History
The fact that dogs are always part of a royal Japanese present suggested to the Commodore the thought that possibly one species of spaniel now in England may be traced to a Japanese origin. In 1613, when Captain Saris returned from Japan to England, he carried to the King a letter from the Emperor, and presents in return for those sent to him by his Majesty of England. Dogs probably formed part of the gifts and thus may have been introduced into the Kingdom the Japanese breed. At any rate, there is a species of Spaniel in England which it is hard to distinguish from the Japanese dog. The species sent by the Emperor is by no means common even in Japan. It is never seen running about the streets, or following its master in his walks, and the Commodore understood that they were costly.
Francis L. Hawks and Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1856)It is thought that the toy spaniels that eventually became the King Charles Spaniel originated in the Far East, primarily Japan. They may share a common ancestry with the Pekingese and Japanese Chin. Toy spaniels were given as gifts to European royalty.
The red and white variety of toy spaniel was first seen in paintings by Titian, including the Venus of Urbino (1538), where a small dog is used as a symbol of female seductiveness. Further paintings featuring these toy spaniels were created by Palma Vecchio and Paolo Veronese during the 16th century. These dogs already had high domed heads with short noses, although the muzzles were more pointed than they are today. These Italian toy spaniels may have been crossed with local small dogs such as the Maltese and also with imported Chinese dogs. The Papillon is the continental descendant of similar toy-sized spaniels.
The earliest recorded appearance of a toy spaniel in England was in a painting of Philip II of Spain and Mary I of England. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) was also fond of small toy dogs, including spaniels, showing the fondness of the British Royalty for these types of dogs before Charles II.
Henry III of France (1551–1589) owned a number of small spaniels, which were called Damarets. Although one of the translations of John Caius' 1570 Latin work De Canibus Britannicis talks of "a new type of Spaniel brought out of France, rare, strange, and hard to get", this was an addition in a later translation, and was not in the original text. Caius did discuss the "Spainel-gentle, or Comforter" though, which he classified as a delicate thoroughbred. This spaniel was thought to originate from Malta and was sought out only as a lapdog for "daintie dames".
Captain John Saris may have brought back examples of toy spaniels from his voyage to Japan in 1613, a theory proposed by Commodore Matthew C. Perry during his expeditions to Japan on behalf of the United States in the mid‐19th century. He noted that dogs were a common gift and thought that the earlier voyage of Captain Saris introduced a Japanese type of spaniel into England.
Read more about this topic: King Charles Spaniel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (18941963)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (18421910)
“What you dont understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (18901960)