MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON I N Picture Post about a
fortnight ago there was an interesting article upon the changing shapes of dogs. According to Mr. Croxton Smith, the author of the article, it was only in 1859, with the first dog-show at Newcastle-on-Tyne, that people really began to notice the difference between their pets. The use of some form of canine animal for assistance in sport, or as guardians of the cave, goes back to the prehistoric age. The Egyptians some five thousand years ago had already developed several varieties of the original wolf prototype.. There were thin dogs, similar to grey- hounds, which were bred for their speed, and little short dogs, of the terrier type, which were bred for burrowing. The Assyrians by about 600 B.C. had developed a type of mastiff of seemingly massive strength. The Greeks appear to have cherished feelings of ambivalence towards the canine species ; on the one hand, the epithet " dog-faced " was among the most wounding adjectives that could be employed ; on the other hand, the old hound Argus, who wagged his aged tail in recognition of Odysseus, is represented as an agreeable, and indeed engaging, character. I should imagine that there were three main categories of dogs in ancient Greece.
.- On the one hand, the watch-dog, whether of homes or flocks, who must have been little different from the fierce Molossian animals which to this day scare the traveller among the Arcadian hills. On the other hand, the sporting dog, such as Atalanta mastered with such consummate skill. And in the third place, the pariah packs, similar to those which graced the alleys of Constantinople before the Young Turks banished them, and which served as the scavengers of the town. Thucydides mentions expressly that at the time of the plague of Athens these scavenger packs would not touch the corpses which lay unburied outside the walls.
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The Greeks, with their sparse way of life, do not appear to have been extravagant about their pets. Occasionally they would tame a partridge or a quail. The Romans, when they acquired riches, had a perfeot passion for pets of all shapes and sizes. Lucullus, as we know, had his tame mullets ; it was customary for a boy to send a girl a pet hare as a token of affection ; and in any richly-appointed house one would find pigeons, geese and monkeys in every corner ; on the dinner-table tame snakes would creep among the dishes and nibble honey cakes held to them by the guests. The Romans also were the first systematic breeders of dogs. They crossed the native Umbrian and Salentine strains with hounds imported from Laconia and Arcadia ; 'in the third century A.D. they imported bull-dogs from England and our native type of terrier. Yet these dogs were used mainly for hunting pdposes or as watch- dogs. The aim was to produce a strain which would be swift or fierce or strong. Lucrepus refers to the great Molossian watch- dogs, with their tremendous bark, who when irritated would bare their teeth in rage—duros nudantia dentes. The favourite lap-dog of the Romans seems to have been the Maltese poodle. Martial has a pretty little poem in honour of Issa, the beloved lap-dog of his friend Publius—deliciae ratella Publi. She seems to have been a charming animal ; she was perfectly house-trained, she slept on Publius' pillow without making a sound, her kiss was purer than that of a dove, and when she died, Publius painted her portrait so that " deatlf should not deprive him of her completely." Yet, apart from Issa, apart from Lesbia's too famous sparrow, apart from Ovid's parrot, the references to pets in ancient literature are few indeed. Issa alone comes down to us as a distinct personality across two thousand years.
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Looking at the portraits of dogs reproduced in Picture Post, one wonders for what purpose the dog-fanciers of the last ffifty years have been at such pains to alter their appearance. It does not seem to me that the squat slobbery bull-dog of 1950 is really much of an improvement on the elongated and less damp prototype of 'three centuries ago. I quite see that it was useful to breed white and not brown fox-terriers, since the original brown 'variety was often mistaken by the hounds for a fox. But,I do not see the point of replacing the old alert sharp-nosed fox-terrier by a beast with a long goatee beard. The Scottish terrier of my youth was an alert and perky little animal ; he has been succeeded today by a stunted befeathered object, also disfigured by a beard. The Sealyham of 1'910 was certainly a more companionable object than the grotesque which the breeders have produced in 1950. And the spaniel today seems to spend his whole time imitating the appearance and the snivelling habits of a Pekinese. Yet when one compares the pictures of animals introduced into seventeenth- century pictures with the photographs of those displayed at Cruft's Show today, one is left with the question whether it is the dogs themselves who have changed so completely or whether the artists of the time saw them in a different way. The camera (which cannot lie) suggests that it is the shape itself of the dogs that has changed. The question then arises whether this is due solely to the fantasies of those who breed and show these animals or whether, as the decades pass, there is, in fact, a natural and automatic modification in the shape and size of our domestic animals. That some such natural alteration does occur is confirmed, I now suggest, by the observed changes over the centuries in the shape and size of human beings.
* * * * Many expert iconographers will affirm that there is, in fact, no real change of physiognomy, but that we are misled, partly by differences in style and apparel, partly by the different methods adopted by successive portraitists. I fully admit that if you array a man in a ruff or a tie-wig he immediately looks uncomfortable and out of date. I admit also that the society ladies depicted by Lely or by Boldini look completely different, largely. because these two artists observed and emphasised different effects. Yet even when one makes these reservations, the fact remains, I contend, that the actual cast of features does change with the passage of the centuries and with altered standards and habits of life. It can be established by measuring suits of armour that., our ancestors were much shorter and slimmer than we are ourselves. I affirm tbat the contours of the face have also changed. It is difficult to define these changes, since they are caused by infinitely subtle gradations, by small "deposits, little cell by cell." Yet in my Own life I have observed the physiognomy of a race alter in a most marked degree. The average Irishman, for instance, of fifty years ago was in no noticeable manner different from the average English- man ; he had about him a sporting, almost a Newmarket, look. Today, as one walks the streets of Dublin, one is struck by an altered appearance ; the Irish seem to be developing into a different type, as alien from us as are the Lithuanians or the Finns. These modifications cannot be wholly due to climate or changes in diet ; they must also be due to altered states of mind, and must, as such, be largely psychological. * * *
We are all aware, for instance, how certain habits of life, certain professional concentrations, imprint themselves upon the structure of the bones and flesh. Sailors and soldiers, lawyers and publicans develop variations in the modelling of eyelids, lips and fingers. Similarly, those Scandinavians, Germans or Americans, who, at a distance, seem indistinguishable from Englishmen, can be recognised as foreign owing to some almost indefinable difference in the modelling of the muscles below the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth. These subtle distinctions again are not wholly due to climate or diet, but must come from different habits of life or different pro- cesses of imitation. Thus the human race is insensibly changing its appearance, even as the mastiffs and the spaniels have changed. And in the end we may all acquire a standardised Welfare State look ; the semblance of the common man. Or shall we also split into inbred fancy types ?
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