England to Me: A Memoir

by Emily Hahn

  “Be quiet, Carola,” I said. “Watch the acting.”

  “Is your dog anxious to perform?” asked Lady Fairly. “So is mine. Just look at him!” Her enormous boxer lay down at our feet and gave a heavy, disapproving, Johnsonian look at Fitzroy. Lady Fairly watched the two of them with amusement. “Can yours do tricks?” she asked Carola.

  “He can jump out of windows,” said Carola. “Mummy, when is the dog show?”

  When the children’s performance had finally ended, Carola and Mary and I made the rounds of the stalls, and then at last it was time for the dog show. Mary rubbed Carola’s face with her handkerchief and looked her over with some anxiety. She had dressed her with great care and had done her rather insufficiently long hair into pigtails, tightly tied up with red-white-and-blue ribbons. Now, from her handbag, Mary brought out more ribbons of the same sort and proceeded to decorate Fitzroy. “We had him all nice this morning,” she said, “but he went and acted silly, biting his tail and all. I had to undress him.”

  With a red-white-and-blue bow at his neck and another on his stumpy tail, Fitzroy looked even more philosophical than he did usually. He attracted some attention from the crowd, for no other dog owner had thought of dressing his pet. As a final touch, Mary produced a small black paper top hat, with a rubber band to hold it. Anchored to one of Fitzroy’s yellow ears, it remained there, reasonably secure.

  “There you are,” said Mary to Carola. “You both look lovely. And now we can go to the show.”

  At the side of the lawn was a square terrace, dominated by a large signboard announcing that entries (at a shilling each) could be made there for the dog show and that prizes would be bestowed on such dogs as won the following contests:

  CLASS A: The fattest dog.

  CLASS B: The dog doing most tricks.

  CLASS C: The dog most resembling its owner.

  CLASS D: The dog with the most appealing face.

  CLASS E: The best tail wagger.

  A shilling for each entry in each class? Mary and I went into a huddle. We had invested rashly in the calf raffle, the guess-the-weight-of-the-cake contest, and chances on a chicken dinner. We had bought a large secondhand book about a Dutch doll, and a small hymnbook. We had eaten ice cream wrapped in pink paper and at Carola’s urging had bought a rather worn pair of knitted baby bootees, for threepence. There was still tea to come, at a shilling each.

  “Two classes,” I decided at last. “We’ll enter him for two. One of them, certainly, should be the most-resembling-owner. And how about tail wagging for the other?” Carola and Mary agreed, and Fitzroy was entered.

  All the children and adults who, like Carola, had been guiding their dogs uneasily through the crowd came up on the terrace at this point and stood near the sign, trying to keep their leashes from getting tangled. A tall, gray-haired man who was, I learned, a retired admiral worked manfully at the hopeless task of keeping a part of the terrace clear for the judging. Down on the lawn, the dogs had not been so much in evidence; here they kept coming and coming until there was a throng of sniffing beasts, a froth of waving tails.

  “Mummy,” said Carola, “have we got the prize?”

  “Class A, please!” shouted the admiral. “Let’s see, what names have we here? Lady Fairly for the fattest dog. Is Lady Fairly the only one? No other contestant?”

  “Dear me,” said Lady Fairly, “do we get the prize by default?”

  Indeed, not one other dog in this day of austerity and rations was fat enough to be deemed worthy of being entered in the contest by his owner, and the prize went to Lady Fairly.

  There were several dogs, though, who could do tricks, and Carola grew increasingly impatient during the judging of Class B contestants. “Is it over, Mummy?” she kept crying. “Have we got the prize? Can’t Fitzroy do a trick?” But when her name was called, as the owner of the first entry in the dog-most-resembling-owner contest, Mary and I had to push her into the center of the ring, where she stood with Fitzroy, both of them done up in red, white, and blue. Fitzroy’s top hat had slipped to a rakish angle.

  “Are you the owner?” asked the admiral.

  “Yes,” said Carola in a small voice.

