Creatures Great and Small
There is a widespread belief that Ontario’s Tiny and Tay townships were named for Elizabeth Simcoe’s dogs. In fact, Tiny, Tay (and a third named Flos) were King Charles spaniels who belonged to the Maitlands: Sir Peregrine and his second wife, Lady Sarah Lennox, while he served as fourth lieutenant governor of Upper Canada (1818-1828). It is true, however, that Elizabeth Simcoe’s life was full of animals: living, stuffed, studied, and otherwise enjoyed. Their stories provide an interesting glimpse into both Simcoe family life and the society of which she was a part.
In recent years, scholars of history, literature, and culture have been contributing to a growing discussion of a field known as animal history. The field has roots in Welsh historian Keith Thomas’s 1983 publication Man and the Natural World (in which he examined, among other things, early modern British ideas about animals), and American historian Harriet Ritvo’s 1987 book, The Animal Estate, (in which she analyzed British ideas in the Victorian era). In 2013, the scholarly journal History and Theory dedicated an issue to animal history and there is now an entire journal for the subject (Animal History, published from the University of California).
As with any contemporary subfield of historical study, there are debates about methods, concepts, definitions and what the field might offer the study of history more broadly. Can the study of animals tell us things about past human experience that we have overlooked? Or, as Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraj asked in their introduction to a recent essay collection, do animals have “agency” in history – in other words, can we study them as historical actors? How do we find animal “voices” in history? What are the limits to what we can know in the broader, epistemological sense?
One of the interesting discussions in this literature has evolved around the concept of the “pet” or household companion animal (as opposed to animals used by humans for work or food). When did Europeans begin to keep “pets” and why? Harriet Ritvo’s study (noted earlier) proposed that pet-keeping began in England in the nineteenth century, then literary scholar Ingrid Tague pushed its origins back into the eighteenth century.
Elizabeth Simcoe’s experiences with animals contribute to all these discussions. Her encounters are part of the story of an important era of change in the human/animal relationship. What might her stories tell us about that history (and hers) more broadly?
It is very likely that Elizabeth (born in 1762) grew up with family pets although there is no direct evidence in the surviving sources. But her aunt Margaret (Spinckes) Graves later wrote frequently about the cats and dogs in her life. In 1795, she told her great-niece Eliza that a friend had given her “the prettiest tortershell Kitten I ever beheld.” It was “very tame & gentle yet playful & gay, & and a great favourite with every Individual in this House.” Sadly, the kitten was soon stolen and she lamented its loss deeply, “for I never was half so fond of any Domestic animal in my Life.” At the time, Margaret Graves also had a young spaniel that promised to “turn out Handsome” although she was less pleased at his personality (“not a pleasant one”). At least “it follows the Carriage, & enjoys itself mightily” on her outings, she allowed.
The Tortoiseshell kitten seems to have been a replacement for a “huge” cat that she had given up the year before. “He had got such a sad trick of watering all over the House I could not bear the stink he occasioned,” she wrote Eliza. “But as he was very good in killing Rats & Mice, I took care to get very good quarters for him” at a farm in the country.
We don’t know about pets in the Simcoe household when it was first established, but in preparation for the move to Upper Canada, Elizabeth Simcoe told a friend that her beloved cat Salem had been sent to live with Frances Downman (wife of John Graves Simcoe’s friend, the physician Hugh Downman) at Exeter, chosen because Mrs. Downman would “value him on our account” while she was partial to cats in any case. “I thought it the best care I could take of him,” Elizabeth added almost apologetically.
Clearly, she did not want to live without pets in Upper Canada. Her correspondence from there includes several references to household pets acquired in the colony. Trojan, a “hound,” has gone down in history as one of the first recorded instances of a dog eating homework. Just before Christmas 1792 at Niagara, she wrote that “I left Trojan … in my room while I was to dinner & he tore to pieces my best Map of Canada & the United States which I had taken great pains to draw.” Lt. Gov. Simcoe wrote a mock poetic ode on the episode, full of double entendres on the fall of empires. A bit of doggerel best left for another occasion!
At Kingston, Mrs. Simcoe acquired a white cat with grey spots that she took to Niagara and then Toronto. He was quite a favourite with her, perhaps because (as she wrote), “His sense & attachment are such that those who believe in transmigration would think his soul once animated a reasoning being.” He travelled quite happily by ship and “sits composedly as Centinel at my door amid the beat of Drums & the crash of falling Trees” when he wasn’t trotting around the lieutenant governor’s camp, visiting all the tents in turn.
