where is that Narcissus of canine Calibanism, with his coffee-coloured coat, his tail in a ring like the blue-nosed baboon’s his crisped morsels of ears, his black muzzle, his sharp, gleaming little teeth, his intensely red lips and tongue?”

He recalls seeing one as a five-year-old. (p. 162)
His mistress was a Duchess, the grandest, handsomest Duchess that ever lived (of course, I except Georgina of Devonshire) since the days of that Grace of Queenberry of whom Mr Thackeray was good enough to tell us in the “Virginians”. She, my Duchess, wore a hat and feathers, diamonds, and a moustache – a downy nimbus round her mouth, like that which Mr Philip insinuates rather than paints in his delightful Spanish girls’ faces. I see her now, parading the cliff at Brighton, with he black velvet train – yes madam, her train – held up by a page. She was the last duchess who at Twelfth-night parties had a diamong ring backed in a cake which was to be distributed in lots. Before she came to her coronet, she had been a singing woman at a playhouse, had married a very foolish rich old banker, and, at his death, remarried a more foolish and very poor duke. But she was an excellent woman, and the relative to whom she left the bulk of her wealth, is one of the most charitable, as I am afraid she is one of the most ennuyee ladies in England.”

He’s referring, he later explains, to the Duchess of St Albans, who appears thrice in the National Portrait Gallery, once in caricature – the banker was Henry Coutts, and the duke the 9th of that title. She left her money to Angelina Burdett-Coutts, a fascinating character whose high on my list of “women I must research one of these days”.

As for the Dutch pug, it seems to be simply what we’d call a pug now, and that linked article suggests perhaps it didn’t not much disappear as go downmarket in Victorian times – into more humble households.

UPDATE: Can’t resist adding another doggie history link – Elizabeth Chadwick on Living the History has been reflecting on the dogs of 1066.