Dukes and their dogs: Why Britain’s aristocracy
are just as mad about their canine friends as the rest of us
Country
Life
December
23, 2017
His Grace the Duke of Rutland with Nelson the labrador (Picture: ©Country Life/Sarah Farnsworth)
Duke of
Rutland (Picture: Sarah Farnsworth)
(Picture:
©Country Life/Sarah Farnsworth) Credit: Duke of Rutland (Picture: Sarah
Farnsworth)
Stylish
canines have long been a duke's or duchess's best friend, as Matthew Denison
found out.
Britain’s
aristocracy have always been as dog-mad as the rest of us. In 1892 the new
Duchess of Newcastle – well known among the canine cognoscenti as a breeder of
fox terriers – paid £200 at Crufts for a dog called Oudar, equivalent to
£20,000 in today’s money. It was one of 16 borzois sent to Crufts that year by
Nicholas II of Russia, and became the first of the Duchess’s 13 borzois.
Others have
been so attached to their canine pals that they’ve had the greatest artists in
the land commit their likenesses to canvas. So attached was the 4th Duke of
Rutland to two of his dogs, a black-and-tan terrier called Crab and a Spitztype
called Turk, that, in 1777, he commissioned their portrait from George Stubbs.
The following year, he invited Stubbs to paint Turk again and, in 1780, both
dogs were included in Reynolds’s portrait of the Duke’s children, the Marquis
of Granby and Lady Elizabeth Manners.
And when
Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, commissioned his portrait from Thomas
Gainsborough, he didn’t request a painting like the one the artist had lately
undertaken of the Duke’s wife, who was in shimmering silk and blue ribbons –
his depicts a young man outdoors, embracing a curly-haired terrier.
Today’s
dukes are just as keen on dogs. The Duke of Leinster is currently training a
new gundog, Nora the Korthals griffon, and he and the Duchess also own a
five-month-old Tibetan spaniel called Neville. The Duke and Duchess of Grafton
have mongrels acquired for their young children. At Belvoir Castle, the Duke
and Duchess of Rutland and their five children have seven dogs, including
terriers, labradors and cross-breeds.
‘Dogs are essentially hairy companions and, in that sense, members of the family,’ the Duchess of Leinster tells me. ‘We are always heartbroken when they die. A house isn’t really a home without a dog – although it would be a lot cleaner!’
In a house
of many dogs – including a dalmatian called Daisy, Suzy the shih tzu and a
yellow labrador called Monty – the Duke of Rutland’s particular attachment is
to the dog he considers his own, an 11-year-old chocolate labrador called
Nelson.
The Duke’s
second chocolate lab (the first was called Pagan), Nelson was trained as a
working dog, but his working days are behind him. ‘He’s old and disobedient and
he may choose to pick up or he may not – but he’s got a hell of a character.’
Nelson,
whose name reflects the Duke’s interest in British naval history, sleeps in a
kennel on one of the castle’s terraces. This is a practical arrangement, given
the logistics of life in a house like Belvoir. ‘It’s so hard here if a dog
wants to go out, so hard to rush to the nearest door.’
(Picture:
©Country Life/Sarah Farnsworth)
His Grace
the Duke of Rutland with Nelson the labrador (Picture: ©Country Life/Sarah
Farnsworth)
Nelson
spends much of his day indoors, however, sitting beside the Duke’s children as
they watch television in the evening. He’s particularly drawn by the lure of
jam tarts. ‘Loyalty is in a lab’s stomach,’ the Duke reflects.
Like many
labradors, Nelson enjoys attention and contact. ‘He sits beside me and, if I
don’t pay him any attention, he puts his right leg up on my knee. Then the left
leg. If I still ignore him, he climbs up on to my lap.’
There have
been labradors at Belvoir Castle for generations. The Duke’s grandfather had
black labs and his father yellow ones, always called either Belvoir or Quest.
The Duke’s mother – and the Duke himself – had basset hounds. His primary
consideration in choosing a labrador is shape: ‘Nelson has a nice, wide head
and a wide, square body, like traditional and beefy labs.’
When he was
younger, Nelson accompanied the Duke walking or driving around the estate,
friendly with those members of the public he encountered on castle open days.
Today, his life is more sedentary. ‘Most of all,’ the Duke comments, ‘he’s a
companion and, in effect, an old friend.’
It’s a
sentiment shared by all the owners who spoke to Country Life – and one common
to all of Britain’s dog owners, whether in castles or cottages.
The Duke of
Northumberland with Hector and his wife’s dog Sasha (Picture: ©Country Life/Chris Watt)
(Picture: ©Country Life/Chris Watt)
The Duke of Northumberland and Hector
After her
death, Cushy’s place was taken by black labradors. ‘There’s no particular Percy
family breed,’ the Duke comments. ‘One of my favourite dogs was Rupert, a
collie/springer cross and a good retriever with a great character.’
The wheel
has turned full circle: today, he again owns a cocker spaniel, a young black
dog called Hector.
‘Like my
much-loved previous black cocker Donald, who was Hector’s great-uncle, Hector
is a working cocker from a line that my head gamekeeper, Colin Adamson, has
bred for nearly 20 years. He’s two years old, trained by Mr Adamson and
untrained by me.’
The Duke
chose Hector for character and appearance as well as his working skills. He’s a
good retriever, with a preference for grouse: ‘Cock pheasants are a bit big for
him, but he drags them back by the neck.’
Like many
young spaniels, he’s ebullient and energetic. Following a rabbit scent on the
Alnwick estate, ‘he runs for miles and returns – eventually – to the whistle
from the opposite direction to the one expected, so he’s well suited to the
wild Northumbrian countryside’.
This
wildness isn’t confined to Hector’s life in the field. At night, he sleeps
between the Duke and Duchess and occasionally mistakenly jumps from the floor
onto the Duchess’s head. Tactfully, he makes amends during the Duke’s absences
by attaching himself to whichever family member remains in the castle, which he
shares with the Duchess’s spinone, Sasha, and a Hungarian viszla called Ouzel.
The Duke of
Northumberland with Hector and his wife’s dog Sasha (Picture: ©Country Life/Chris Watt)
However,
Hector is in no doubt about his master’s identity. ‘He is my shadow,’ the Duke
admits. ‘He follows me everywhere and sits on a rock staring at the water when
I’m fishing.’
Hector’s
preference for life outdoors suits the Duke’s sporting interests – and suits,
indeed, on several levels. ‘Alnwick Castle is a difficult house for puppies and
old dogs – as the many carpet stains confirm.’
Henrietta,
Dowager Duchess of Bedford, and Rosie
‘A Jack
Russell is a challenge and fun and it’s good when you’re older to have a dog
that’s feisty and takes no truck at all,’ muses the Dowager Duchess of Bedford.
As she currently divides her year between a village house overlooking Woburn’s
park and her house in New Zealand, the Duchess describes her six-year-old
Irish-bred terrier, Rosie, as a ‘shared’ dog. For six months of the year, she
lives with New Zealand neighbours, something which she seems to take in her
stride: ‘She’s very tactful. She knows that when I’m there she lives with me,
although her happiest times are when all her “owners” are together.’
For the
Duchess, Rosie is a friend: ‘I’ve always talked to my dogs, but I don’t treat
them as people – they’re not human.’ They are, however, capable of sharing
human traits. ‘My dogs have all been quite nosy, as am I. Rosie and I go
looking at things.’
The Duchess
remembers her parents-in-law as not being particularly doggy and, after she and
her husband took over the running of Woburn Abbey, she understood why.
The Duchess
had a series of steel-grey standard poodles and, afterwards, a Pekinese, but
house training was decidedly difficult. ‘You have to tell the puppy to hold on
as you roar down a corridor towards the outside, only to find that every door
is locked. And you can’t really have a dog flap at Woburn.’
Home in the
country in New Zealand presents none of the challenges of historic-house
dwelling, but it does offer a great many rabbits to chase. For the Duchess, she
has found, in Rosie, the right dog at the right moment in her life.
She
remembers all of them with affection – ‘amusing’ Mr Chips the Maltese terrier,
the intelligence of her poodles, her stubborn but delightful Pekinese – ‘but
I’m a very down-to-earth sort of person,’ the Duchess insists. In independent
and self-contained Rosie, she may have met her canine soulmate.
The Duke of
Buccleuch and Lucy
Richard
Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch pictured with Bowhill’s resident Dandie
Dimmont, Lucy at Bowhill House near Selkirk, Scotland. (Picture: ©Country
Life/Ian Rutherford)
Richard,
the Duke of Buccleuch, grew up in houses full of dogs, in a family in which
dogs and owners shared common traits. ‘My late aunt Elizabeth [the Duchess of
Northumberland] had spaniels that were rather like her: wonderfully fresh and
innocent and enthusiastic.’
Cocker
spaniels were a feature of life in the Buccleuch houses of Drumlanrig, Bowhill
and Boughton. The Duke’s grandmother and his aunts all had cockers. As a child,
he and his brother John both had badly behaved working cockers, Sammy and
Blackberry, which the Duke remembers as the bane of keepers’ lives.
However, it
is labradors and Dandie Dinmont terriers with which the Buccleuch estates are
particularly associated. In the second quarter of the 19th century, the 5th
Duke, along with the Earl of Malmesbury, imported labradors from Newfoundland.
A Buccleuch strain evolved, which survives today – ‘quite small working dogs,
like a Clumber: they can cover the ground, they’re strong and easy to train’.
Thanks to
the friendship between the 3rd Duke and Walter Scott, the family is also
associated with the Dandie Dinmont terrier. Currently one of Britain’s most
endangered breeds, it was named after a character in Scott’s novel Guy
Mannering, which is set locally.
Today, an
‘angelic’ Dandie Dinmont lives at Bowhill. Her name is Lucy and she belongs to
the Duke’s caretaker, Calum Flanders.
Richard
Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch pictured with Bowhill’s resident Dandie
Dimmont, Lucy at Bowhill House near Selkirk, Scotland. (Picture: ©Country
Life/Ian Rutherford)
‘I feel
very strongly about Dandie Dinmonts,’ the Duke tells me. ‘They desperately need
people to want to own them. I need to have one.’
And that is
just what the Duke plans to do. Over the course of their married lives, the
Duke and Duchess have had three labradors and two spaniels. Their second
spaniel died only recently.
Although
the Duchess plans to have another cocker, the Duke, who will spend much of his
time at Bowhill, is looking for a Dandie Dinmont of his own. For both owner and
dog, it will represent something of a homecoming.
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