At the side of my desk at the La Jolla Historical Society sits a stone memorial from Feb. 28, 1930, that seldom ceases to elicit a smile from visitors. It is inscribed to Queenie, the beloved dog of the Hal Higgins family, who once lived down the street from our offices on Eads Avenue when Mr. Higgins served as chauffeur to Ellen Browning Scripps. An animal lover delivered the headstone for safekeeping some time ago when the old Higgins home became the site for a new condo project.
As February marks the month of Valentine’s Day, it seems only fitting to take note of La Jolla’s pets from the past and their owners who have loved them so dearly. Dogs, ranging from pedigreed to mutts, have always been among the most popular of pets, of course. Leopold Hugo, La Jolla’s first photographer of note, was seldom seen without a small canine accompanying him on his outings to photograph billowing clouds and crashing surf. So, too, Walt Mason, a well-known literary scribe, who was accompanied on daily walks through the village by his beloved Red, a Cocker spaniel. Rajah, an Irish setter, became a canine legend around La Jolla long before the leash law when he took himself for walks and insisted on lounging on the plush furniture inside banks and at the Casa de Manana when it was a resort hotel (despite his royal name, Rajah was repeatedly kicked out).
La Jolla in the 1920s often was host to aristocratic European café society and a number of royals (not dogs!) were known to visit, bringing their canine entourages. Among them was the Princess de Montyglyon, with lineage to the Holy Roman Empire, who traveled with four Samoyeds, two collies and two chow-chows “” all of them show dogs (the princess’ famous Moustan sammy was the first of the breed registered in the American Kennel Club stud book and had been given to her by Russia’s Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of the czar).
Unfortunately, the La Jolla Historical Society’s animal photo file does not include a picture of the princess and her royal dogs. We do have a picture of two huge English sheepdogs dressed in bonnets pushing a baby carriage, circa 1910; the revered tabby, Simon, who enjoyed life with the Anson Mills family for many years and often is referred to in the Mills’ diaries and many images of La Jolla’s favorite donkey, Rags, pulling children along the dusty streets of the early 20th century in a small cart.
As Rags was a familiar sight around early La Jolla (he belonged to no one in particular, but in those days everybody fed and took care of him), so, too, were the dogs of La Jollan Charles T. Mason at a later date in the 1930s. Mason had two Great Danes, a St. Bernard and several Airedales ” all conspicuously eyecatchers if for no other reasons than the fact that he drove them around in Ellen Browning Scripps’ vintage Rolls Royce!
Mason had been given the car after Miss Scripps’ death in 1932, ironically the same vehicle that had been driven for so many years by Higgins, the chauffeur who owned Queenie. If Queenie ever rode in the Rolls, we’ll never know. Her tombstone is very fine, however, and records that she died at age 14.
” “Reflections” is a monthly column written for La Jolla Village News by the La Jolla Historical Society’s historian Carol Olten. The Society, dedicated to the preservation of La Jolla heritage, is located at 7846 Eads Ave. and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