  With portentous solemnity, the admiral brought out a tape measure and set to work. He measured Carola’s nose, and then he measured Fitzroy’s. He measured Carola’s waist, and then he measured Fitzroy’s barrel. Carola stood quiet and unsmiling during the big moment, her chin lifted. Fitzroy sneezed. Then the moment was over, and Carola came back.

  “Second entry, please.” The admiral summoned a woman with two black retrievers, one large, one small. I was afraid she would claim that the small dog belonged to the big one, in which case they were bound to win, but she hadn’t thought of that. There were no other entries, and almost immediately the admiral announced in loud tones that Carola had won the prize.

  “Do you hear that?” said Mary. “Do you hear? You took the prize!”

  The people surrounding us all congratulated Carola. It was almost a minute, however, before she could speak. “Fitzroy won the prize,” she said at last. “Where is it?”

  “We get it afterward,” I said.

  She didn’t really care. She stood there in a dream, staring at Fitzroy, her eyes shining, her lips tremulous.

  Nothing after that quite came up to the same pitch. The gaiety went on, swirling around her, and when she was called for Class E (best tail wagger), she walked perfunctorily into the arena. There Fitzroy, surrounded by tail-wagging dogs, sat down, and Carola, suddenly alert, addressed an anguished shriek to me.

  “Mummy, he won’t do it!”

  “Make him stand up!” I cried. “Make him stand up!”

  When he heard my voice, he got to his feet and wagged his little stump furiously. That was enough; he was awarded the prize.

  While we waited for the prizes to be given out, we had to fill in the time somehow. Over by the big house there were pony rides going at twopence a ride, and Carola entrusted me with the prize- winning Fitzroy while she took a turn. As I stood there dreamily listening to all the noise, a lady came over to me. She was a good- looking lady, with a pleasant voice. “He is a beauty,” she said, indicating Fitzroy. “Do you mind if I ask you where you got him?”

  “Why, not a bit. We got him from the Coopers—the people next door to us. We’re from Cordwayne.”

  “Really? Well, that’s extraordinary. I had no idea anyone else in the neighborhood bred them,” said the lady. “We breed them ourselves. I must say he’s a beautiful specimen.”

  I looked at her with incredulity. I was absolutely certain that nobody in the world except the Coopers had ever bred—if you could call it that—anything like Fitzroy. “Do you mind,” I said in my turn, “if I ask you just what you think this dog is?”

  “Why,” said the nice lady, “a Jack Russell, of course.”

  “To my certain knowledge,” I said, “Fitzroy is half Corgi and half wirehair, and the wirehair’s own parentage is a little—”

  “My word,” said the lady. There was a long silence. Then she rallied. “Do you see that puppy?” she asked, pointing to a small dog over by the hedge. “She’s the granddaughter of one of ours. Do you see what I mean?”

  I looked, and I saw what she meant. The whiskers, the tufted brows, the long body and short legs … “It’s amazing,” I admitted. “It couldn’t happen twice, though. You ought to see Fitzroy’s brother.”

  “My word,” she said again, and left abruptly.

  Carola’s prizes were ten shillings and a bottle of pink bath salts. “Can we go home now?” she asked, when she had got them. “I want to show Daddy what Fitzroy won. Clever Fitzroy. Daddy’ll never in the world believe it, will he, Mummy?”

  “No,” I said, “he certainly won’t. Never in the world.”

  Fitzroy must have had something. One can only call it a je ne sais quoi; God knows I can’t think of what else to call it. He stole my chair whenever he got the chance, and would not get out when ordere
d to, but had to be prodded, pushed, and pulled. He snored in his sleep, and snarled when he was waked. He never did learn the difference between outside and the stone-floor corridor. He yapped at the gardeners every single day as if he had never seen them before. He could not be taught about chasing motorcars. He never obeyed orders, and though one could not call him stupid, for he had the cunning of a monkey in getting what he wanted, he was a resistant animal, an animal given to negation. Still, he had something. Everyone said so.

  “The only trouble with that dog,” said Ruth Cooper, who retained a proprietary interest in him even when he dug up her flower bed, “is lack of discipline. Too many people telling him what to do.”

  “No, that isn’t the only trouble with him,” I said. “It’s one of the troubles, but no one phrase will sum up the essence that is Fitzroy.”

