Books

Old Favourites: My Dog Tulip (1956) by JR Ackerley

Funny and honest, it’s one of the first dog-owner memoirs to make an impact

The title of the second chapter is Liquids and Solids – Ackerley deals with his beloved Alsatian’s bodily functions openly. Photograph: iStock

Brian Maye
Sat Apr 3 2021 - 06:00

Dog-owner memoirs have proven perennially popular; this was one of the first to make a major impact and it remains one of the best because of its humour, honesty and the quality of the writing. Most of all, it resists any temptation to anthropomorphise. As EM Forster remarked, Ackerley recognises his dog “as a creature in her own right, as a dog of dogdom and not as an appendage of man”.

It caused something of a shock when published, one reviewer horrified by its “scatological and gynaecological detail”. Far from shying away from the messy realities of dog ownership (the title of the second chapter is Liquids and Solids), Ackerley deals with his beloved Alsatian’s bodily functions openly, unashamedly and, in the case of sex, with an amused perplexity. The chapters on finding Tulip an appropriate “husband” are at times hilarious. He wishes to mate her with another noble Alsatian, all to no avail; then a scruffy mongrel does the business. The birth of her litter is lovingly described. Their owner sees it as his solemn duty to find them “good homes” but eventually has to admit defeat and “cast them to fortune”.

Ackerley frequently ponders the significance of Tulip’s presence in his life and learns valuable lessons. “How should human beings suspect in the lower beasts those noblest virtues which they themselves attain only in the realms of fiction? Tulip was incorruptible. She was constant. It mattered not who fed, flattered or befriended her, or for how long; her allegiance never wavered; she had given her heart to me in the beginning and mine, and mine only, it was to remain forever.”

He also ponders, with regret, how poorly we humans sometimes repay such devotion. “I realised clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.”