THE PUG: fashion’s snuffly pet
I do not like pugs. I cannot abide the snuffle, nor do I care for faces that look as though they had collided with a wall. This personal distaste, however, should not admit prejudice against a breed which some people find attractive, and whose name at one time could be bestowed on a favourite person: he, or she, is my pug. I doubt if it would be taken as a compliment today. What woman, though, could resist a love-letter beginning: “My sweete pugge, thy absens will make the returne of thy swete companie the more welcum to me.” This occurs in a letter dated 1580, in the charters of Berkely Castle.
The Dutch had no hesitation in adopting the pug as a national hero after the Prince of Orange’s dog had awakened him by jumping onto his face and thus saving him from a surprise capture by his enemies. It was even thought that the Dutch were responsible for producing the ugly little creature, by breeding a form of dwarf mastiff, and so much credence did this theory obtain that the pug
sometimes became known as the Dutch mastiff. It seems more probable that their country of origin was China, and an innovation in the form of coalblack pugs was introduced from there in the 1880s.
The periods of favour enjoyed by the pug in England show a graph of ups and downs like a
temperature chart. From the time of Charles II onwards until the closing years of the 18th century, he was the fashionable pet both in England and Italy, where he could be seen wearing a neat jacket and trousers, but by the beginning of the 19th century, only a few samples remained in England. Then came a fresh burst of popularity when, owing to their rarity, the available puppies sold for high prices, and ladies of fashion tricked out their pets with necklaces of turquoise and other semi-precious stones. Pugs were considered as especially suitable companions for ladies, owing to their sensitive and nervous disposition; one of them, indeed, was said to have died of fright on seeing a tramp looking at it through the window. Ladies swooned readily in these Victorian days, or so we are told, and so perhaps their pets tactfully swooned with them.