It is often said, almost as a bromide, that the original Guisachan goldens were cream colors.
Well, I have actually looked at the depictions of the first Guisachan dogs– the Nous X Belle litter.
Here is Mary Marjibanks with either “Cowslip” or “Primrose.”
I have seen this painting in color. The dog in question has light shadings on what is mostly a mid-gold body color.
Now, a case can be made that “Ada” was a light gold dog:
I have also seen this painting in color, and Ada is a light gold dog.
Their sire “Nous,” however, was a clearly a dark colored dog with some mid-gold shadings.
And keep in mind that this strain was crossed with red Irish setter or maybe red Gordons, which means that the strain moved toward the darker coloration.
As the breed standardized, the breed looked like the dogs in this photograph, which includes two of the later Noranby dogs:
Well, it was always possible to find light colored goldens with cream shadings. The real light colored, almost white dogs are really a more recent phenomena.
The reason why Elma Stonex said the original color was cream was probably more political reasons than historical ones. With the publication of her findings from the Guisachan kennel records and her sources from the Earl of Ilchester, she was destroying a long-held and fiercely defended theory about their origins. Keep in mind that the golden’s early patrons believed that the dogs were of Russian origin, and this theory was so strongly believed that it was nearly impossible to have a real conversation about their origins for nearly forty years. The Golden Retriever Club (UK) had changed the standard to allow for cream shadings on their dogs (which is historically correct) in 1936, but by the time Stonex’s evidence was coming out, the creams , as in totally cream-colored, were already becoming popular in the UK.
It makes sense that Elma Stonex would have written such things in order to curry favor with the clubs intelligentsia, many of whom were breeding out the darker colors.
It is because of this sort of possible political wrangling that one must be very skeptical of official breed histories. I think I have found that the original dogs were not creams as we know them today, and I think we have a good example of historical revisionism here.
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I have also always been skeptical of the bloodhound cross in the golden retriever, because the following things are often said about that cross. The Earl of Ilchester said there was a record of it; however the paper on which it was written was lost. This particular earl, who was related to the Marjoribanks family, was a child when this cross happened, so he may not have remembered it correctly. The description of the dogs from that cross also varies. It is sometimes said that the cross reduced the size of the dogs, which is nonsense if you’ve ever seen a bloodhound, or mad them “savage,” which is also rather strange, the European breed called the bloodhound was never savage. ( However, the New World bloodhounds, which were tracking mastiffs, were quite aggressive.)
I also think the bloodhound issue is a likely a left over from the Russian circus dog story. The actual story about the Russian circus dog goes like this. The 1st Baron Tweedmouth found a pack of performing Russian dogs (thought to be Caucasian Ovtcharkas!) that were very good natured, and easily trained. He took them to Guisachan and bred from them until he needed to have new blood added. He then crossed with a bloodhound, creating the modern golden retriever.
Now, I can’t disprove that bloodhounds were not crossed in. After all, the dogs were used to track wounded deer at Guisachan. However, on the European continent, it is not unusual to use gun dogs to track wounded game. In fact, in addition to gun dog work, most of the German HPR’s will also bay a wounded boar or even dispatch it.
But again, one must be very skeptical of official breed histories, even ones that were as strangely carefully documented as this one.
