Country-house Clawdo

Was it the leopard in the dining room, the jackdaw in the kitchen or the ferret in the nursery? Bronwen Riley presents a whodunnit of the worst-behaved pets

- Bronwen Riley

IT was the end of ashaming week when my irresistibly entitled whippet had committed outrages all over the country. In Cumbria, he was banned from yet another drawing room for, on entry, cocking his leg up a pair of exquisite silk curtains belonging to the editor of a glossy interiors magazine.

Confined to the kitchen at a house in Hertfordshire, he rapidly worked out how to open the back-stairs door and led my hosts’ two incontinent Italian greyhounds on a rampage through bedrooms with plush, new pale carpets. In Scotland, as everyone sat down to supper, I saw tooth marks in the butter that could only have come from one smug-looking whippet, sprawled on the sofa licking his lips. I smoothed the marks away by sleight of hand, hoping that no one noticed.

At awkward times such as these, I seek solace in the classics—there is always an appalling emperor to put everything in perspective—and among friends with animals more outrageous than my own. For anyone else who despairs of their pets’ bad behaviour, here is a room-by-room investigation of country-house pet crimes, together with some hard-earned advice from both victims and perpetrators.

The dining room

OPINIONS have been sharply divided over the place of pets at mealtimes since classical days. The Greek poet Anacreon had a dove that ate from his hand and drank from his cup and that maddest of Roman emperors Heliogabalus took malicious delight in having his pet lions and leopards climb up on the couches alongside worried guests at dinner. Renaissance etiquette books advise against bringing dogs and cats to table, suggesting that many people did.

Having your pets at the table is one thing, but the writer Thomas Hardy’s spoiled dog, Wessex, was allowed to walk about on the table during meals. Cynthia Asquith recalled him snatching every forkful of food before it had reached her mouth as the indulgent Hardy looked on.