Reigning Cats and Dogs Pt 2

Even before they received pets of their own, royal children were given toy dogs and cats to habituate them to their presence. Louis played with china dogs and, on his fifth birthday, was given some glass ones by the wife of his physician, Jean Héroard. He still enjoyed playing with these two years later, despite the fact that he was now actively following the hunt, and appears only to have desisted at the age of eleven, when dancing and music became great passions.

Toys were normally removed when children officially reached maturity which, in the case of boys, involved the symbolic process of breeching, or changing from frocks to breeches. It was only at this point that children were deemed capable of reason. Catherine the Great (Catherine II, 1729-96, Empress from 1762) recorded in her memoirs how her toys were theoretically confiscated when she was seven but that in reality this was `a mere question of etiquette, as no-one interfered with me in my games'. Possibly the rule was more rigorously enforced under her descendant, Tsar Alexander III (1845-94, Emperor from 1881), who kept his childhood collection of miniature glass and china animals, which he referred to as his `treasures', in a secret drawer in his desk until his death. In 1856, at the age of eleven, he had sketched for them an imaginary city which he named Mopsopolis, PugCity, inhabited by the eponymous dogs.

Another favourite royal game was harnessing pet dogs to miniature carriages which were then pulled along the galleries of palaces. In 1608 Louis attached his dogs, Pataut and Lion, to the carriage that his mother's favourite, Concini, had given him. In April 1715, Madame (Duchesse d'Orléans, 1652-1722, second wife of Louis XIV's brother Philippe and always addressed as Madame) wrote to the Raugravine Louisa, her half-sister, describing how


after dinner my grandson, the duc de Chartres, came to see me, and I arranged for him a spectacle suitable to his years. It was a triumphal car drawn by a big cat, in which was seated a little lady dog called Andrienne. A pigeon acted as a coachman, two others were pages and a dog served as footman and sat up behind. His name is Picart, and when the lady alights from the carriage, Picart lets down the step. The cat's name is Castille. Picart allows himself to be saddled and has a doll put on his back, and he will do everything that the domestic horses do.


Napoleon's sister Caroline Murat gave a similar carriage to his son the King of Rome, but it was pulled by sheep, trained by Franconi, the famous circus trainer. The carriage arrived in Vienna in November 1815, much to the joy of the boy and the despair of his tutor, Count Dietrichstein, who noted how `this apparition revived, as if by magic, all those memories of Paris and the imperial splendour of the Court which had been somewhat dimmed since 25 October [when most of his French attendants had been dismissed]. The Prince's playmate, Emile, joined in, and from that day on the excessive and often frenzied gaiety of the two children, as well as their insufferable chatter, grew to such a pitch that it was quite impossible to keep them quiet.' Pets were sometimes given in order to deflect a child from baleful influences. When he was five years old, in 1816, the King of Rome was taught by his favourite uncle Archduke Francis `to be not only rude but indecent', according to Leopoldine, his aunt; their brother, Archduke Rainer, gave the boy a basset hound as an alternative companion and soon superseded his brother as the prince's favourite.

Parental neglect or absence was an important factor in building up the symbiotic relationship subsisting between child and pet.