And finally ‘our’ author Leonard Woolf, author of The Wise Virgins. This is probably Sally, a black-and-white Cocker Spaniel on the left; and it may be Merle, a Shetland Sheepdog, as a puppy, on Leonard’s lap. If anyone knows the name of the third dog please let us know. Also, who was the dog who was living with Virginia Woolf when she was writing Flush? (It must be in the biographies, but we are on holiday on the Roseland Peninsula so can’t look it up. More about this heavenly spot next week.)

Vita Sackville-West has apparently written a book (it’s on order from the library) called Faces: Profiles of Dogs (1961). As we have just read Elizabeth von Arnim’s All the Dogs of My Life we shall soon be extremely well -nformed about women novelists and their dogs. This undated photograph may be of Pippin, the mother of Virginia Woolf’s dog Pinka. And the textile used on the armchair is interesting: it’s obviously Omega but which fabric is it?

This is Churchill with Rufus II (‘but the II is silent’) at Chartwell in 1950. To see a similar poodle – Max, although he is black not brown – go in to our neighbours Pentreath and Hall in Rugby Street, he is often there.

Edith, Lady Londonderry with her Favourite Hound, Fly, painted by Philip de Laszlo in 1913. We have had Lady L on the Post before, she was an admirable woman, more about her on the National Trust site here.

Some Persephone readers will know (cf. the March Letter) that the Persephone team is thinking of getting its own dog. This is partly because a relation has a dog with whom we have fallen in love; and partly because we think it might distract us from the pervading Brexit gloom. So now we are looking for a puppy. And have been reading Dogs of the National Trust by Amy Feldman (which we sell in the shop).  Here is Jane Carlyle’s dog Nero: a similar dog would be SO appropriate for a literary establishment (and also he appears on the endpaper for The Carlyles at Home). Nero is thought to be a Havanese, although when Jane acquired him in December 1849 she assumed he was a mongrel. He was buried in the garden of Carlyle’s House in February 1860.

A Peasant Woman from Tula Province 1910. (In 1924 Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘On or about December 1910 human character changed’: ‘The date refers to the seminal exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists organised by Roger Fry. This change in human character caused a domino-effect: “All human relations have shifted – those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.” Modernity, as defined by Virginia Woolf, is a society and culture in flux. With references to breaking, “smashing and crashing”, and chaotic noise, Woolf presents modernity as fragmentary and unstable’ (here).

In 1926 Natalia Goncharova designed the sets and costumes for the Ballet Russes production of  Stravinsky’s The Firebird. This week the Royal Ballet is performing it using her designs: inevitably the performance is sold out but here are some photographs.