We’re getting towards the end of Women in History month but I couldn’t miss out Lady Kathleen Pilkington of Chevet Hall. A visitor in 1913 described her as ‘a fearless rider’ with the Badsworth Hunt and ‘a splendid rifle shot’.
She is fond of racing and is specially devoted to birds and her collection of foreign birds is one of the best in England.”
Charlton Jemmett-Browne, The French Bulldog, USA, September 1913
Lady Kathleen Mary Alexina Milborne-Swinnerton-Pilkington (Cuffe) (1872-1938), appeals to me as a character to draw because she spans the era of Sherlock Holmes – she’d be the plucky young gel who Doctor Watson would fall for – right through to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction when, with her champion French Bulldog, Chevet Punch, she’d be the formidable matriarch in an Agatha Christie country house party murder mystery.
I’m grateful to the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Site (WHAS) on Facebook: thanks to Keith Wainwright for posting the photograph of the Pilkington family in 1906, about to set out on a bicycle ride around the Chevet Estate. Lady K. is wearing her hunting pink complete with top hat!
Chevet Punch & Daisy
“Champion Chevet Punch” & “Chevet Daisy”
Owned by Lady Kathleen Pilkington
Painting by Maud Earl, 1910
Lady K. was so renowned for her Champion French Bulldogs (and who could resist Chevet Punch and Chevet Daisy?!) that American short story writer and poet Bret Harte once requested a puppy from her in verse:
"Which I have a small favour to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup, and the same,— If the duty would not overtask you,— You would please to procure for me, game; And send her express to the Flat, Miss,— For they say York is famed for the breed, Which, though words of deceit may be that, Miss, I'll trust to your taste Miss, indeed."
Bret’s ‘Flat’ was at 72/74 Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, so the bull-pup was going to a good home: Kensington Gardens is just five minutes walk away.