  One of his more popular characteristics was that his tastes were catholic! There was no one-man nonsense about Fitzroy. He loved the whole world, with the possible exception of Clifton and the postman, both of whom ride bicycles. Fitzroy did not understand or trust bicycles. We started out with the idea that Carola ought to feed him every day, but as Carola either forgot or refused to leave her pudding to do her errand of mercy, the job fell sometimes to Louise or Lorraine, sometimes to me, and oftenest to the Major, not to mention surreptitious snacks from Mrs. Alford. To give Fitzroy full credit, I must say that he showed no signs of feeling cupboard love for any particular person. He was not so mercenary as one might expect. In the end, his wandering affections fixed themselves as much as they could (a dubious quantity) on Lorraine. Lorraine let him sleep on her bed, and complained only slightly when he woke her up by snarling in his sleep every time she rolled over. The more Fitzroy followed Lorraine about and loved her, the more Lorraine loved him, naturally. It began to be the talk of the house.

  “You don’t mind if I steal his affections, do you?” she asked me one evening, as she sat by the fire and knitted an overcoat for Fitzroy.

  “You didn’t steal his affections, not from me, anyway,” I said. “I never had them.”

  Hardly had I spoken these words when Fitzroy began haunting my sitting room, neglecting Lorraine’s territory. The fact was, the nights were drawing in and growing chilly, and Fitzroy preferred my fireplace. But as soon as we got the central heating going, he went back to Lorraine’s bed. He moped when she went to London, and clicked around morosely on the bare wooden floors. He had now become a powerful-looking dog, heavy in the forequarters, and his head, somehow failing to match the rest of his body, looked too big. The ruff round his neck had something to do with this effect, but whatever impression Fitzroy gave, one knew it was just a phase and that he would begin to look different in a week or two.

  After his puppylike ways diminished and he grew grave and stately, Carola stopped paying him much attention. Except for dressing him up occasionally in baby bonnets and the Major’s discarded neckties, she didn’t play with him any more. That suited Fitzroy. He was getting stodgy, settling down to his snarling naps like an old clubman, and, like an old clubman, he began to step out now and then for a night on the tiles.

  One day we heard of a tragedy next door at Four Winds. Teaser, Fitzroy’s brother, had taken to killing chickens, of which Ruth has a good egg-laying brood.

  “I don’t know what to do about him,” she said. “I’m in despair. I’ve whipped him within an inch of his life—that was after the first chicken. With the second I hung its head around his neck to make him wear it and teach him a lesson, but he simply ate it up. One more and I’ll have to have him put down. I hate to do it for Janice’s sake—he’s her dog, and she’s away at school; it does seem rather mean to take advantage of her absence like that, but with chickens so scarce, and eggs too difficult, there’s nothing else for it.”

  “But how did it all begin?” I asked. “Do many dogs kill chickens? I thought it was rather rare.”

  “Well, Tessa did,” she admitted. Tessa was the wirehair mamma, now dead as the result of a collision with a lorry in the road. “I always had to keep a sharp eye on Tessa, and I’m afraid it may be in the blood. One of the other pups developed the same vice over at Winfrith where he’s been living; I think they had to dispose of him. I’m glad Fitzroy hasn’t shown any signs of it.”

  A few days later Teaser got into the chicken run and slew three at once, and death sentence was promptly passed on him. But one of the Dutch housemaids set up such a howl of grief at the very idea that Ruth relented and told her to used her own methods, as long as Teaser was removed permanently from the house. Rika took him on a lead to Weymouth and walked him up and down the streets, accosting people as they came by and offering him for a gift. Wonder of wonders, she found a family of children, living in the middle of the town where there are no chickens to kill, and they were very glad to have Teaser. Janice was spared that much heartbreak at least.

  “I’m certainly glad Fitzroy has better habits than the rest of his family,” I said smugly to the Major. Next day Fitzroy killed his first chicken.

