Pooch power
Petronella Wyatt
It could only happen in England. Only in England would they permit a Grade II-listed house to be destroyed for the sake of one rather aesthetically displeasing oak tree. It was a question of whether the tree should be felled or the house allowed to fall down. And what do you think happened? The house was allowed to fall down.
So here I am, having to move out for six months while they try to prop the thing up again. The builders are starting work next month. The cost? Three hundred thousand smackers. And once more the seemingly insoluble question has been raised: where am I going to live?
The insurance company had consented to pay for a swank West London hotel. This Trollopian concession resulted from their contractual promise to provide similar accommodation. As the house belonged to my late father, like the Kingdom of Heaven it has many rooms. To rent a similar panorama would have cost them considerably more than the swank West London hotel.
But there is always a dog in the manger. I am speaking of my dog. The swank West London hotel, one had imagined, would display a degree of complaisance towards a small, white papillon called Mimi after La Boheme, if only to bestow upon its lobby some oomph and espieglerie. have a small white fluffy papillon called Mimi after La Boheme,' I remarked, winningly, to the manager. There was an invidious pause. 'That's nice for you,' he said.
'It will be all right?' I continued in a flood; once started there was no surcease. 'What will be all right?' `It's very quiet. Most of the time you would think it was dead. A stuffed dog."Well, then, it will be easy to leave the animal with someone.' I was hoping to bring the dog here.' The manager looked at me and there were icepacks in his eyes. 'We cannot help you with that, Madam.' It was a choice between the swank West London hotel and the dog. Don't ever tell me I have a heart of stone. Telephone calls were made to five other other swank West London hotels. I now, indeed, know the dog policy of every swank hotel in West London. Most don't have one. One assistant manager recalled dyspeptically, The last time we made an exception for a small dog, it bit one of the maids.'
I must say that I find this attitude incongruous, nay, indecent. After all Britain is supposed to be a country of animal lovers. So much so that we have the Animal Liberation Front and a possible ban on hunting. They have nothing of this on the Continent. Yet in Paris and Rome your dog may accompany you to every hotel and many restaurants. In the Pre Catelan they give the dog its own place setting.
Sartre once said something about this. The British like animals in principle but not in practice. This is the legacy of an unhealthy obsession with hygiene, absent from the more passionate European temperament. I'll wager that none of these Animal Liberation people owns a pet. It might smell or mess up the Ikea carpet. We are far more regressive in this respect than the Americans. At least two New York hotels I know of offer complimentary dog walkers.
The British are indeed a backward lot. Once upon a time we allowed dogs in our hotels — remember E.F. Benson and all those pearl-pale pooches in Claridges — and were prepared to cut down a tree in order to conserve houses of architectural distinction. Today we have elevated these monsters of nature to an absurdly exalted position, as long as they don't pee on the floor.
This worship of trees carries the crapulous bogusness of Nazism. The Hitler youth went out into the forests, lit bonfires and communed with nature. Goering, of course, was a dedicated conservationist. Sometimes I think the Germans were never properly civilised because the Romans failed to conquer them lastingly and completely. This was because the Germans kept laying unsporting traps for the Roman legions in their forests.
So much for trees. The 18th-century Duke of Richmond once remarked he was bored by the Thames, because all it did was flow, flow, flow. One could say of trees that all they do is grow, grow, grow. I ask you, what is the country coming to?
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