24 I HOPE YOU WERE GOING SOME PLACE IMPORTANT
Richard Joseph to the man who killed his dog
25 THE DOG IS A DREAM OF AN ACTOR
Eric Knight to Jere Knight
Jane Welsh Carlyle to Elle Twisleton
27 THE TRUST REPOSED IN YOU WAS SADLY MISDIRECTED
David McLachan to The Scottish Fancier and Rural Gazette
Sue Perkins to Pickle
A letter is a time bomb, a message in a bottle, a spell, a cry for help, a story, an expression of concern, a ladle of love, a way to connect through words. This simple and brilliantly democratic art form remains a potent means of communication and, regardless of whatever technological revolution we are in the middle of, the letter lives and, like literature, it always will.
INTRODUCTION
The dog was the first animal to be domesticated by humans. In fact, we buddied up with the grey wolf such a long time ago that experts can’t be sure exactly how many tens of millennia our friendship has endured. What is certain, however, is that our bond with ‘man’s best friend’ is stronger than ever. Estimates vary wildly, but it is generally believed that there are currently in the region of half a billion dogs keeping humans company around the globe. And thanks to our refusal to stop meddling with nature, they now come in all manner of shapes and sizes: according to the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (World Canine Organisation), those half billion dogs can be divided into approximately 360 officially recognised breeds, ranging from your garden variety, no-nonsense players like poodles and Labradors, through to the lesser-known (at least to me, an ignorant Englishman) models such as the Norwegian Lundehund and the Hungarian Mudi. And we don’t just keep canines around for companionship. On a daily basis, dogs are saving the lives of countless humans as they guide the blind, find bombs, search for missing people and detect disease. It is difficult to imagine life without them.
I write this on a Chewsday (forgive me) in November 2020, an undeniably terrible year now entering its 6932nd day. For hours, a gale has been thrashing the window behind my head and rattling the roof tiles above, the permanent low hum of radiators being warmed serving to remind me that the cruelty of winter is just weeks away. The political landscape is simply too grim to contemplate. Civil unrest seems omnipresent. In the UK we are in month nine of a life-changing pandemic that has already resulted in millions of deaths worldwide, devastation to the economy and the enforced isolation of huge swathes of the population. To put it bluntly, things are not looking or feeling great. And yet, to my right, curled up beside me, is Red, our permanently dishevelled dog. A ball of fluff whose very presence calms my nerves. A cherished member of our family who is blissfully unaware of any problems beyond our four walls, whose beautiful nature brings the very best out of our children and has taught them about life and love in ways we couldn’t. It is no surprise to me that many of my fondest childhood memories star at least one of my family’s dogs, and I will forever be grateful to my parents for bringing them into our home.
Despite all of the above, as far as I could tell – and trust me, I have looked everywhere, even beneath all the chairs – there did not already exist a book filled only with letters related to our trustiest companion. Certainly not in the English language. Which brings us to the book in your hands, Letters of Note: Dogs, a pocketable volume of correspondence in which various people write about, to or even through our canine friends. It will make you laugh, cry and ponder our ever-evolving relationship with this magnificent creature, and maybe, should you not already be owned by a dog, convince you to make the leap.
Fetch a drink, sit and let me lead you through this epistolary canine treasury.
Shaun Usher
2020
The Letters
LETTER 01
SHE DOESN’T ANSWER THE PHONE
E.B. White to the ASPCA
12 April 1951
American writer E.B. White was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1899, and by the time of his death, aged eighty-six, he had truly mastered the art of storytelling. His children’s novels include such classics as Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan. White adored animals. According to his granddaughter Martha, he owned, at various points in his life, more than a dozen dogs that she knew of – many different breeds, numbering collies, setters, Labrador retrievers, Scotties, terriers and dachshunds among them. His letters, too, are littered with references to his four-legged friends, but none so charming as this one, written in response to an accusation by the ASPCA that he had failed to pay his dog tax and, as a result, was ‘harbouring’ an unlicensed dog.
THE LETTER
12 April 1951
The American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals York Avenue and East 92nd Street
New York, 28, NY
Dear Sirs:
I have your letter, undated, saying that I am harboring an unlicensed dog in violation of the law. If by “harboring” you mean getting up two or three times every night to pull Minnie’s blanket up over her, I am harboring a dog all right. The blanket keeps slipping off. I suppose you are wondering by now why I don’t get her a sweater instead. That’s a joke on you. She has a knitted sweater, but she doesn’t like to wear it for sleeping; her legs are so short they work out of a sweater and her toenails get caught in the mesh, and this disturbs her rest. If Minnie doesn’t get her rest, she feels it right away. I do myself, and of course with this night duty of mine, the way the blanket slips and all, I haven’t had any real rest in years. Minnie is twelve.
In spite of what your inspector reported, she has a license. She is licensed in the State of Maine as an unspayed bitch, or what is more commonly called an “unspaded” bitch. She wears her metal license tag but I must say I don’t particularly care for it, as it is in the shape of a hydrant, which seems to me a feeble gag, besides being pointless in the case of a female. It is hard to believe that any state in the Union would circulate a gag like that and make people pay money for it, but Maine is always thinking of something. Maine puts up roadside crosses along the highways to mark the spots where people have lost their lives in motor accidents, so the highways are beginning to take on the appearance of a cemetery, and motoring in Maine has become a solemn experience, when one thinks mostly about death. I was driving along a road near Kittery the other day thinking about death and all of a sudden I heard the spring peepers. That changed me right away and I suddenly thought about life. It was the nicest feeling.
You asked about Minnie’s name, sex, breed, and phone number. She doesn’t answer the phone. She is a dachshund and can’t reach it, but she wouldn’t answer it even