In Peke condition: Meet the ancient toy dog breed famed for resembling a pain au chocolat

'Little Billiee the Pekin[g]ese spaniel, hails from China, and is a wonderfully good specimen of his breed. He is very small, well built, and has extraordinary feather on the legs and feet, and quite the longest ears imaginable. He is certainly a most charming little pet, being lively and having the best of tempers,' Country Life reported in 1897 on visiting the Princess of Wales’s kennels at Sandringham.

The Pekingese has long enjoyed royal attention and was once the exclusive companion of China’s emperors, who regarded the breed as sacred, confining the dogs to the Forbidden City. However, it was the sacking of Peking, during the Second Opium War of 1860 that brought the breed to Britain. The emperor of China had fled the Summer Palace — which had been inhabited by his aunt — and a British officer spared a thought for the five little dogs mourning the loss of their mistress, who had committed suicide on the advance of the allied troops.

One of those dogs he presented to Queen Victoria, who named it Looty and consigned it to the kennels at Windsor Castle, where it survived until 1872. Of the remaining dogs, two were given to the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon, who went on to develop the Goodwood bloodline, and two were secured by Admiral Lord John Hay.

However, it would be a wealthy barrister’s wife, Clarice Ashton Cross, who founded Britain’s most distinguished peke kennels at Alderbourne, and took Edwardian dog shows by storm, arriving by carriage with footmen carrying her dogs in hampers.

Ashton Cross proved to the nation that a 'show dog is not necessarily a beautiful imbecile' and that the diminutive little dogs were perfectly capable 'of running and hurdling, the obstacles, of course, being graded to suit their size' and that those ‘'reared sensibly are most pleasing outdoor dogs and are an ornament to any lawn.' Indeed, Arthur Croxton Smith confirmed in 1931 that they 'are not merely lapdogs, suited only for lying about on cushions,' a sentiment that was echoed in 2010 when Country Life reported that the Pekingese’s 'instincts for herding and for chasing quarry were stronger than the pampered indolence of the popular stereotype.'

Brave, imperious, and undeniably fluffy, displaying a 'certain aloof air of disdain, as though the memory of royal ancestry never quite leaves him' the Pekingese has captivated many enthusiasts including the 3rd Duke of Wellington, Idina Sackville, Barbara Cartland, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Banks, the first woman president of the RHS, and Mary Russell, the 'Flying Duchess' and wife of the 11th Duke of Bedford, who built a charming little temple in the pet cemetery of Woburn, Bedfordshire. Beneath a wrought-iron dome supported on Corinthian columns sleeps a cast of Che Foo, otherwise known as Wuzzy, the duchess’s Pekingese.

Famed for resembling a pain au chocolat (or a fig roll?), a Pekingese called Eric stole the nation’s heart when he competed for Crufts Best in Show in 2023.

This is an extract from 'The Country Life Book of Dogs' (Rizzoli, £50) by Agnes Stamp.