CHAPTER LXV 

 The King Charles Spaniel 



HE belief that the black and tan pet spaniel was the favourite 

 of King Charles II has become so much of a conviction 

 among those willing to accept general belief that it will be 

 considered by many as just a little short of sacrilege to ex- 

 press disbelief in the statement that he either had any small 

 black and tan spaniels or that they were known in his day. For more than 

 a year we have made special research with the object of finding something 

 to connect the black and tan King Charles spaniel with the monarch he has 

 been named after, but without result, and the patience of many of our best 

 dog friends in England must have been sorely tried by our repeated appeals 

 for further effort, all of which have proved fruitless. 



There are portraits of Charles 1 1 in which spaniels figure, beginning 

 with the Van Dycks of his boyhood days in which the future king and his 

 sisters are shown with liver and white spaniels. Another Van Dyck shows 

 a smallish black and white spaniel, with ticks on the legs and an approach 

 to roan on the quarters. This is in a painting of the daughters of the first 

 Lord Wharton, the elder being named Philadelphia Wharton after her 

 mother. The only Charles ii picture that we have seen in which a dog 

 figures, is the reproduction in part of the painting of the gardener oflFering a 

 pineapple to the king when he was at the Duchpss of Cleveland's. This is 

 used as the frontispiece to Stone's Costumes, the king and a spaniel being 

 shown. This spaniel is a liver and white to all appearances, certainly not 

 a black and tan. 



The only writer who has touched upon this feature of research is Blaine, 

 who wrote the first book on Canine Pathology in the early quarter of the 

 last century (our copy is the third edition, 1832). Of the King Charles he 

 says; " King Charles 1 1, it is known was extremely fond of spaniels, two var- 

 ieties of which are seen in his several portraits, or in those of his favourites. 

 One of these was a small spaniel, of a black and white colour with ears of an 



extreme length, the other was large and black, but the black was beautifully 



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