Little Rich Dog

A fat little poodle trotted to & fro one day last fortnight in the old Manhattan house where Ella Virginia von Echtzel Wendel lay dead (TIME, March 23). He went into the room where Rev. Drs. Nathan A. Seagle and Ezra Squier Tipple were getting ready to conduct the funeral. He jumped up & down before them, "as if," said Dr. Seagle, "he were pleading to serve as an acolyte."

"World's richest dog," last of a line of cherished poodles all called Tobey, the Wendel dog got many a press notice after his mistress's death. What was to become of him? Would he be supported in the style to which he had been accustomed? (It had been said that he had his own brass bed, his own special table, that huge sums had been refused for the Wendel property so as to insure Tobey a place to run in.) Was it true that he was to be shot, as were the Wendel horses (said legend) when the old family coachman died in 1929? Was it true that Manhattan's Flower Hospital was to receive some $17,000,000 from Miss Wendel's estate because a doctor there had once mended the broken leg of a previous Tobey Wendel?

Last week it was learned that Tobey was in the care of family friends. He was snapped by an alert Hearst cameraman while being carried out for an unaccustomed run in Manhattan streets (see cut.) He was found to be rather an unattractive dog: six years old, fat, phlegmatic, sleepy. Once he was more charming, in fact his name originally was Charming Billy.* It was probable that he would be sent to the country. It was not true that he had had his own bed and table: just a cushion and blanket.

Ella Wendel's will, filed during the week, did not even mention fat Tobey Wendel. The family fortune, estimated at $100,000,000, gave bequests to family friends and retainers, to charities and religious bodies, following closely the will of Miss Ella's sister, Mrs. Rebecca A. D. Wendel Swope, who died last summer (TIME, Aug. 4). Flower Hospital received its expected share (but its officials scouted the leg-setting story); and the famed old Wendel house went to Drew Theological Seminary, whose onetime president, Dr. Tipple, was an old family friend.

A Mrs. Mabel Hayward put in a claim last week for a share of the Wendel estate. Buxom, 46-year-old Mrs. Hayward keeps house for a 76-year-old retired detective, Capt. Theodore Lawton, on his ramshackle farm at Wickford, R. I. She roves about the country with her two children during the summer, playing her mandolin, banjo and guitar at fairs and carnivals. She has a paper purporting to be the marriage certificate of the late John Gottlieb Wendel II, and one Hannah S. Holt, of Chelsea, Vt., dated 1855 (Mr. Wendel II, supposed never to have married, died in 1914). Mrs. Hayward claims to be the daughter of Bertha Wendel Davis, born to John Gottlieb Wendel II and Hannah Holt Wendel in 1856.

Stag Debate (Cont'd)

When Stag-Huntress Mrs. E. Wimbush of Bagborough, England lately expressed her affection for stags, the revered Manchester Guardian attempted to point out the error of the Wimbush way (TIME, March 23). Many another staghounding organization took umbrage, wrote letters flaying the Guardian. But the Guardian's editors have not yet been convinced that stag-hunting is a sublimated form of kindness to animals. Answered the Guardian:

"One may disregard such arguments as the suggestion that hunting saves the stag from dying 'in old age of starvation from loss of teeth'--to accept that might be to run the risk of being invited to hunt old-age pensioners on the ground that we should not only spare them the pain of toothache but also reduce the burden on the National Exchequer. It is about as convincing as the suggestion, supplied by a peer of the realm in a pamphlet recently put out by the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, that the stag deserves to be hunted because 'he is a selfish old fellow, much addicted to the pleasures of the table and the harem'--which might involve us in hunting some of the landed gentry as well as the old-age pensioners."

* Presumably from:

Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?

--Old Courting Song.

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