IN THE AUTUMN of 1914, seventeen-year-old Princess Tatiana of Russia, volunteering as a Red Cross nurse in a St. Petersburg hospital, grew close to a wounded soldier named Dmitri Malama. After nursing him back to health, Tatiana was delighted to receive a special gift from the dashing soldier: a French bulldog puppy. She named the little dog Ortipo, after Malama’s horse. However, on September 30, 1914, writing to her mother, Tatiana realized that other members of the royal family might not be so keen to have a puppy in the palace. “Forgive me about the little dog,” she wrote. “To tell the truth, when he asked should I like to have it if he gave it me, I at once said yes. You remember I always wanted to have one, and only afterwards when we came home I thought that suddenly you might not like me having one. But I really was so pleased at the idea that I forgot about everything.”
Tatiana’s mother was sympathetic; not only did she let her daughter keep the dog, she allowed her to accept a second puppy—another gift from Malama—when the first one died shortly after its arrival. The second Ortipo was a female French bulldog like the first, and she quickly became Tatiana’s constant companion. “It is a very cute little thing—I am so happy,” she wrote.
Before long, Ortipo was running amok in the palace, raising Cain. Unlike the other Romanov family dogs, Ortipo slept with Tatiana on her bed (her sister Anastasia complained in her journal about being kept awake at night by the bulldog’s snores). When she reached her full size, Ortipo received a jeweled collar made especially for her by Carl Fabergé, who also made a series of French bulldog figurines for Tatiana, carved from smoky quartz and decorated with precious gems. The family’s letters and journals often refer to Ortipo’s adventures; we hear of her chasing Princess Olga’s cat through the Winter Palace, getting into a fight with a pig, and giving birth to puppies. (“They are very small and ugly, and who knows what and whom they resemble.”) In March 1916, Dmitri Malama paid a visit to the palace; the czarina noted in a letter to her husband, “Ortipo had to be shown to his ‘father,’ of course.”
We last hear of Ortipo in April 1918, in firsthand accounts of the Romanovs’ flight, in which Tatiana is described as “struggling to carry Ortipo while dragging a suitcase through ankle deep mud and a howling crowd at the Ekaterinburg train station.” Two months later, at midnight on June 16, 1918, Tatiana and her entire family were executed. According to one account, when the revolutionary soldiers went into the house where the czar and his family had been shot, a small bulldog, defending his owners’ bodies, barked at them angrily. A soldier stabbed the dog to death, then brought it outside and displayed it impaled on his bayonet, drawing savage cries of victory from the crowd. Finally, the poor creature’s body was tossed into the pit along with the bodies of the royal family.
So the story goes, at least. What really happened is a little more difficult to discern. From witness accounts, we know the Romanovs actually took three dogs with them to exile in Ekaterinburg. As well as Ortipo, there were Princess Anastasia’s dog, a King Charles spaniel named Jimmy; and Prince Alexei’s dog, a springer spaniel named Joy. In the 1990s, the bones of a small terrier-type dog were found alongside the remains of the royal family in the mine shaft in which they’d been buried after their execution, but historians are unsure which of the dogs these bones belonged to, and whether this was the same dog that was allegedly stabbed with a bayonet.
A bulldog impaled on a bayonet is a memorably grisly image; perhaps for this reason, it feels like an embellishment, a vivid detail drawn from folk history. The image tells us what we already believe, or want to believe: our enemies are heartlessly brutal, our noble dogs loyal to the last. In later accounts of military atrocities, however, the story gets more disturbing: the bulldog becomes a baby. During the First World War, British newspapers contained reports of German soldiers tossing babies into the air and letting them land on their bayonets. During the Nanking massacre, Japanese soldiers were said to use enemy babies for bayonet practice, and the same was said of Khmer Rouge fighters in Cambodia. It may well be true that, throughout history, there have been incidents of soldiers impaling babies (and even bulldogs) on their bayonets, but the widespread appearance of this grim motif makes it most likely to be propaganda.
