Letter № 5 · from Bella, Cotswolds
On the Dressing of Spaniels
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Dear S., — My Mistress dresses me. There is, on certain occasions, a small woollen jacket the colour of an apologetic emergency. There is, on other occasions, a green Barbour-style coat that flatters no one. There is, on Christmas Day, a thing with antlers. I am not unwell. I am not cold. I am, in the matter of antlers, not a reindeer. I do not know how to make these distinctions known.
S. replies:
Dear Bella, — There is no Latin word for the indignity of being dressed warmly when one is, in fact, comfortable. The Romans, who saw most things, did not see this. They had not yet invented the Mistress.
I write from a household where the Mrs is herself always cold. The impulse to dress others, I observe, tends to follow. Bear it as the great spaniels of antiquity bore worse. The jacket, in time, becomes one's own. The antlers, mercifully, are once a year.
You are not alone. There are, I am quietly told, many of us.
Yours, with discreet solidarity, — S.