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CHAPTER XLVII. 



THE KING CHARLES SPANIELS. 



BY MRS. LYDI.\ E. JENKINS. 



Happiest of the Spaniel race, 

 Painter, with thy colours grace : 

 Draw his forehead large and high, 

 Draw his blue and humid eye ; 

 Draw his neck so smooth and round, 

 Little neck with ribands bound : 

 And the mutely swelling breast 

 Where the Loves and Graces rest ; 



WHAT'S in a name ? That which 

 wo call a rose by any other name 

 would smell as sweet," said Juliet 

 to her lover ; but a name may be so identi- 

 fied with that for which it stands, and may 

 embody fame, honour, ancestry, celebrity, 

 memories, and so many characteristics, that 

 to change it would constitute in some in- 

 stances a real loss. 



So thought owners and breeders of the 

 beautiful little King Charles Spaniel when, 

 in 1903, the Kennel Club wished to relin- 

 quish the ancestral and royal name, and 

 let the varieties of the breed be called in 

 future Toy Spaniels, differing one from 

 another in colour only. When all the 

 efforts of the Toy Spaniel Club to avert 

 this change seemed likely to prove futile, 

 and many efforts had been made, King 

 Edward VII. himself intervened by in- 

 timating to the Kennel Club that it was 

 his wish that the historical name should 



And the spreading even hack. 

 Soft, and sleek, and glossy black ; 

 And the tail that gently twines, 

 Like the tendrils of the vines ; 

 And the silky twisted hair. 

 Shadowing thick the velvet ear ; 

 Velvet ears, which, hanging low. 

 O'er the veiny temples floit>." 



— Swift. 



be retained — a wisli which was, of course, 

 acceded to. 



Even had the change been made there 

 is no doubt that the old designation would 

 never have been quite abandoned, and 

 that there would always have been some 

 people left who could not recognise this 

 breed of dogs under any other title than 

 that which had been its prerogative for 

 centuries. 



In October, 1902, a meeting of the Toy 

 Spaniel Club was held at the Crystal Palace, 

 at which it was decided that as all four 

 varieties of the English Toy Spaniel could 

 be produced in one litter, they must be 

 members of one family, and that these 

 varieties had existed in the time of King 

 Charles the First. A resolution was passed 

 to ask the Kennel Club in future to register 

 tlie whole breed as King Charles Spaniels 

 of different colours, the existing names of 

 the varieties at that time being King 