As such, it’s related to another theme of historical folklore: the victorious display of a royal dog. In 1648, when Charles I of England was taken captive and held in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, his black-and-white toy spaniel Rogue was imprisoned with him. In January 1649, he was condemned to death for high treason, and on the morning of his execution, the dethroned king, so they say, took Rogue for his final walk across London’s Green Park to the scaffold, which had been erected at Whitehall Palace. According to this version of events, after his master’s execution, the king’s spaniel was taken up by Oliver Cromwell and toted around London by the Roundheads as the symbol of a fallen monarchy. However, more reliable historians claim that Charles I sent the dog to his wife a few days before his execution.
During their father’s imprisonment, Charles I’s children were exiled in France, and when his son Charles returned to England in 1660, he brought his favorite toy spaniel with him. It was this son, later to be Charles II, after whom the King Charles spaniel was named. A pack of these small dogs accompanied their master all over the palace, where, like Ortipo, they had free rein, and even slept with the king in his bed. On September 1, 1666, Samuel Pepys attended a council meeting in the palace and wrote in his diary that “all I observed there was the silliness of the King, playing with his dog all the while and not minding the business.” Charles II was notably fond of spaniels; still, they had been popular at the British court long before either he or his father took the throne. It was a spaniel, some say, that saved the life of Edward VI in 1549, when his uncle, Thomas Seymour, was alleged to have broken into the king’s apartments at Hampton Court Palace in an attempt to kidnap him. His entrance disturbed the dog, which started barking at him. The traitor killed Edward’s pet in a panic, but it was too late—the noise had alerted the king’s guards. Seymour was later executed at the Tower of London, dying “dangerously, irksomely and horribly,” according to eyewitness accounts.
For a very short time, Edward VI was betrothed to the seven-month-old Mary, Queen of Scots. The unpopular engagement was soon broken off, but as dog lovers, the couple might have made a good match. When Mary was executed in 1587, she was said to have been hiding a lapdog in her petticoats, unseen by spectators until after the sentence had been carried out. Some accounts describe this secret companion as a small black-and-white spaniel; others refer to her as a Skye terrier. After the queen’s beheading, the blood-splattered lapdog apparently refused to be parted from her mistress’s body, and when forcibly removed, she languished away in grief. However, since similar stories were also told of Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn, this, too, is most likely an apocryphal tale based on the widespread folklore motif Faithful Lapdog Dies When Mistress Dies.
In fact, Marie Antoinette’s spaniel Thisbe (rhymes with Grisby) was also rumored to be a victim of the frightful bayonet. An account of the execution has been widely reproduced: “The Queen’s head fell—there was a moment’s dead silence—then the loud, agonising howl of a dog. In an instant, a soldier’s bayonet pierced its heart. ‘So perish all that mourn an aristocrat,’ he cried.” There are also rumors that, after her death, Marie Antoinette’s pug Mops committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine, and that Anne Boleyn’s greyhound Urian was beheaded along with his mistress. (The latter is hard to imagine. Did the dog have its own small scaffold with a dwarf executioner, or were the pair dispatched together, with a single blow?)
Generally speaking, the abandoned dogs of defeated monarchs are better off than those who accompany their master or mistress to prison, exile, or the scaffold. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, Anglo-French forces looting the Chinese emperor’s Summer Palace came upon five Pekingese dogs in the otherwise empty suite of a dowager empress. A naval officer rescued two of the dogs, and the Duke of Wellington’s brother-in-law also took a pair. The fifth, given the audaciously honest name Looty, was taken by a general, and presented to Queen Victoria. Looty apparently seemed lonely, and so six months later, a second Pekingese was ordered from China, and the breeding of this pair led to a new fashion for Pekes in aristocratic society. Looty’s portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862, then hung in Windsor Castle, where it will no doubt remain until the next revolution.
Fashions in dogs are nothing new. After bullbaiting was outlawed in England (see BULL’S-EYE), the original bulldog was crossbred with the pug to produce a smaller, less fierce bulldog that could be kept as a pet. Sometimes, the litters of these dogs would contain a big-eared runt, and the runts were especially prized by female lace makers, who liked these low-maintenance lapdogs that would keep them warm in the damp English weather, and draw fleas away from flesh and fibers. Plus, the runts were small enough for these ladies to keep on their knees or under their skirts while engaged in their work.
