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- Herausgeber: Daunt Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
'It must be a nuisance to go through life with a Father Christmas moustache like that, but no doubt the Schnauzer gets used to it.' In Faces, Vita Sackville-West traces the origins and history of forty-four dog breeds. She reflects on their characteristics with frank humour, from the gentle-eyed Afghan, 'like somebody's elderly Aunt Lavinia, who nourishes a secret passion for the Vicar', to the Labrador Retriever, 'dear, solid, faithful lump of a dog!', and that 'docile minion' the Corgi. Each profile is accompanied by Laelia Goehr's striking black and white photographs. Together, profile and portrait capture these canine characters in their various moods: benevolent, haughty, amused, wistful, or simply a little bit sleepy. Charming and fascinating in equal measure, Faces is a joyful read for all dog lovers.
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Faces
PROFILES OF DOGS
Text by Vita Sackville-WestPhotographs by Laelia Goehr
DAUNT BOOKS
Foreword
‘There is in some men a naturall dislike and abhorring of Cattes, their nature being so composed that not onely when they see them, but being neare them and unseen and hid of purpose, they fall into passions, fretting, sweating, pulling off their hats and trembling fearfully …’
I would not go so far as that, but I do prefer dogs.
The notes I have appended to Laelia Goehr’s magnificent and imaginative illustrations are very amateurish indeed. I am sure they are full of blunders for which I hope I may be forgiven. All I have tried to do was to give some sort of personal interpretation about the dog under consideration, and I have not hesitated to say whether I disliked or admired the dog I was writing about.
I may thus have given offence to some lovers of lap-dogs or toy-dog breeds, because, as the readers of these notes will readily discover, my taste is for the large, noble, romantic, and aesthetically decorative animal.
Anyhow, the only way I could treat the subjects Laelia Goehr supplied was to look at them with a fresh eye and to find out something about them which might make amusing reading. I have tried to find out little stories and anecdotes about them.
I hope I have not made my notes too anthropomorphic. When one loves dogs, it is difficult not to attribute human qualities to them, so one almost automatically writes ‘he’ instead of ‘it’. One’s own dog is not it, but he or she.
How very odd it must be to be a dog, when you come to think of it. He must have crept in, thousands of years ago, to share man’s hearth and man’s first fire. And now he lies, in his complicated breeds, in our civilised houses, centrally heated; yet he still lies humbly on the floor, waiting for his dinner, and for a loving caress from his owner.
Contents
one
THE BASSET HOUND
He stands very low to the ground, which explains his name, for he started life as a Frenchman, chien courant à jambes courtes. His legs are indeed very short, though not short enough to make him look like one of those small ottomans one can push about on castors. He is a sporting dog, not a lapdog; and his job is to pursue the hare which as we all know is a very rapidly moving animal.
No one could dislike blood-sports more than I, but one must not extend one’s human prejudice to a creature whose instinct impels him to take part in them. If the basset wants to chase a hare, who shall blame him? It is we who have encouraged him to do so. We imported him from France in 1860 or so; and in 1875 the painter Sir John Everett Millais exhibited his French hound Model on the show-bench as a novelty. The English soon discovered his sporting qualities, and within thirty years had him in organised packs – not very many packs, it is true, for even today (1961) there are only about a dozen in the whole country. It has sometimes been asked why we bothered about the basset when we already had the beagle. The answer seems to be that the basset has a finer nose for a catchy scent on cold ploughland; has less tendency to ‘flash’, i.e. overrun the scent and thereby lose the hare; and that people who appreciate the finer subtleties of houndwork prefer to follow the basset.
Let us leave this clever, stumpy little hound to his professional business, and consider him as a personal companion. In order to do this we must shuffle the show-bench basset and the hare-hunting basset and the private-pet basset into three different categories, for although at least one breeder hunts her dogs as well as showing them, that would not be the ambition of the one-dog man or woman who just wants somebody on four legs to take him or her out for a country walk.
I have never yet owned a basset, but I sometimes think I would very much like to. He would be nice and solid to pat; silky to stroke; and those long leathery ears would be voluptuously and sleepily soft to fondle. Besides, he is said to be affectionate and docile, though the hare’s opinion might differ.
And then there is his voice. I started to write a clerihew about it:
The basset
Has a great asset.
His deep melodious voice
Makes all but the hare rejoice.
Who would not prefer a bark resembling the deep bass notes of a cello, to the ear-splitting screech of an over-blown trumpet?
