Firmly established in the reputation of HRM, Queen Victoria, is her love of dogs. As if ample evidence existing in paintings, biographies, and breed histories isn’t enough, her own musings and sketches bear this out. Indeed, such was the Queen’s affection for dogs that her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, once said to her, “You’ll be smothered with dogs.”  

To which most of us would say, “And this is bad why?”

We’d bet that most of you reading have mementos of dogs you’ve loved, so you’ll understand Photographs of Dogs in the Royal Kennel, Windsor, a commissioned record of all the dogs that the Queen and her family owned. Fifty-one photographs taken by William Bainbridge at the Royal Kennels at Windsor document the names, sometimes the dog’s pedigree, and the dates of birth and passing of the Queen’s dogs. Included is “Nigel,” the dog owned by John Brown, Victoria’s personal attendant:

Among the dogs that Bainbridge photographed was “Looty, the first Pekingese dog in Britain, “Laddie” and “Topsy,” the Queen’s Scotch Terriers, and two Pomeranians, “Lina” and “Beppo” photographed in 1888. Others include Border Collies, Dachshunds, and Pugs. Embossed on the album’s cover is the Greyhound, “Helios.”

Queen Victoria had commissioned Bainbridge to repeatedly photograph the dogs in her Windsor kennels even towards the end of her reign. It’s difficult to write with certainty if Victoria had a favorite dog, but we hazard the guess that it might have been her Collie, “Noble.” He appeared in the letters written by Victoria to one of her favorite grandchildren, another Victoria, aka Princess Louis of Battenberg, and when Noble died at the age of 16, her instructions for his burial given to her doctor, Sir James Reid, were explicit: “I wish the grave to be bricked. The dear dog to be wrapped up in the box lined with lead and charcoal, placed in it… I will then tell Mr Profeit to write to Boehm [Sir Edgar Boehm – sculptor] to get a repetition of his statue of the dear Dog in bronze to be placed over the grave.”

Victoria was so despondent over her loss that she couldn’t even choose a burial site for Noble’s grave. Since Noble died at Balmoral, his grave is among trees on those grounds. His monument includes an inscription that describes Noble as “the favourite collie and dear and faithful companion of Queen Victoria I” and that he was “by nature noble too.”

Top image: “Queen Victoria at Osborne” by Sir Edwin Landseer. The painting is of Queen Victoria on her mount held by John Brown. On the bench at left are Princess Helena and Princess Louise, two of Victoria’s daughters.