[ Gautier / Ménagerie Intime ]
Théophile Gautier (1811 - 1872) was a French novelist, poet, playwright and critic, one of the more influential figures of 19th-Century French literature.
Ménagerie Intime ("Private Menagerie") is Gautier's account of the role animals, and his affection for them, played in his life. It was first published in 1869.
Gautier never owned a Newfoundland — in general he preferred cats to dogs, though he did own dogs — but the breed is mentioned twice in this book. (Taken from the translation by Frederick C. de Sumichrast, published in 1902.)
The first mention occurs in the very first paragraph:
. . . I must own that all my life I have been as fond of animals in general and of cats in particular as any brahmin or old maid. The great Byron always trotted a menagerie round with him, even when travelling, and he caused to be erected, in the park of Newstead Abbey, a monument to his faithful Newfoundland dog Boatswain, with an inscription in verse of his own inditing.
The final mention of Newfoundlands comes in the section in which Gautier discusses the deaths of his animals, in this case that of one of his dogs, "a rascally little cur" named Dash:
Infirm though he was, he
would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
to a small greyhound.