The Simcoes took in another dog at Niagara, a Newfoundland whom they called Jack Sharp. Elizabeth refers to the original owner as “Mr. Shane,” but he was undoubtedly William Butler Sheehan, nephew of Colonel John Butler of Butler’s Rangers fame. Jack Sharp accompanied the lieutenant governor on a winter’s “walk” from Niagara to Detroit in early 1793. Simcoe gathered information about the people, geography, and politics along the way while Jack Sharp gathered a mouthful of porcupine quills.
Mrs. Simcoe recorded that Jack Sharp also went with Simcoe on a trip to Lake Simcoe in the autumn of 1793. Jack was “troublesome enough on this excursion,” she observed, “as his size was very unsuitable to a Canoe.” Nonetheless, she hastened to add, “he is a great favourite.” Perhaps she was joking when she wrote that the party became lost at one point, running low on food and “Had they remained in the woods another day, it was feared Jack Sharp would have been sacrificed to their hunger.”
The line between household pets and food was more directly blurred in Elizabeth Simcoe’s encounters with raccoons in Upper Canada. The wife of the commanding officer of the garrison at Niagara in 1792 had two tame raccoons who fascinated Mrs. Simcoe. “They resemble a Fox,” she explained to family back home, but were “exceedingly fat” and had a remarkable joint in their noses. “When they eat,” she added, “they use their fore feet as monkeys do.” But this encounter with domesticity did not prevent her from savouring a roasted raccoon on a picnic at York some time later. It “tasted like Lamb if eaten with Mint sauce,” she decided.
However, even food animals seem to have generated a streak of empathy in her heart. At York in 1793, she went to observe a night fishery at which salmon were attracted to the fishing boats by “large torches of white birch bark” and were then easily speared. “The manner of destroying the fish is disagreeable,” she reported, “but seeing them swimming in Shoals around the boat is a very pretty sight.”
Of course, other animals were troublesome pests; mice and rats appear regularly in the Simcoe papers. At York in Upper Canada, Elizabeth reported that “Ground Mice” were “innumerable & most troublesome.” She joked with her friends that “We want the Edict published in Spain to excommunicate & banish them” (likely referring to the 1492 Alhambra Decree by which Ferdinand and Isabella attempted to expel the Jews from Spain).
The Simcoe pets in Upper Canada do not appear to have returned with them to England but there was no shortage of replacements. The captain of the ship that brought them home had two dogs, Bean and Belle, that became little Francis Simcoe’s “constant playfellows” on the voyage. Back home, aunt Margaret Graves seems to have been a reliable and endless supplier of family pets. At one point, John Graves Simcoe was in Bath where he met her latest crop of dogs. “There is so many, & such various sorts,” she wrote to the family at Wolford, that “every person may chuse one to his own Mind.”
Many of the Simcoes’ friends also had dogs of “various sorts.” Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, commissioned artist Gilbert Stuart to paint a portrait of his children in 1787 in which they posed with the family greyhound.
The Acland family of Devon also had dogs; the 7th Baronet was a noted hunter and Joshua Reynolds painted him with one of his staghounds, a now-extinct breed often associated with North Devon deer hunts.
The playful relationship between those in the Simcoe social circle and their dogs was immortalized in Sarah Martin’s illustrated nonsense book, The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog, first published in 1805. Sarah was a sister of Judith (Martin) Bastard, one of the closest of the Simcoe friends. Judith and her husband, John Pollexfen Bastard, lived at Kitley (near Yealmpton, Devon) where Sarah was a frequent visitor; it seems likely that the book was written on one of those visits.
One edition of her book is dedicated to Col. Bastard, while family tradition has it that Mother Hubbard was modeled on the Bastard’s housekeeper. The delightful little book sold more than 10,000 copies. Sarah Martin wrote a sequel, and the original was reproduced many times in the years to come. Some literary scholars have suggested that it represented a new direction in books for children: pure silly fun without the heavy overlay of morality lessons that had dominated the first phase of children’s literature.
Elizabeth Simcoe (and later, her eldest daughter Eliza) also spent a great deal of time visiting the Buckinghams at Stowe, that massive social statement by the Temple-Grenville clan south of Northampton. And that family had included dogs over several generations. For example, a very fine pug appears in the 1802 portrait of their grandson Richard and his mother, daughter-in-law Anne Elizabeth (later the 1st Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos).
