The 5th Earl of Ilchester.
From Country Life Illustrated (1897):
One of the most successful portraits shown at the recent exhibition at the Haymarket, by Miss Fairman, was that of Hector, the favourite red retriever belonging to the Earl of llchester, who owns a fine kennel of this choice variety, and the only one in England. They are very keen and thoroughly good sporting dogs, and Lord llchester is understood to prefer them to any other breed for working. Hector, by the way, is the home favourite, and spends most of his happy life lounging in the beautiful saloon of Holland House, wherein he had undisputed away, until one day a little mongrel terrier strayed in from the streets. The poor little beastie, being allowed to remain—-because, owing to the muzzling order,expulsion simply meant sentence of death—has assumed a quite unwarrantable air of authority over Hector, whose dignity does not allow him to argue with a small dog. There is one thing, however. Hector will not permit the newcomer to do, and that is to vex the soul of Lady Ilchester’s pet Yorkshire Venus, who is Hector’s own chosen chum ( pg. 326).
Hector and the particular strain of “red retriever” referred to here are the same strain that gave us the modern golden retriever. Henry Edward Fox-Strangways, 5th Earl of Ilchester, is the Earl of Ilchester referred to in this text. His mother was the Dudley Marjoribanks’s sister. Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, was of course the founder of the this strain at Guisachan. The Ilchester (“Melbury”) dogs were derived from Ada, one of the bitch puppies from that Nous/Belle litter.
Hetor’s behavior toward small dogs is very golden.
“You’re small. You’re cocky. I could flatten you in eight seconds. But I am too big to be paying much attention to you. So I’m going to ignore you now.”
I’ve seen them have that conversation with terriers– sans the words, of course.
If the terrier is a dog and the retriever is a bitch, the terrier will then spend the better part of an afternoon trying to impress the retriever or trying to hump her.
There’s a photo of Henry Edward, 5th Earl of Ilchester, with Ada in Elma Stonex’s book on Goldens. He was far better looking (at least as a younger man) than “Spy” has depicted him– the caricaturist loved to spear politicos and the aristocracy. Ilchester came off easy compared to some others!
It’s too bad that the Melbury Goldens died out in the 1930s. Although possibly some might be back in pedigrees as unregistered dogs; there were a great many Goldens registered before WWII that had unregistered sires or dams, or grandparents.
Ilchester was the son of Hon. John Fox-Strangways, fourth son of Henry Thomas Fox-Strangways, 2nd Earl of Ilchester. His mother was Amelia Marjoribanks, daughter of Edward Marjoribanks. He was educated at Eton.[1]
Amelia was niece to Dudley C Marjoribanks…
grandson
Edward was the dad.
Dudley’s son was also Edward, the one who took the title of 2nd Baron Tweedmouth.
http://thepeerage.com/p6005.htm#i60044
Amelia was the daughter of Edward Marjoribanks of Greenlands, Dudley’s father. Dudley’s son who took the title 2nd Baron Tweedmouth was also named Edward:
http://auden.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/auden/family.php?famid=F8255
You’re right, I have Amelia listed as the daughter of his sister Georgiana but she is his sister (problem with using optical character recognition software)
Okay, whose pedigrees do we want to talk about here? The dogs don’t care and the people should know better.
The pedigrees of the people involved are often of interest simply from the standpoint that they help explain the distribution and spread of the dogs and their breeding, their pedigrees as well.
Additionally, some understanding of the social mores and customs of the time do help in understanding the role of the retrievers (and other dogs) we are interested in.
An exceptionally helpful book in that regard is titled “Game and the English Landscape”; the authors’ names escape me at the moment, but it is fascinating, and well illustrated.
You have to love the surnames. Come on, “Tweedmouth” “Marjoribanks” “Fox-Strangways” … you can’t make these up they’re so pompous.
I keep reading Strangways as “strange ways”
Marjoribanks is pronounce “Marsh banks” or “March banks.”
Some people with that name shortened it to “Banks.”
Tweedmouth refers to the River Tweed (which is most of the border between Scotland and England). The mouth of the Tweed is near the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is Dudley and his son Edward were MP’s.
How on earth did they get ‘Marsh’ out of ‘Marjori’?!
The English language is so odd…
They were Scottish, and the English dialect spoken in Scotland is considered by many linguists to be its own language. Yes, Scots Gaelic is a different language, but some authorities think the English dialect spoken in Scotland is a different language, which is called Scots.
Here are its origins: http://marjorib.awardspace.co.uk/JIssue1.html