[ Ross / The Book of Noble Dogs ]
I cannot find much information about this author; I suspect she was English, as she wrote a number of books on British history.
This book was first published in 1922 (New York: Century), then reprinted 2 years later. It included a dedication that I cannot refrain from including here:
A certain Abbot of Bec had a vision of purgatory wherein he saw two fair penitents whom he had known on earth. They confessed they were in that dim abode because of an inordinate love of little dogs. To these legendary and lovable ladies I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
The first mention of a Newfoundland, sort of, is in Chapter 3, "In Greece and Rome":
Alcibiades possessed a valuable specimen of the race, of great beauty and wonderful strength, for which he had paid a large sum. To judge from an ancient piece of statuary by the Greek sculptor Minos, it was of a Newfoundland type. The hound was allowed to ramble at will in the outskirts of Athens, even when he was wearing the magnificent golden collar with which his proud master had adorned him. One afternoon he was held up by five highwaymen who attempted to relieve him of this costly appendage. He gave a good account of four of them and they beat a hasty retreat; regarding the fifth as his hostage and without further molesting him, he dragged him by the coat tails through the city to present him to his master. Alcibiades's love for his dog was exceeded by his capriciousness. One day the citizens, who had been growing increasingly restive under his sway, gaped and gazed as they met, walking the streets, the fine animal, denuded of its magnificent tail. Surely it must be some act of revenge on the part of one of the Athenian's enemies. Not so, his friends found out, when they came to him and inquired: "Why have you done this monstrous thing? You have ruined your favorite's beauty. Everybody is talking about it and blaming you." Alcibiades was speechless for a moment, roaring with laughter. "That is just what I wanted. The Athenians will be so busy tittle-tattling about it that they will have no time to say anything worse about me." The dog did not bear a grudge and, when his master passed finally into exile, accompanied him, and was with him when his house was fired and he himself, endeavoring to escape from the burning ruin, laid low by a hail of arrows. The dog by his side, bearing in his mouth a bundle of important papers, did not escape injury, but, forgetting his own pain and dropping the packet at his master's feet, attempted to draw the darts from the bleeding body. (33)
The "piece of statuary" to which Ross refers is sometimes known as "The Dog of Alcibiades" (or as "the Jennings Dog," after an early owner), and is of a type of dog now identified as a "molossor," which as an ancestor of the mastiff would indeed be a (remote) forefather of the Newfoundland. Read more about, and see an image of, this statue at Wikipedia.
The dog of Alcibiades is also mentioned, and linked to the Newfoundland, in William Youatt's 1845 book The Dog, as well as in an 1838 issue of New Sporting Magazine. Alcibiades, by the way, was an Athenian statesman, general, and orator who lived in the 5th Century BCE.
Ross' next mention of Newfoundlands, in the chapter "Authors' Comrades," involves Lord Byron and his dog Boatswain:
Byron suffered from something akin to hatred of his species, which found its fullest expression in the well-known inscription on his Newfoundland dog Boatswain, who, born in that country in 1803, had but five years to his count. He was taken ill at Newstead with rabies, his master, unheeding, or not knowing the extreme danger, himself wiping away the saliva from his foaming mouth. Byron announced his death to his friend Hodgson. "Boatswain is dead! — he expired in a state of madness, on the 18th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to anyone near him. I have now lost everything, except old Murray."
But "old Murray" even was ruled out when he wrote the "record" for the Newfoundland's monument, erected in the garden at Newstead, where, when his time came, he desired himself to lie. It described his favorite in glowing terms as possessed of "beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices. This phrase, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is just tribute to the memory of Boatswain." In the verses printed beneath this eulogy he records his poor opinion of humanity, as compared with dogmanity, man, "the feeble tenant of an hour," claiming for himself an "exclusive heaven: To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; I never knew but one — and here he lies." The author was but twenty at the time.
