sensual, stroking intimacy, such as would make any man jealous? In the sixteenth century a clergyman named William Harrison included in his Description of England a satirical assault on women and lapdogs:
They are little and prettie, proper and fine, and sought out far and neere to satisfie the nice delicacie of daintie dames, and wanton womens willes; instruments of follie to plaie and dallie withal, in trifling away the treasure of time, to withdraw their minds from more commendable exercises, and to content their corrupt concupiscences with vain disport, a sillie poore shift to shun their irksome idleness. These Sybariticall puppies, the smaller they be the better they are accepted, the more pleasure they provoke, as meet plaiefellows for minsing mistresses to beare in their bosoms, to keep companie in their chambers, to succour with sleepe in bed, and nourish with meet at bord, to lie in their laps, and lick their lips as they lie in their wagons and couches.
I wondered, from the tone of this, if the Canon of Windsor’s wife had taken up with a toy spaniel. In fact, I find he was plagiarizing a scientific work published seven years earlier by John Caius, MD, court physician to Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I and President of the Royal College of Physicians. Our Western concept of breeds was first recorded in his Short Treatise of English Dogges in 1570. In this useful work I meet Bonnie:
There is, beside those which wee have already delivered, another sort of gentle dogge in this our Englishe soyle … the Dogges of this kind doth Callimachus call Melitoeos, of the Island Melita, in the sea of Sicily, (which this day is named Malta, an Island in deede famous and reoumed …) where this kind of dogges had their principall beginning.
He continues, ‘These dogges are little, pretty, proper, and fine …’ and so on, although the magnificent phrase ‘Sybariticall puppies’ is the Revd Harrison’s own. Dr Caius goes on to make a perceptive point about lapdogs, which I would not have been able to understand in 2002, when Bonnie was so new, as I do now. Criticizing a female tendency to delight in dogs more than in children, he guesses at mitigating circumstances: ‘But this abuse peradventure reigneth where there hath bene long lack of issue, or else where barrenness is the best blossom of bewty.’ The small dog as child substitute? Of course – for there are many ways to save a life, and this is one to which I shall return.
That summer we took Bonnie to stay on our new boat, a Puget Sound cabin cruiser which was moored at Dittisham, on the river Dart in Devon. J bought the dog a tiny ‘pet float’ and each morning he would rise early, dress her in her red life jacket and row to the shore so that she could relieve herself. My lack of rowing skills was a good excuse, but in truth, he never once complained. I would stand on deck and watch him, remembering our honeymoon in that very village (so cold in February 1968, while this July gave us the hottest day of the year) and loving the fact that he was so at home on the water which scared me, a non-swimmer. By now he loved my dog; why else would he have agreed that she should come on holiday while Billie and Sam and all the cats remained behind on the farm, taken care of by my father? The dog came everywhere with us and when, after a few days, I developed an inexplicable pain in my right arm, my daughter suggested it must be a repetitive strain injury, caused by clutching Bonnie so tightly. Of course.
Bonnie was sitting between us as J and I heard Devout Sceptics broadcast at 9.00 a.m. on Radio 4, Amy Tan’s voice filling the cabin as the waves made their soft slapping sound against the blue hull and J listening with his characteristic intensity. I imagined those tiny Yorkies on her knee, her long fingers held carefully out of reach of their tongues, as she talked about her belief that there is a benevolent spirit in the world, larger than any individual. ‘That works with the concept of a god,’ she said – and went on to link it with the idea of, not so much forgiveness in the Christian sense of the word, but compassion. Her voice was quietly firm as she told me that her aim was to learn about ‘this notion of compassion’, about empathy with her fellow human beings – which she defined as ‘another way of saying Love’.
She added that of course you cannot measure love – it cannot be scientifically proven, no more than the idea of an afterlife. Yet she could say, ‘Yes, I believe this,’ because she finds ‘intuitive emotional truth’ in the idea each day of her life and in the writing of her novels.
As I re-read her words today (the interview was printed in my book, Devout Sceptics) I realize how much Amy Tan’s philosophy informs my own life, and that the meeting with her and her small dogs was significant in more ways than one. Everything that has happened to me since Bonnie arrived from nowhere has at once tested and confirmed it. What’s more, the entirely serious lessons my little dog has taught me confirm her optimism. There is no doubt in my mind what small dogs are ‘for’.
But it was still so new. My diary entries record the process of dog intoxication – for that is indeed what it was. As the American genius Amy Hempel wrote in her short story collection The Dog in the Marriage, ‘… you don’t just love the dogs, you fall in love with them.’ In the summer of 2002 I wrote in my diary:
27 June – Bonnie has transformed things. She is so sweet I want her to be with me all the time.
3 July – I find it hard to concentrate on the novel because I spend too much time fussing over Bonnie.
23 July – Bonnie continues to delight me. It is a strange feeling – to love a dog.
Bonnie fitted easily into the Devon part of our life, although some of the old friends teased the lady with the lapdog. I suppose I can understand, because it was so unexpected to see me in that role; nevertheless we must all allow people to change. And I had changed. Instead of being impatient on the boat and feeling marooned I relaxed, strolling with the dog and gazing at the water, soothed by the ceaseless pinging of rigging in the breeze. Looking back, that summer seems idyllic. Robin had rumbled into the village on his Harley-Davidson, and joined us on the boat. Our son Daniel arrived, tense but liberated at the end of a long relationship. Kitty’s boyfriend left early and she was upset. We spent time with the grandparents, I cooked meals in the boat’s small galley, J took care of Bonnie’s needs … and so family life went. From the time they were babies our children had loved that village, the scene of our many shared family holidays, not to mention our honeymoon.
The weather was hot, but a sudden squall disrupted J’s birthday celebrations on the last day of July. No drinks on the boat for family and friends, but dinner in the local café for a pile of us. My diary records, ‘The wine flowed and the noise rose and Bonnie sat on my lap and I thought how lucky we are to have all these talented, interesting and deeply kind Devon friends. It was a fabulous night.’ On another evening we joined friends for a beach barbecue. Suddenly fireworks from a celebration up the river filled the sky with falling flowers and stars and ‘illuminated the evanescence of it all’.
The year 2002 marked the jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen. The country which had in March confounded all republicans by mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother joined in celebration of the fifty-year reign of her daughter. J and I had watched the London procession on television. We are both monarchists: my grandmother cleaned houses for a living and served lunches in a girls’ school, yet the Royal Family was part of her sense of identity, like her quiet belief in God and love of her family. She liked to show me pictures of the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, cutting them out of the Daily Mirror. She liked the smart woollen coats with velvet collars and buttons worn by the children of the upper classes.
In contrast, J’s father, Richard Dimbleby, was an icon for my grandparents’ and parents’ generation: the most famous broadcaster the country had ever known, revered by the public first for his fearless war reporting, for his shocking, shattering dispatch as the first journalist into Belsen, and then for his commentaries on great events (the funerals of George VI, Sir Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy and the coronation of Elizabeth II) when the poetic dignity of his spoken prose expressed the deepest feelings of the majority of British people. When I first met the philosophy student (two years after his father had died) and told my parents I was dating ‘Richard Dimbleby’s son’ they were awestruck. It was hard for me to believe too.
From different worlds we came, J and I, meeting in the second year of our respective courses and marrying after just three months, so much in love there was nothing else to do. It was just like fireworks