Imagine: you’re famous. Like, crowned head, pope or Hollywood megastar famous. Who can you trust? Everyone is out for what they can get and liable to betray you at any moment. Everyone except your pets, who, yes, are also out for what they can get, but can’t call the tabloids. Rather a bite in the face than a stab in the back, which is perhaps why, historically, so many big stars have preferred to derive emotional support from furry (or occasionally scaly) things.
Where did it start? In the age of discovery, European royal courts started filling up with poor creatures who had no business being there, from monkeys dressed in human finery to parrots casually handed out as diplomatic gifts. Juan of Austria had a lion (imaginatively called Austria), Philip II of Spain had “lions, bears, rhinoceros, elephants and civet cats”, while Pope Leo X had an elephant too, Hanno, whose skeleton was rediscovered by puzzled heating engineers in a Vatican courtyard in 1962. Hanno was a gift from Manuel I of Portugal, who also staged a fight between a rhino and a (different) elephant (the elephant ran away and the rhino was declared victor), which is some next-level capricious monarch stuff.
The idea that “exotic and rare” meant “better” lasted for centuries. In Georgian times, the rich and powerful had private menageries: Jeremy Bentham stroked the Earl of Shelburne’s leopard; as John Mullan reports: “Sir Robert Walpole’s pet flamingo warmed itself by the kitchen fire. Sir Hans Sloane was followed round his Chelsea home by a tame, one-eyed wolverine.” Having something eye-catchingly wild-looking as your companion remained a power move right up to the late 70s, when animal welfare laws tightened. Actually, with sufficient sprinkling of celebrity fairy dust and in laxer jurisdictions, it has also happened more recently (Justin Bieber’s monkey, anyone? Mike Tyson’s tiger?).
It was unconscionably terrible – none of these creatures should have been the playthings of the rich and powerful – but I can’t help feeling a momentary pang of envy. You can’t even stroke a goat without filling in a risk assessment these days; what must it have been like to have your own lion, or elephant? You would definitely lose your grip on reality, which may explain a lot of celebrity conduct.
An aside: if you’re wondering whether the poet Gérald de Nerval actually walked a pet lobster in the Palais-Royal gardens, the jury is out. He may have brought one back from La Rochelle and named it Thibault, as suggested in a letter to a childhood friend, or it might have been a joke on, or cooked up with, Théophile Gautier. Let’s choose to believe, as we don our bite-proof gauntlets for a cautious look at some of history’s weirdest celebrity emotional support animals.
Catherine of Aragon and her monkey, 1520s
This stylish Tudor monkey is shown expressing its obedience to the Catholic church by reaching for her cross rather than the coin in her hand. Catherine and her companion are representing all of history’s monkey women here, including Joséphine Bonaparte and her orangutan, Rose, of whom sadly no pictures exist. Rose, a gift from the governor of Martinique, ate at table with a knife and fork (turnips were her favourite), and, on becoming ill, was put to bed in a nightgown, where she received wellwishers and enjoyed sweetened tisanes, before succumbing, probably to the cold.
Grace Coolidge and Rebecca the racoon, 1927
Rebecca was presented to the American first family as a Thanksgiving dinner delicacy in 1926, but Grace decided that despite racoon’s reported “toothsome” flavour, they would keep her as a pet instead. This was hardly out there; the Coolidge White House was home, at various times, to “12 dogs, six birds, two cats, a donkey, and a goose named Enoch … two lion cubs (called Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau), a black bear, a wallaby and a pygmy hippopotamus called Billy”. The rather chaotic energy Rebecca exudes here is confirmed by reports she repeatedly bit Coolidge and attempted to escape. Despite that, she seems to have been popular. “We all loved Rebecca. Her chief joy was to get into my bathtub with a cake of soap – she loved the suds and would splash around in the water for an hour,” a White House staff member reminisced.
