In 1942, Eugene O'Neill wrote a letter to a friend congratulating him for choosing a dalmation: "Unlike the English bulldog," he wrote, "or the French poodle, or the German Gestapo dog, they never drool or yap or whine about the white dog's burden of Empire, or their supremely rational culture, or the enlarged yard space due to a superior race of mutts."
The dalmatian, like most breeds of dog, reflects regional rather than national circumstances: the Norfolk terrier, the Lancashire heeler, the Sussex spaniel are the products of highly localised cultures. But the potency of O'Neill's anti-nationalist satire underlines how effectively dogs were used as symbols of nation amid the fervour of wartime patriotism.
One such example is the bulldog. Popularly, if inaccurately, known as the English or British bulldog, this funny little snuffling creature has ample patriotic resonance. Bred for bull-baiting, it became associated with seedy, picaresque London low-life.
The abolition of this cruel sport in 1835 heralded the beginning of the bulldog's gradual transformation from disreputable cockney rogue into defender of the realm. Patriotic Victorian music-hall songs told of brave British "boys of the bulldog breed", and by 1899 a book on the breed was able to declare confidently: "John Bull is never considered completely represented anywhere without a bulldog as his companion."
By the first world war, the bulldog, with its distinctive features and muscular body, was making frequent appearances in cartoons. Our slobbering friend was depicted tenaciously defending the nation from Germany, often waving a Union Jack or with "Britain" emblazoned across its back.
During the second world war, the bulldog benefited from its uncanny resemblance to that other jowly protector of the nation, Sir Winston Churchill, and both were the frequent subjects of propaganda and caricature. Since then, however, the poor bulldog's reputation has taken a slide. Appropriated by the far right, the bulldog now mixes in bad company, usually in tattoo form.
The poodle is thought to have entered France with German soldiers during the Napoleonic wars. Ethnic origins aside, the dog quickly acquired the status of military hero in France. Napoleon himself wrote about the brave, faithful poodle in his memoirs, and one particular dog, known as Moustache, is credited with various heroic deeds. He reputedly saved his regiment's flag during the battle of Austerlitz and was honoured with a tricolour collar bearing the inscription: "Moustache, a French dog, a brave fighter entitled to respect."
In Britain during the second world war, this highly intelligent canine was often scorned as a pampered pooch, or, as a 50s book in praise of the breed puts it, "a pet of popinjays and the boudoir plaything of powdered ladies". It became a vehicle for anti-French stereotyping. Perfumed and effete, it was caricatured colluding with its stumpy dachshund friend.
Although no longer so closely associated with Germany, the dachshund was fondly regarded as the German national dog around the turn of the century. This association is powerfully represented in Otto Dix's painting The Match Seller (1920). Dix makes a bitter comment about the treatment of war veterans in postwar Germany by depicting a dachshund (symbolising the German people) urinating on a limbless beggar while the well-heeled walk by.
In Britain, despite its immense popularity as a household pet, this cheery little dog quickly became associated with the Wrong Side when the first world war broke out. Indeed, there is anecdotal evidence that dachshunds were stoned to death in the streets of Britain and America. One American dog historian writes, "It was as uncomfortable to own a dachsie as it was to possess a German-sounding name." Some American breeders resorted to using the translation "badger dog" in order to disassociate them from their German origins. Similar reasoning explains why in Britain the German shepherd was known as the alsatian for so long.
British cartoonists depicted our sausage-shaped friend as the ideal companion to its corpulent, beer-swilling Teutonic owner. The diminutive, spike-hatted dachshund was no match for the mighty bulldog.
Although British patriotism and anti-European sentiment can be found daily in the tabloid press and beyond, the satire has developed more bark, more bite, but less dog. However, if anyone's interested in a Union Jack-clad bulldog teapot, I know just the place.