The economic crises of the nineteenth century and the industrial production of textiles caused many of these skilled artisans to cross the channel, resettling in France, where their skills were still in demand. Some of these ladies smuggled their toy bulldogs on board ship with them, hidden inside their clothing. Many lace workers settled in Calais, but others went on to Paris, where they lived mainly in the working-class areas of the city, side by side with the butchers, slaughterers, and meat traders, whose dog of choice was the native round-faced terrier boule, also an accomplished ratter. Most people believe it was the interbreeding of the toy bulldog and the terrier boule that gave rise to the French bulldog, with its compact physique, odd face, and enchanting personality. This little dog was quickly taken up as a pet by the Parisian working classes, especially coach drivers, shoemakers, and other street traders.
The French bulldog has a unique appeal. Aesthetically, other breeds are undeniably more glamorous and showy, but this bat-eared beast has a jolie laide quality that some find impossible to resist. Notoriously, these charming little creatures became fashionable among prostitutes, so much so that during the Belle Époque in Paris, if a woman was seen walking a French bulldog, it was read as a sign she was looking for business. Not only did these funny little dogs help attract potential clients; their easygoing character meant they had no problem taking short naps at hotels during the afternoon, when their mistresses were engaged with gentlemen customers. At the time, well-known prostitutes often posed for paintings, postcards, and drawings with their French bulldogs at their feet, in their laps, by their sides, or under their dressing tables, sometimes sporting feathered neckwear or ruffled collars.
Eventually, the dogs became popular with artists, homosexuals, bohemians, and other members of the avant-garde who wanted to show how edgy they could be by having one of these “naughty” animals as a pet. The risqué entertainer Mistinguett owned a French bulldog, as did Madame Palmyre, the woman who owned Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite restaurant, La Souris. Her Frenchie, Bouboule, appears in two of the painter’s works: Le Marchand de Marrons (1897) and Madame Palmyre with Her Dog (1897). Another French bulldog is the subject of Touc, Seated on a Table (1879–81). Touc, like Ortipo, had an unusual name; at the time, French bulldogs were usually given names starting with B, such as Billie, Bullie, Bébé, Bouton, Boulet, or Bouboule. Two early British champs were Bumps and Bruiser.
The aristocrats of prewar Russia quickly picked up Paris fashions, and the trend for Frenchies was no exception. The Russian craze was started by Prince Felix Yusupov, who, when in Paris as a boy for the Exposition of 1900, saw some French bulldog puppies for sale. He took such a fancy to one of them—a brown pup named Napoléon—that he begged his mother to buy it for him. To his joy, she consented. Felix felt it would be disrespectful to call his dog after such a famous man, so he changed the creature’s name to Gugusse. For the next eighteen years, this dog was Yusupov’s devoted and inseparable companion, becoming a well-known member of the Russian imperial family. According to the prince (later known as “the man who killed Rasputin”), Gugusse was “a real Parisian guttersnipe who loved to be dressed up, put on an air of importance when he was photographed, adored candy and champagne.”
Gugusse slept on a cushion by Yusupov’s bed, and appeared in the prince’s portrait painted by Valentin Serov (who declared that Gugusse was his “best model”). Purebred French bulldogs have bat ears, like Gugusse in the finished portrait, but in a photograph of Felix and Gugusse posing for Serov, you can see that Gugusse’s ears are floppy. Since Yusupov was known for his own vanity, it seems likely he asked Serov to paint his dog with the breed’s “proper ears”—which is a shame, as the floppy-eared Gugusse looks interesting and unique.
The famous Russian opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin owned a French bulldog named Bulka, whom he dressed in a coat decorated with little bells on the front; a contemporary said the dog was “unpleasant looking, hoarse, and breathed loudly through her nose.” In 1914, the Russian artist Ilya Repin painted Chaliapin reclining with Bulka on a Turkish divan. Disappointed with the result, the artist painted over the canvas in 1917, replacing the figure of Chaliapin with that of his own mistress, Alisa Rivoir, depicted in the nude. One of her arms is wrapped around the charming Bulka, who stayed in the picture.
