The kennel editor of the Field:
the man who described the dogs that mattered.
Rawdon B. Lee was not a theorist — he was the kennel editor of the Field, Victorian Britain's reference sporting journal, and personally knew the leading breeders, show dogs and working dogs of the era. His 1893 book is written by an observer who had seen those dogs first-hand, who knew the kennels, the pedigrees, the stories. For the Retrievers chapter, Lee devotes separate sections to the Curly-Coated, the Flat or Wavy-Coated, and "other colour" retrievers — and treats the Wavy-Coat not as a marginal variant but as the retriever of the future.
Curly, wavy, straight:
all variants of the same modern retriever.
"It must be taken for granted that our modern retriever, be he either curly-coated, straight or wavy-coated, black, brown, or pale liver in colour, at some time was produced from one or other of the crosses I have named."Rawdon B. Lee, A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), 1893, p. 371
Lee lists the three coat varieties of retrievers of the era — curly, straight, and wavy/long — as equivalent variants of the same modern dog. There is no hierarchy. There is no "correct" variety and one to be tolerated. They are all normal variants, produced from the same founding crosses.
The Flat or Wavy Coated:
"the dog of the future."
"THE FLAT OR WAVY COATED BLACK RETRIEVER. This handsome and kindly dog, so say its admirers, is to be the dog of the future. Whether this will prove the case or not only that future can decide, but, taking a line from the progress it has made in public esteem during the past dozen years or so, it is a prognostication likely enough to prove correct. Here we have a creature made for use; handsome, kindly in disposition, obedient, easy to rear, breeding true to type, and well answering the purpose for which it is intended, so there can be little fear of retrogression on its part."Rawdon B. Lee, A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), 1893, p. 380
In 1893 Lee opens the section on the Wavy-Coated Retriever with this enthusiastic statement. Note: "breeding true to type" — it bred true to type. It was not an unstable cross, not a capricious variant. It was a type that maintained itself from generation to generation. This is exactly what we expect from a stable recessive gene like FGF5: it expresses itself predictably and reproduces with continuity.
The origins from the Labrador:
"pure and simple Newfoundlands."
"It has taken a few years' careful work to bring the wavy retriever to what it is at the present time. Not too big but just big enough. Our grandfathers said, 'Oh! we want a big retriever, a strong \'un; one that can jump a gate with an 8lb. hare in its mouth, and gallop with one at full speed.' This is not so now. [...] pure and simple Newfoundlands."Rawdon B. Lee, A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), 1893, p. 382
Lee describes the origin of the Wavy-Coated Retriever from pure Newfoundlands — "pure and simple Newfoundlands". Not from crosses with setters or other long-haired dogs, as the cynological orthodoxy of the era often suggested: from directly imported Newfoundland dogs. This confirms that long coat in British retrievers was not the result of external contamination, but of the inheritance carried by the original island dogs.
The Labrador in the pedigree
of the best Wavy-Coated.
"No setter cross has ever been used, but one of the older stock, Paris, was a Labrador, still he was a great winner on the bench in his day. Mr. G. T. Bartram's good old dog, Zelstone, used with great success of late years as a sire, has likewise an undoubted strain of Labrador in him."Rawdon B. Lee, A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), 1893, p. 385
This passage — referring to S. E. Shirley's kennel, founder and first chairman of the Kennel Club — is revealing. Lee is dismantling the setter-cross theory for long coat: in the most important kennel of the era, a setter was never used. The long coat came directly from the Labrador bloodline. Paris was a pure Labrador. Zelstone had "an undoubted strain of Labrador in him". Long coat in the Wavy-Coated Retrievers of the 1880s and 90s was direct inheritance from the Newfoundland dogs, not from external contamination.
The fashion that corrupted the type:
straight coat = setter head.
"At the present time there is a tendency to produce the wavy-coated retrievers with an inclination to the type and shape of head possessed by the setters. This is, no doubt, due to the fallacy carried out in breeding for straight coats, which are all very well in their way, attractive enough in the show ring, but thoroughly bad from a workman's point of view."Rawdon B. Lee, A History and Description of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division), 1893, p. 386
Lee is a sharp critic of the dog fancy of his time. In 1893 he already sees what was happening: selection for straight coat was bringing the setter head into the retriever — a morphologically different type from the original, "thoroughly bad from a workman's point of view." The pressure towards short and straight coat was not "purifying" the breed — it was moving it away from the original functional type. An observation that still resonates today in the discussion about the Wavy Coat.
1893: long coat as direct inheritance
from the Newfoundland — not a cross.
Lee's 1893 book is valuable because it dismantles from within the dominant Victorian theory — the setter-cross theory as the origin of Wavy-Coat in retrievers. Lee shows with specific names, pedigrees and kennels that the best Wavy-Coated of the era descended from pure Newfoundlands and that long coat was their direct inheritance, not an anomaly introduced from outside. The chapter is written ten years before the Labrador was recognised as a separate breed, at a moment when Curly and Wavy were two equivalent varieties of the same British retriever.