The King’s Dog
Most visitors are very familiar with the generations of Monarch associated with Sandringham since 1862 however there is one resident who is often overlooked and deserves a mention.
Assigned a footman to clean him and permission granted to sleep on an easy chair next to the King’s bed, Caesar was a wire fox terrier and the loyal companion to King Edward VII. The inscription in his collar “I am Caesar and I belong to the King” suggests a dog with a sense of status and quite rightly so.
He provided endless entertainment with his total disregard for royal protocol. On trips aboard the royal yacht, Caesar playfully attacked Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron of Penshurst who reminisced:
“When I went into the cabin with The King, the dog always went for my trousers, much to Edward’s delight. I used to not take the slightest notice and went on talking, which I think amused His Majesty still more”
Caesar always accompanied The King on long car journeys. The delinquent white-haired terrier regularly wriggled free and leapt from the car ignoring commands from The King. In reply to any reprimand Caesar was known to smile cheerfully up into his master’s eyes until His Majesty smiled back.
After the King’s death in 1910, Caesar endeared himself to the nation as he walked behind his master’s coffin ahead of nine Kings and other Heads of State.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was reportedly furious at being upstaged and was deeply offended by the dog taking precedence. Later that year, Caesar turned author and published his own sentimental memoir entitled “Where’s Master?”
Despite his own popularity the book was not well received and hurriedly withdrawn from sale. It had been ghost written by Edmund Blunden, an acclaimed novelist and war poet, nominated six times for the Noble Prize for Literature. It seems “Where’s Master?” was not his finest work!
Caesar, the affectionately remembered loveable rogue, died in 1914 aged 16 and is immortalised in stone laying at the foot of King Edward’s effigy in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
The usual definition of a dog’s life is “a miserable, unhappy existence” but that certainly didn’t apply to Caesar.
Caesar was later made into of the most significant carvings undertaken by Fabergé too. The small Fabergé figure of Caesar, measured 5.1 x 6.5 x 2.2cm, carved in white chalcedony with ruby eyes and an enamel and gold collar also carrying the inscription: ‘I belong to the King’ – exactly as it did in real life.
Cæsar, by Fabergé, 1910, St Petersburg, Russia. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021
Written by House Guide Christina Wood