[ Pearce / Idstone Papers ]
Full title: The Idstone Papers: a series of articles and desultory observations on sport and things in general.
Thomas Pearce (1820 - 1885) was an English cleric, breeder of champion setters, and writer on sporting topics, principally dogs. He published his works under the pen name "Idstone."
This volume is a collection of shorter pieces Pearce originally wrote for The Field magazine, a sporting and country magazine that began publishing in 1853 and continues to this day. The essays were collected and published in book form in 1872 (London: Cox), then republished two years later.
The first mention of Newfoundlands is indirect. Pearce writes of visiting a horse trainer and, walking into his house, sees that "Over the mantelpiece hung Landseer's white pony and Newfoundland, the dog holding whip and bridle in his mouth, and two or more foxes' heads, well preserved, were suspended around the wall." (11) "Landseer's white pony and Newfoundland" refers to Sir Edwin Landseer's 1835 painting Prince George's Favourites.
The next mention occurs in a discussion of what constitutes an ideal shooting pony, which Pearce declares should have "the disposition of a Newfoundland dog" (92).
Pearce later mentions that one of the Labradors he was hunting with "came from 'the land' (Newfoundland)...." He will later refer to the dog as a "cunning, smooth Newfoundland" (249), so I think we are dealing with an instance of "Newfoundland" still being used somewhat loosely; other writers of the 19th Century often distinguished between two different "types" of Newfoundlands, one of which usually seemed to be either the Labrador Retriever or an ancestor thereof.