[ Bolton / Lives of Girls Who Became Famous ]
Bolton (1841 - 1916) was an American writer, particularly of biographical sketches and of children's stories and poems.
This book, a collection of biographies of noted women of the mid- to late 19th Century, was first published in 1886 (New York: Crowell).
There is only one incidental mention of Newfoundlands, which occurs in the chapter on Lady Anna (sometimes "Annie") Brassey (1839 - 1887), a noted English travel writer whose works recount the sea voyages she took with her husband, Sir Thomas Brassey. Bolton retells one of Brassey's anecdotes, a nearly verbatim quotation from Brassey's Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam [1878], which is treated separately here at The Cultured Newf:
On their way to the Straits of Magellan, they see a ship on fire. They send out a boat to her, and bring in the suffering crew of fifteen men, almost wild with joy to be rescued. Their cargo of coal had been on fire for four days. The men were exhausted, the fires beneath their feet were constantly growing hotter, and finally they gave up in despair and lay down to die. But the captain said, "There is One above who looks after us all," and again they took courage. They lashed the two apprentice boys in one of the little boats, for fear they would be washed overboard, for one was the "only son of his mother, and she a widow."
"The captain," says Lady Brassey, "drowned his favorite dog, a splendid Newfoundland, just before leaving the ship; for although a capital watchdog and very faithful, he was rather large and fierce; and when it was known that the Sunbeam was a yacht with ladies and children on board, he feared to introduce him. Poor fellow! I wish I had known about it in time to save his life!" (307 -308)