Fashions in Pets

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22109, 3 June 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

Fashions in Pets

Man has always liked to keep as pets small animals and birds. Cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds are perhaps the most popular pets nowadays, but there have been many different fashions in pets through the ages. In the Middle Ages a kind of greyhound was the most popular pet. Pictures of kings at this time always.show two or three of them playing about on the steps of the throne or leaping in front of the royal procession. They are small elegant animals with long whippy tails. Nothing was , too good for them. One had a collar made of crimson velvet with 20 pearls and 11 rubies sewn on it. Another had a black velvet collar with ermine tails fastened round it by gold buckles. They had cushions made of deerskin to lie on and silver dishes to drink out of. Of course, ordinary people could not keep their dogs in such state; but they gave them the best they could —

the same as they had themselves. Later on, the fashion was all for spaniels. These dogs are supposed to have come from Spain in the first place, but in England they are specially associated with the Stuart kings. Charles I’s queen was painted with one sitting on the edge of her skirt, and Charles II was so fond of them that he used to take half-a-dozen to bed with him. But Francis I of France went one better than that: he had a pet lion which slept on his bed. There was a craze in the sixteenth century for all kinds of wild beasts. The King of France sent an elephant to Queen Elizabeth for a present. But to go back to dogs. Just before the French Revolution the

fancy was all for the tiny ones again. A man of the stern kind which can stand out against crazes wrote about ‘‘the great idiots who carry little dogs on their arms in public places.” One of the strangest fashions of all was the Victorian craze for black ahd white spotted Dalmatians, or plum-pudding dogs, as they were called. Their job was to runsmartly with the carriage every time it went out. The whole glory of owning a carriage was lost unless a couple of plum-pudding dogs went with it. Cats never seem to have been the fashion in quite the same way as dogs. Perhaps because of'their own natures they do not catch on with the whole population as dogs do. Certainly people did rather lose their heads over Persian cats 200 years ago. One lady had 20; they lived in her drawing-room and ate their meals on her embroidered cushions and tapestry armchairs.

And as she was afi*aid their beautiful long hair might wear out, she made fur overcoats lined with the finest silk. Monxeys were not so easy to come by as dogs and cats. The eighteenth century was their .great time; when a ship came in with a load there was a kind of bargainsale scramble for them. They were allowed to run free with a little lead weight attached to one foot to keep them from escaping. About the same time there was a craze for keeping negro boys as servants, or really as pets. Parrots and canaries have both been very fashionable pets. In the great days of the discovery of the New World, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a parrot was the invariable present for a sailor to bring home to his family. Very often it was the only thing besides his bare life that he did bring home. For parrots are very tenacious of life and survived shipwreck and days on a raft when all the other curiosities had perished or were lost. Canaries became the rage in the eighteenth century and were in fashion all through Victorian times. Enormous prices were given for them. The slightest variety in colouring—perhaps only a white feather in one wing—made a difference of pounds in their price. Rich people kept them in ivory and silver cages. They had music

masters for them, and staffs of experts who had. nothing to do but look after them. Gradually the price for common, one.* became lower, and everyone, rich or poor, had a canary in Victorian days. Fools and Jesters In old stories the King’s jester plays a large part. The fool or jester was ‘really a kind of human pet. Dressed in parti-coloured clothes, covered with little bells, the jester was a plaything rather than a person. Very often he was ■a harmless lunatic. In the Middle Ages people’s ideas of what was funny were very different from ours. And so. the jester drew regular pay for the sole 'job of amusing his master by his foolish talk. Naturally, three-quarters of the joke lay in the fact that he said whatever came into his head, whether it was respectful or not. He would be clouted like a dog if he was tiresome, but all the same he could be more outspoken than anyone else. There is no doubt that this was an attractive feature of his calling, and a good many jesters were not so simple as they took care to seem. We are apt to associate them only with the Middle Ages, but actually they went on much longer. James I had one called Archie Sinclair. Then there was the craze for dwarfs. Jeffrey Hudson was probably the most celebrated dwarf who was ever an English King s pet. He was only 18 inches high when he was nine years old. Trie Duke of Buckingham had him served up in a pie at a dinner which he gave to Charles I and his queen and they instantly adopted him. Later he was knighted.

MAKING LACE CURTAINS

Inside a lace factory visitors are impressed first with the noise necessary to make lace. The so'md of textile looms is like no other mechanical sound. It may remind people of a deafening shower falling on a pond. And as they look at the'giant looms they see that a miracle is happening—something which the reason tells them is not possible. The machines are there, pounding and quivering, and out of their massive gears a spider’s web is growing. That’s lace. The film rises from the machinery like a shimmering cloud. The loom is 400 inches wide. producing eight curtain widths. Men are walking up and down, running expert hands occasionally over the mist of silken threads: but mainly standing by to watch for the breaking of one of the strands. When this happens there is a comnlicated operation to be performed in the of the machine, where 6000 bobbins are' spinning out, each one threaded through a separate needle on the loom. The pattern is formed by means of a long roll of cardboard which has holes punched in it. This is the Jacquard system, used in the weaving of linen, silk, carnets, and many other things. Six thousand separate threads are attached to the Jacquard and run down to the body of the loom. Small arms are operated by the apertures in the cardboard roll, each one lifting one of the threads to perform its part of the weaving. The thing is done so quickly that every thread of the 6000 appears to be constantly ‘in motion above the loom like a shower of glistening rain. The cardboard pattern runs through the machine exactly like a record through a player piano, with the rhythm of the loom beating out the time. The results can be seen wherever there are windows.