According to the ship’s insurance records, a French bulldog named Gamin de Pycombe went down with the Titanic in 1912. The dog’s owner, who survived, was a twenty-seven-year-old banker named Robert Williams Daniel; another survivor, R. N. Williams, later recalled seeing a French bulldog trying to keep afloat as the ship went down. Gamin de Pycombe was insured for more than $700, which is quite a sum for pet insurance, even by today’s standards. Incidentally, two other passengers on the Titanic, Samuel and Nella Goldenberg, were on their way to attend the French Bull Dog Club of America’s show at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where Mr. Goldenberg was to be one of the judges. He survived the shipwreck, keeping his appointment at the show.
According to the American Kennel Club, French bulldogs are becoming increasingly common. In 2002, they ranked as the fifty-eighth most popular breed in the United States; in 2007 they ranked as the thirty-fourth, and in 2012 as the fourteenth (the third in New York City), though they’re still nowhere near as fashionable as their relative the English bulldog, which places fifth. It’s not always a good thing when a breed’s popularity increases so fast. Such trends often lead to a rise in puppy mills, backyard breeders, and mixed-blood imports. Plus, some people who buy French bulldogs don’t realize that, as a “man-made” breed, they’re prone to various medical problems. Because their bodies are similar to those of the English bulldog—whose monstrous head and pushed-in face were achieved by selection for a skeletal malformation known as chondrodystrophy—Frenchies have a number of physical weaknesses, though the smaller dog’s problems are, thankfully, less severe than those of its English cousin.
This is not to minimize the French bulldog’s potential health problems, which include joint diseases, spinal disorders, heart defects, eye problems, and deafness. Puppies have to be delivered by cesarean section, since their heads are too large to fit down their mother’s birth canal. Their short snouts mean that anesthesia is always a risk, and their eyes are subject to dryness and susceptible to injury. Like other flat-faced dogs, moreover, Frenchies don’t do well in hot weather. They wheeze, snort, grunt, suffer from labored breathing, experience strange honking fits called “reverse sneezing,” and snore like a freight train at night. Their short jaws can cause dental difficulties, and the wrinkles and folds of skin around their eyes, which produce their adorably mournful expressions, can harbor dangerous bacteria.
I fell in love with Grisby at first sight, but I also realize a number of people find French bulldogs unappealing. Lovers of more traditional breeds often find them freakish, and look with distaste on their grossly foreshortened jaws, high foreheads, and protruding eyes. The flat face is supposed to be especially anthropomorphic, designed to appeal to the human “cuteness” response, but many people find it grotesque and disturbing. In fact, when the breed first appeared in Britain in 1898, it caused a genuine scandal. The English bulldog was such a popular symbol of national character that the sight of this miniature French version with bat ears seemed like a mockery of everything the bulldog had come to stand for. The sentiment was summed up in the popular press: “We English, who have always felt a special affinity for our national symbol, must reject this little abomination that has been brought to our country.” Fortunately, the feeling was not universal, and the antipathy toward the breed soon dissipated when Edward VII, who ruled from 1901 to 1910, acquired a French bulldog named Peter, whose portrait was painted by famous dog artist Arthur Wardle.
According to the American Kennel Club, “the French Bulldog originated as, and continues to be used as, a companion dog. The breed is small and muscular with heavy bone structure, a smooth coat, a short face and trademark bat ears. Prized for their affectionate natures and placid dispositions, they are generally active and alert, but not unduly boisterous.” Under the American Kennel Club standards, the weight of the French bulldog is not to exceed twenty-eight pounds. In general, females range in weight between sixteen and twenty-four pounds, and males between twenty and twenty-eight pounds (my own little abomination is admittedly a few pounds over the limit).
Much as I love the way Grisby looks, I know that he’s a product of selective breeding, and his size, shape, and temperament are the result of human choices that might not be in the best interests of a dog. Sometimes I wonder whether he’d be happier if he’d been born with a snout and tail. (I wonder: Does he ever feel sensation in a phantom tail?) Yet it’s ridiculous to ask the question “What did nature intend for a French bulldog?” since nature didn’t intend a French bulldog at all. Like all domestic dogs, no doubt, he’d quickly perish were he to be released into nature. Grisby was born and bred not for the wild but for the lap. Bully for me that the lap is mine.