The Chow-Chow

London: The Field Press Ltd.. Very Good+. [1922]. Second Edition. Hardcover. (dark green cloth with decorative gilt embossing on front cover; no dust jacket) [nice-looking book, despite a very faint dampstain on the front cover, with gilt lettering on spine and front cover bright and unrubbed, ditto the gilt illustration of a dog on the front cover; internally it's quite clean except for some offsetting to both endpapers and a previous owner's initials plus date & place of purchase written lightly in ink at the top of the front endpaper]. (B&W photographic plates) A compact little tome (just 78 pages), discussing the history, general management, ailments, breeding, etc. of this much-beloved breed of dog. From the Preface to the First Edition: "A long illness debarring me for some years from all social and literary pursuits, added to my great fondness for dogs, led me to undertake the scientific breeding of Chow-Chows, making a specialty of the blue variety" -- and subsequently to write this book, "to offer my experience to lovers of the breed, not so much to those who can afford to run large kennels, but to those who desire to keep and breed the best at the lowest cost consistent with the well-doing of the Chow." The Preface to the Second Edition (this one) notes the "favourable reception" accorded the First Edition, and states that she has here "included some fresh material, the result of a more extended experience." (No date appears on this edition, by the way, but from a copy of the Third Edition I have learned that the first edition was published in January 1914 and this (2nd) in June 1922.) I was going to call the book "charming," but then I took a look at the final ("Miscellaneous") chapter, which starts out with a rather grim and graphic discussion of various methodologies the author (or her servant!) had employed for doing away with "undesirable" dogs; as she puts it, "the most merciful manner of putting away a dog when for some reason or other it is necessary to do so." (And if you're wondering what "some reason or other" might amount to, here's an example: "One of my Chows has had an obstinate fancy for selecting her own mate, and will prefer a village mongrel to the most perfect specimen of her own breed; and it has been far from easy to force her into a superior alliance. More than once she has contrived to evade every precaution, and each time all offspring of the mésalliance has by some means had to be put away." Well, sorry, Lady, but the horror of your puppy-execution can't be papered over by using a fancy word like "mésalliance"; I hope the village mongrels have been peeing on your grave for the last century. .