  That is to say, we think it was his first, though Clifton later hinted darkly that one of his hens had been slaughtered before, and that he had refrained from making loose accusations in the absence of downright proof. “But it must have been that dog, madam. In my opinion, the doctor hadn’t never ought to let that terrier breed. Once you’ve got it in the blood …”

  Well, we apologized to the owner of the chicken and offered to pay for it. He was a dairy farmer named Palmer who lived the other side of us from Four Winds. The Palmer cows had all strayed onto our land on one occasion, and some plow horses belonging to the farm paid us a visit another day, so relations between Palmer and Clifton were already strained. Oddly enough, the chicken episode—the first one, that is—rather patched up these differences, because Palmer was inclined to be spacious and generous about it, on account of his guilty conscience. Besides, nobody could be quite sure it really was Fitzroy; he had not been seen in flagrante delicto. He had been lurking around the place, certainly, and then Palmer had found the mangled body of his hen. Still, there was room for doubt.

  “I told Palmer to beat him within an inch of his life if he ever again sets foot on their land,” said the Major. “That may teach him.”

  “But he’s only killed one!” said Carola, tears brimming over. “That’s too much of a punishment, Daddy! Why, Teaser killed four chickens. It isn’t fair.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have him beaten than killed?” I asked her. “He’ll have to be killed if he goes on killing chickens. Anyway, why can’t you be sorry for the chickens instead of being on Fitzroy’s side all the time?”

  “I don’t care about those old chickens. They all go to heaven, anyway.”

  Next day they caught Fitzroy in the act. He killed and started to eat a chicken, quite coolly, in front of the indignant farmer, whose wife telephoned us immediately. I answered the phone.

  “Yes, Mrs. Palmer. Oh, I’m so sorry. Look here, I’ll lock him up immediately, and if that doesn’t work we’ll have to have him put down. Yes, I quite understand. Of course you must let us pay for it. Oh yes, you’re perfectly right. I’m so sorry.”

  That evening, discussing it where Carola couldn’t hear us, we came to the conclusion that Fitzroy would have to be killed. Keeping him locked in the kennel was out of the question; it was cruel and unhealthy for all concerned.

  “But can’t he be taught?” demanded Lorraine, in tears the production of which Carola could scarcely have exceeded. “Surely he can be trained?”

  “They say you can’t, once they’ve tasted fresh blood,” I said. “It’s true, some colonel is always advertising that he can train difficult dogs, but I think he means for shooting and things like that.”

  “Can’t we give him away?” she said.

  “Well, we can certainly have a try. He has such an odd pedigree, that’s the trouble.”

  Next day Alice came to the rescue. Her family would take Fitzroy, she said. They want
ed a dog. No, they had no chickens, or if they had they would know how to look out for them. Joyfully we gave Fitzroy to Alice’s family then, and the next day I went to London, according to schedule, with the Major. Both Lorraine and Carola were relieved and happy at the way everything had turned out. The Major and I were not ill pleased ourselves.

  Lorraine had a nice little habit of writing me notes once in a while when I was away, and the day before we were coming back I got one of her customary household reports.

  “Oh, Lord,” I said suddenly, over the breakfast coffee. “Listen to this, Charles.” I read the letter aloud:

  “Now, Mickey dear, Mickey darling, prepare yourself for a shock.

  “Last night about nine o’clock there was the sound of frantic howling outside, first thought it was one of the babes but after a time knew only one person could make such a bloodcurdling howl and this with a note of desperation in it. Ran down and opened side door, and Lo! it was the Return of Fitzy. He carried on in a hysterical way when he saw me.… Then he ran into your study, and made a cry when he found you weren’t in, then on to Carola’s night nursery and still no one could he find, he inspected every room just to see a familiar face I think. He was filthy with matted dirt, so I gave him a warm bath and then some dog biscuits and he slept like a log until past breakfast time on end of my bed. He was very clever to have found his way back and must have been desperate too. He is awfully thin too. Can just picture the brave little dog, padding along the street and fields all dark for those four miles, dodging the cars on the roads and not knowing what he would find at journey’s end. And what relief when finally he came to gates of Conygar.”

  Here my voice faltered, so I was rather taken aback to read what Lorraine had been impelled by honesty to write immediately afterward: