BY THEIR pet dogs let them be known; chatelaines of great houses, keen hunters and countrywomen to their boots. They run shoots, fending off their husband’s soaking wet spaniels and labradors, relegating them to the boot room or outdoor kennel. Meanwhile, their own pet lapdog sits on a cushion in pampered splendour, every bit as regal as the breed of King Charles II himself, licensed since his day to enter any public place, hostel or inn, without hindrance or reproach.
Not for these pampered pets the boot of the car or some draughty outhouse. These dogs of the heart stay firmly by the hearth. They are as treasured as the time the poet Alexander Pope gave a lapdog puppy in the 1730s to Frederick, Prince of Wales, with the epigram on the collar: ‘I am His Highness’ dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?’ Their owners defend them mercilessly, and are not unknown to spoil them rotten.
Once, staying with Lady Powell of Bayswater in Lazio, we drove in her Fiat 500 into Rome with her wirehaired dachshund on her lap, his paws blithely on the steering wheel. Wethe dog came too. When Noël Coward wrote , he should have mentioned women as well.