Rescue heroes of the Alps is shaggy dog story (they hail from the UK)

St Bernards popularised by founder of the Kennel Club bear little similarity to original, book claims

THEY are as synonymous with Switzerland as Toblerone and yodelling. But St Bernards, as we know them today, originated in London, not the Swiss Alps, according to a new book.

The earliest records of the most famous rescue breed come from monks at a hospice at the St Bernard Pass in the Swiss Alps in 1707, and it has long been assumed that the breed started here.

The rescue work of the monks’ dogs came to prominence in the early 19th century through stories of the heroism of a mountain dog called Barry, who was said to have saved between 40 and 100 people.

Inspired by such tales, John Cumming Macdona, an English clergyman who founded the Kennel Club, imported dogs from the Alps that were thought to be Barry’s descendants.

But unlike Barry, a short-haired mongrel, these were large, brown, longcoated dogs.

Prof Michael Worboys, a historian from the University of Manchester, claims in his book, Doggy People: The Victorians Who Made The Modern Dog, that the breed recognised today was influenced by a fictional scene created by a Victorian animal painter at his studio in St John’s Wood, London.

Edwin Landseer’s rescue scene of two Alpine Mastiffs in 1820 – inspired by stories of Barry – prompted Macdona to recreate the breed from the painting even though they bore no resemblance to the real-life dog.

The friendly canines he bred soon became a sensation at Victorian dog shows, with more than half of the St Bernards in the first Kennel Club Studbook in 1874 from Macdona’s kennel. His own dog, Tell, also became a celebrity. However these long-haired, gentle giants looked nothing like the monks’ original working dogs.

“It’s fascinating that Macdona’s St Bernards, due to their size, weight and long coats, were ever thought to have been good working dogs in snowy mountains,” Prof Worboys said.

“The newly invented St Bernards were bred for show, not work; form trumped function. [Macdona’s] shows fostered the increase in the number, standardisation and beautification.

“Though defined by their form, the new breeds were also given backstories, and St Bernards had a good one that celebrated Victorian values,” he added. After he died, Barry was taxidermied and placed in the Natural History Museum in Bern.

But after visitors complained that he looked “wrong” and nothing like the modern St Bernard, the museum remodelled him to make him taller with a more noble appearance.

Landseer’s painting also popularised the false idea that St Bernards carried a barrel of brandy on their collar, and the museum added this feature to Barry to make him more appealing.

However, he still bears little resemblance to the rescue breed as it is rec- ognised today.

St Bernards will be competing today in Crufts, which is taking place until Sunday a the NEC Birmingham.

Charles Cruft, who founded the show in 1886, was reportedly an admirer of the breed, making them a logo of his early shows.

Over-breeding since the Victorian period has led to St Bernards being placed on the Kennel Club’s category 3 list: breeds considered to be more susceptible to developing specific health conditions associated with exaggerated conformation.

It shares this category with eight other breeds including the German Shepherd, Bulldog and Pug.

Penny Forrest, representing the English Saint Bernard Club at Crufts, said: “Saint Bernards used to have really heavy, wrinkly heads. We had an issue with the eyes at one point because of that – they literally couldn’t see through their own faces.”

However, Ciara Farrell, the library and collections manager for Crufts, said that while the St Bernard is not a direct descendant of the dogs in the Alps, the evidence is “too tenuous” for it to be re-registered as a native British breed.

‘It is fascinating that St Bernards were ever thought to have been working dogs in snowy mountains’

Trafalgar Square’s lions are not the only totemic animals for which we need to thank Sir Edwin Landseer. It turns out that the 19th-century artist is also the progenitor of today’s hulking St Bernard dogs, or so a new book by a professor at Manchester University claims. The dogs were not first bred by monks at 8,100 feet in the Swiss Alps, he says, or at least not as we know them today. Rather two fine specimens were dreamt up on canvas by Landseer in London’s St John’s Wood. Cleric and Conservative MP for Rotherhithe John Cumming Macdona was so taken by the image that he decided they needed to be given living form and he should be their Frankenstein. The old Tory succeeded in breeding their physical incarnation. How deeply we are still in debt to the Victorian imagination.