Dog days
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The wise scribbler soon learns what not to write about. These may seem to compose a disparate group: fluoridation of the water supply. Jews'n 'Arabs (more formally known as 'the Middle Ease). the authorship of Shakespeare's Sonnets. But as many men have discovered, to write about any of them in the public prints is to risk being barraged by letters from the green ink brigade. Quite what these subjects have in common is not clear. The Middle East is important, while Shakespeare's identity (as opposed to what he wrote) isn't. Then again, there prove to be affairs, such as what happened in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1941, about which (as the Spectator can testify with feeling) a few people care more than everyone else put together.
There are other reasons for the journalist to shun such subjects than fear of angry letter-writers. A more rational, and not less honourable, consideration is boredom. In the years since November 1963 I have again and again assumed a fixed expression while someone explained to me what really happened in Dallas. Only rarely have I blurted out the truth — that as far as I have any views at all on the matter I suspect that Oswald did it but, if you really want to know, I don't care. Disraeli once said that the first rule of polite conversation was, never ask, who was the Man in the Iron Mask, or. who wrote the 'Letters' of Junius? For our time read, who killed Kennedy and, is Alger Hiss innocent?
Perhaps it is unfair to complain about monomaniacs when one has mentioned their fixed idea in the first place; but. until one brings it up. one may not realise how contentious a subject is. Such was my experience when not long ago I wrote about dogs. I was describing my proposed cynophobes' group. the Maupassant Society (Hon. President Andrew 'Gino' Newton). It takes its name from the French writer who was very proud of a large stick, with which he claimed to have killed more than 20 dogs. This piece of whimsy produced howls of anguish from all sides, and not just from the Unknown Loony. our green-ink man: a dear friend burned up the trans-Atlantic telephone cable with her execrations. Chastened. I resolved to keep off the subject of dogs for a while.
That was until the other day. Idly turning the pages of the Daily Telegraph I found this one-column-inch story:
DOGS EAT MAN
Police in Greenland yesterday found the body of a 49-year-old man who had been killed and eaten by a pack of sledge dogs. The man had fallen asleep in the snow on Monday night returning home from a bar. It is a very long time since I have read anything quite so upsetting. The story has haunted me since: I wake up in the night thinking about it. Dick West said, 'Well, it could have been worse. He wasn't returning from a coffee house.' But that's the whole point — he was returning from a bar. Having read that story, how can I ignore it; how can I keep quiet? It is one thing when doggiewoggies deposit 7000 tons (or whatever the figure is) of ordure on the pavements every day, bite the legs of postmen, transmit loathsome diseases which make children go blind, make a din at all hours (there is the story of the Irishman taking an early restorative, and feeling rather fragile, who turned to the barman's noisy dog and said, 'Bite me if you must, but for Jasus' sake don't bark'). But once they start devouring harmless inebriates they are offending against a different order. This means war —a outrance.
Maybe the tide of war is turning. At least, we seem to be winning the battle of hearts and minds. Not all the letters I received after my last piece on the subject were abusive. By contrast to my friend, someone else wrote warmly from America. Another friend. Miss Irma Kurtz, wrote to say that Fido Fouling the Footpath wasn't half of it: she had recently witnessed an Alsatian raping three women in Holland Park, something like that. It all helps. And last week that foolish and stubborn woman in Burnley finally promised a High Court judge that she would no longer flout the wishes of the court by taking her dog for a walk in the municipal park, something which the local authority has very properly outlawed.
Let me say what again I have said before. I am not a fanatical or unconditional doghater; really I am not.! have even met a Border terrior and an English setter who struck me as rather good eggs. The canine curse comes not from gun-dogs and sheepdogs but from 'pets' in towns. Quite why people want to keep dogs — sometimes large and active ones — cooped up in small urban abodes is another question, though an interesting one. Our problem is what they do when they get out of doors.
One solution might be to ban all dogs from city centres. This is indeed the Stalinist answer: there are no dogs in Moscow. The boring moderate remedy which I have proposed before would be a rigidly administered licence system with a licence fee high enough to discourage the frivolous. Until we find a satisfactory answer I am ready for a truce; but it must of course be observed on both sides. I give warning. One more atrocity like the Greenland Massacre and I shall not rest until I have strangled the last collie with the bowels of the last poodle.
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