Valentino and his wolfhound, 1925
Valentino understood the power of a striking image and an elegant companion; he invested what he earned from $10 gigolo gigs “in a large pair of white Russian wolfhounds and a small pair of white swimming trunks”, props for promenading the Santa Monica sands in the hope of attracting the eye of a movie mogul. It paid off, of course, but success brought the desire for more weird animals. You probably wouldn’t have wanted him and his second wife, Natacha Rambova, as your neighbours, what with the frequently escaping lion cub, which Rambova would chase, naked.
Clara Bow and Teddy the koala, 1931
A gift from an Australian admirer, Clara Bow’s koala, Teddy, found itself at the heart of a succurilous 1931 exposé by the Coast Reporter, in which Bow was accused of having sex with her cousin, various women and her great dane, as well as Teddy. Bow also loved dogs and wrote a very moving three-page eulogy for her cocker spaniel, Diablo.
Josephine Baker and Chiquita the cheetah, 1931
Baker’s menagerie was as spectacular as the woman herself, including Toutoute the goat and Albert, a pig who lived in the club kitchen (“Eventually, Albert got so fat from all the foie gras and truffles that he couldn’t fit through the kitchen door”), plus dogs, monkeys, “Tomato the horse, a tortoise, a ‘friendly’ snake called Kiki, a parakeet, and a chimpanzee called Ethel”. Chiquita was a gift from Casino de Paris director Henri Varna as part of Baker’s act, but soon became a beloved companion. Ultimate cat lady Baker walked Chiquita along the Champs-Elysée and the Deauville planches, and, according to fashion editor Diana Vreeland, once took her to the cinema. “The lights went on, and I felt a slight movement under my hand. I looked down – and it was a cheetah! And beside the cheetah was Josephine Baker!” Your move, Taylor Swift.
Joan Crawford and Cliquot, 1955
It seems reasonable to conclude Joan Crawford preferred, and was nicer to, dogs than humans. “What my mother wanted was fans and puppies, not human beings,” said her daughter Christina. Crawford owned a spoiled scottie (Woggles) and various dachshunds before “one of Hollywood’s 10 best-dressed poodles” (now there’s a listicle I would read avidly), Cliquot. “Cliquot is fed on chicken (boneless white meat only) or ground sirloin, which he washes down with a bottle of special brand ginger beer,” a newspaper report claimed in 1954. Despite all this, I wouldn’t say Cliquot looks entirely blissful here; perhaps he was experiencing his own Mommy Dearest moment.
Hylda Baker and her monkeys, 1956
More simians here with music hall comedian Baker. Given the amount of fur she’s wearing, carrying the monkeys must have been very confusing for all concerned. Did they think she was a giant mama monkey? Also, could you really just go out and get yourself a couple of monkeys in the 50s? The answer is plainly “yes” – Harrods would sell you a lion in 1969, after all – but how we weren’t all wiped out by some zoonotic plague defies belief.
Salvador Dalí and Babou the ocelot, 1965
Dalí always seems as if he would have been quite exhausting to be around and he doesn’t give me an “attentive pet owner” vibe. Poor Babou at least took his revenge by wreaking havoc, scaring restaurant guests and destroying 17th-century lithographs. Dalí’s friend, the actor Carlos Lozano, wrote in his memoirs: “I only saw the ocelot smile once, the day it escaped and sent the guests at the Meurice scurrying like rats for cover.” Here, Babou looks as judgmental and unhelpful as every cat I’ve ever met. “Put the pencil down, Sal, all those melty clocks are bumming people out.”
Tippi Hedren and Neil the lion, 1971
There are many mindblowing images of the Hedren household – including one where 400lb lion Neil looks as if he’s playfully taking a chunk out of her daughter Melanie Griffith’s leg; and another where he’s sprawled unhelpfully on the kitchen floor like a cat agitating for Dreamies, as a household employee steps gingerly over him. I love this one – they look so cosy, the apex predator and the elegant proto-Joe Exotic. Surely the only reason no one died during this cohabitation was sheer dumb luck? Hedren herself has accepted it was indeed “stupid beyond belief”.