Perhaps most famous, however, is the tribute to an earlier member of the household, a greyhound named Fido. Among the architectural whimsies of the fabulous gardens at Stowe is the Temple of British Worthies. Built circa 1735, it consists of a row of niches in pediments, each containing a bust of a British cultural icon: Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke among them. Above each is an inscription to identify the “worthy.” The longest inscription of all is on a plaque in a niche at the back of the central block: “To the memory of Signor Fido an Italian of good extraction.” The original inscription was moved elsewhere in 1763, but a new rendering of it sits again in its niche.
The other very important animals in Elizabeth Simcoe’s life were horses. She was an avid rider from her youth to at least late middle age, enjoying daily outings from home and longer holiday excursions through Devon and Wales. Unlike her dogs and cats, however, her horses are never identified by name or personality. They seem to have been in a separate category: working animals rather than pets.
The nearest reference to a specific horse appears in the description of John Graves Simcoe’s funeral in 1806, provided by longtime family servant John Bailey. The general’s body was taken from Exeter (where he had died) in an elaborate cortege. It was met at Honiton by an honour guard of the 3rd Dragoons (the Prince of Wales’ cavalry regiment), one of whom led Simcoe’s “favourite horse” who was draped in a barding of the Simcoe family coat-of-arms.
Finally, Elizabeth Simcoe also maintained a scientific fascination with animals. In her teens, she and close friend Mary Anne Burges collaborated on a plan for an illustrated English translation of the works of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. They were motivated in part because they saw in his classification schemes a search to understand the divine order of God’s creation. Early in their residence in Upper Canada, Elizabeth and her husband paid a visit to Captain Henry Darling of the regiment at Niagara to see his collection of stuffed birds (and apparently a few land animals, including a skunk). She later sent a bat and “a beautiful black and yellow bird” (presumably also stuffed) home to the family in England.
The Simcoe family’s relationship with pets (as opposed to working animals) clearly fits much of the pattern identified by historians. Keeping a pet required money and thus could serve as a marker of socio-economic status, something with which the Simcoes were much concerned. Their social superiors and patrons also kept household pets, providing a model. Undoubtedly, John Graves Simcoe knew of the role of dogs in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, which provided role models of another kind for him. The association of dogs with British royalty – notably Charles II and his spaniels – represented and reinforced a statement about the political principles on which the Simcoes based their lives.
On the other hand, the “fashion” for ladies of the eighteenth century to have a lap dog was unlikely to have influenced Elizabeth Simcoe. She was much opposed to the superficiality of fashion, particularly the “accomplishments” that young ladies were expected to acquire and perform.
And she seems to have disagreed with those eighteenth-century philosophers who argued that only humans had immortal souls. The white cat with whom she shared her living spaces in Upper Canada struck her as almost human; she speculated that perhaps “his soul” had once belonged to a “reasoning being.”
Above all, the Simcoe dogs and cats provided the entertainment and emotional companionship familiar to all who live with pets in the modern world. At a time of rigid social convention and interpersonal formality, a pet cat or dog permitted casual playfulness and an uninhibited relationship possible otherwise with only very intimate friendships of the human variety. The Simcoe family pets enlivened the childhood of her little ones and helped to sustain her in the wonderfully strange adventure of Upper Canada.
Full text of the inscription at Stowe:
To the Memory
of
SIGNOR FIDO.
an Italian of good Extraction
who came to England
not to bite us, like the rest of his Countrymen,
but to gain an honest Livelyhood.
He hunted not after Fame,
yet acquir’d it;
regardless of the Praise of his Friends,
but most sensible of their Love.
Tho’ he lived amongst the Great,
he neither learnt nor flatter’d any Vice.
He was no Bigot,
Tho’ he doubted none of the 39 Articles.
And, if to follow Nature,
and to respect the Laws of Society,
be Philosophy,
he was a perfect Philosopher,
a faithful Friend,
an agreeable Companion,
a lovely Husband,
distinguished by numerous Offspring,
all which he liv’d to see take good Courses.
In his old age he retir’d
to the House of a Clergyman in the Country,
where he finished his earthly Race,
and died an Honour and an Example to the whole Species.
Reader,
this stone is guiltless of Flattery,
for he to whom it is inscribed
was not a Man,
but a
Grey Hound.
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