Dash (spaniel)
Dash (* 1830 , † 1840 ) was a King Charles Spaniel owned by Queen Victoria . Elizabeth Longford referred to him as " the Queen's closest childhood friend " and in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he is described as "the first in a long line of beloved little dogs".
Life
It came into the Duchess' household as a gift from Sir John Conroy to Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent , on January 14, 1833. By the end of April 1833 he was already Victoria's companion, and by Christmas that year she was so infatuated with him that she gave him a bunch of rubber balls and two pieces of gingerbread for Christmas. In return, Dash was loyal to Victoria; once she went sailing on a yacht and Dash jumped off the shore into the sea and swam after her.
Victoria, who was 13 when Dash joined the household, had few or no friends in her childhood as she was largely isolated from other children. This was a measure within the framework of the so-called Kensington system , which was developed by Conroy to keep Victoria away from other influences and thereby strengthen his own position. The only girl of a similar age with whom the princess had regular contact was Conroy's youngest daughter, Victoire, but there appears to have been only a formal acquaintance. In her diary Victoria describes Victoire as Miss Conroy , while the dog was showered with tenderness: “ dear sweet little Dash ” and “ dear Dashy ”.
In November 1834, Victoria and her mother took a vacation in St. Leonards-on-Sea . The Duchess, Victoria with Dash, Lady Flora Hastings and Baroness Louise Lehzen drove with a landau that was pulled by two horses, which got caught in a track and fell. The horses were fighting on the ground and there was a risk that the wagon could tip over and injure the women. Victoria crawled out of the car with Dash in her arms and, as she remembered, "ran with him in my arms, Mama called to follow me, Lehzen and Lady Flora followed us too." While two men passing by cut the horses free, they fled the ladies and dash behind a wall.
Dash stayed with Victoria even after her accession to the throne in 1837. After her coronation on June 28, 1838, Victoria returned to Buckingham Palace and ran to her room to bathe Dash as usual.
Dash died in late 1840 and was buried near Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park . The marble portrait that was erected over the grave bears the inscription:
“Here lies DASH The favorite spaniel of Her Majesty Queen Victoria In his 10th year His attachment was without selfishness His playfulness without malice His fidelity without deceit READER If you would be beloved and die regretted Profit by the example of DASH”
“Here lies DASH, Her Majesty Queen Victoria's favorite spaniel, in its 10th year. His attachment was without selfishness, his cheerfulness without deceit, his loyalty without falsehood. READER, if you want to be loved and die in mourning, take DASH's example to heart. "
literature
- Elizabeth Longford : Victoria RI Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1964, ISBN 0-297-17001-5 .
- Colin Matthew, KD Reynolds: Victoria (1819-1901) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004, subscription required for online edition doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 36652
- Lytton Strachey : Queen Victoria. Chatto and Windus, London 1921
- Cecil Woodham-Smith: Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times 1819–1861. Hamish Hamilton, London 1972, ISBN 0-241-02200-2 .
- Sophie Gordon: Royal Dogs - From the love of British royalty to their most loyal companions. Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-938045-39-8 .