Byron had not always such good fortune among his canine friends. Thomas Moore tells us that, after reading Southey's poem of "Roderick, the Last of the Visigoths,” in which the hound Theron plays as faithful a part as Argus, recognizing his master when he returns worn and weather-beaten after many years, he [Moore] wrote to the poet [Byron]: "I should like to know from you, who are one of the philocynic sect, whether it is probable that any dog (out of a melodrama) could recognize a master, whom neither his own master nor mistress was able to find out. I don't care about Ulysses' dog — and all I want to know from you (who are renowned as "friend of the dog, companion of the bear") is whether such a thing is probable." He received the following reply: "On your question about the dog. Umph! my mother, I won't say anything against, that is, about her. . . . As for canine recollections, as far as I can judge by a cur of my own (always bating Boatswain, the dearest, and, alas, the maddest of dogs), I had one, half a wolf by the she side, that doted on me at ten years old, and very nearly ate me at twenty. I thought he was going to enact Argus; he bit away the back side of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him. So let Southey blush, and Homer too, as far as I can decide upon quadruped memories." (175 - 177)
The next reference to Newfoundlands, still in the chapter on author's dogs, comes in a discussion of the dogs owned by Mary Mitford (1787 – 1855), a very popular early-Victorian English writer whose most well-known work, Our Village, featured a greyhound named Mayflower, who is the subject of the following passage:
One day her instinct for sport nearly got her into trouble, for she discovered the intense amuse- ment to be got out of chasing a sow in the farmyard. The guardian of the place, a great Newfoundland dog, hearing one of the creatures it was his duty to protect grunting in a most disturbed manner, emerged from his kennel with a mighty growl. "May's attention was instantly diverted from the sow to the new playmate, friend or foe, she cared not which; and he of the kennel, seeing his charge unhurt, and out of danger, was at leisure to observe the charms of his fair enemy, as she frolicked round him, always beyond the reach of his chain, yet al- ways with the natural instinctive coquetry of her sex, alluring him to the pursuit which she knew to be vain. I never saw a prettier flirtation," comments his observant mistress. . . . (219 - 220)
Ross devotes a fair amount of space to the various dogs owned by Charles Dickens, including his Newfoundlands:
Other favorites were Don, a Newfoundland, and his son Bumble, so called because of "a peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to mount guard over the yard he had when he was an absolute infant." Dickens, taking a walk with the pair of them, came to the river, and both dogs jumped in for a swim. Don reached land safely, and, shaking himself on the river bank, observed that his son was frightened and in difficulties over some floating timber. He immediately jumped in to his rescue, took hold of him by the ear, and safely piloted him to land with a skill which won his master's warm approval. Both dogs survived the novelist, and Bumble was given on his death to Sir Charles Russell. (240 - 241)
The "Famous in Frames" chapter spends a good deal of time on Sir Edwin Landseer, though only one of Landseer's Newfoundland paintings is mentioned:
The gallant Newfoundland, who figures in the picture in the Tate Gallery as "A Distinguished Member of the Royal Humane Society," sitting resting at the end of a pier, the darkling skies overhead, warning him that he may that night be called upon to play a dog's part in the surging sea, belonged to Newman Smith. The picture won great notice at the Royal Academy, and the public insisted that such a hero's name must be Leo. Unfortunately, when Landseer was appealed to, he had to confess that the owner had given him the extremely stupid name of Paul Pry. And, he also told his friends, the choice of the title of the picture, which was dedicated to the Royal Humane Society, was a disappointment to Paul Pry's master, who wished him to figure in the catalogue pompously labeled as "The Property of Newman Smith, Esq., of Croydon Lodge." (252 - 253)
For more on Landseer's most famous Newf painting, see its page here at The Cultured Newf. As is explained on that page (and elsewhere here at The Cultured Newf), "Paul Pry" was a common English term in the 19th Century to denote any person who stuck their nose into other people's business.
The final mention of Newfoundlands occurs in the chapter entitled "Dogs of War," and relates an anecdote I have not encountered elsewhere prior to this work:
Admiral Collingwood's Newfoundland Bounce, who was with him on board ship in action off Cadiz in 1805, tempered his devotion with discretion. He would have admired the tactics of a monkey who, in the battle of Jutland, alarmed by the bursting of shells, was found in a bomb-proof shelter consisting of a saucepan in the kitchen.
"Bounce is my only pet just now," the admiral wrote, "and he is indeed a good fellow. He sleeps by the side of my cot, whenever I lie in one, and then marches off to be out of hearing of the guns, for he is not reconciled to them yet."
Bounce was also present on the admiral's ship, the Royal Sovereign, at Trafalgar, and shared the honors of victory and of promotion to the peerage. "I am out of patience with Bounce," Collingwood wrote to his wife; "the consequential airs he gives himself, since he became a right honourable dog, are insufferable. He considers it beneath his dignity to play with commoners' dogs. This is, I think, carrying the insolence of rank to the extreme; but he is a dog that does it." (258 - 259)