# The fireside sphinx/The Cat Triumphant

CHAPTER VII
THE CAT TRIUMPHANT
"He stood, an ebon crescent, flouting that ivory moon, Then raised the pibroch of his race, the Song without a Tune."
OUT of the murky shadows which shroud the cat during long centuries of passive neglect or active persecution, there gleam here and there flashes of brilliant light in which we see her sheltered by those whose protection was an honour, cherished by those whose love was a consecration. In Italy, poets as well as painters felt the sweet charm of her companionship, and strove to give their sympathy expression. Tasso addressed to his cat a sonnet brimming with tender flattery; and of Petrarch's pet it has been prettily said that she was her master's joy in the sunshine, his solace ​in the shade. When she died, her little body was carefully embalmed; and travellers who visited Arquà, and the poet's home, hidden among the Euganean Hills, have stared and mocked and wondered at this poor semblance of cathood, this furless, withered mummy, which, more than five hundred years ago, frolicked softly in the joyousness of youth. Upon the marble slab on which she lay were cut two epigrams by Antonius Quærengus, one of which gracefully commemorated the rival passions that shared Petrarch's heart. "Maximus ignis ego; Laura secundus erat." Doubtless of these conflicting emotions, the more simple and sincere was the poet's affection for his cat.
As we search for Pussy's records in literature, that we may better trace her half-hidden history through several centuries of fluctuating fortunes, we find that the striking of the personal note invariably heralds a growing appreciation and esteem. When she figures in folk-lore, she is unsanctified and maleficent, a candidate for "the uncharitable votes of Hell." In proverbs, she serves as an illustration of characteristics without charm, and of wisdom without distinction. In fable, she—or he—is, for the most part, a clever hypocrite, the Raminagrobis of La Fontaine, the Tybert of "Reineke Fuchs." This latter rascal, if less sanctimonious than the chatemite, or than the austere hermit of ​the Ganges, is still an unscrupulous knave, and for that reason, and that alone, is chosen as ambassador by his great kinsman, the Lion.
"'T was then agreed the Cat should try If he could not the Fox outvie In trickery and dissimulation, And thus do service to the nation. For he was, by all men's admission, A wary, skilful politician."
Frankly does the King of the Beasts admit the cousinship and honourable station of his little relative. There is respect, mingled with cajolery, in the monarch's parting words.
"Tybert, forget not, I beseech, How far back doth your lineage reach; Much farther back than mice and rats, Which but created were for cats. So foolish folks who sometime curse them. Were only made that they might nurse them. Never forget, I pray, that ye Spring from our old nobility." ....... "Well taught you are, and quick and wise. Fulfilled of wit in all men's eyes; And plenteous therefore is my hope That with this sinner you may cope. For craft with craft may better fight. Than mere brute strength that lacks foresight."
Tybert is foiled by the arch-villany of the Fox. He comes to grief, and his prestige fades before Reynard's superior knavery; yet, even in defeat, his ​wariness saves him from the utter ruin of nobler and duller beasts.
In the fable, as in folk-lore, it is always astute rascality which wins a final triumph. Honesty is never the best policy, and the Master Thief still shines, a dazzling hero, despite our centuries of ethics. Not for his integrity do we value Puss-in-Boots, that hardy and brilliant impostor, who lifted the miller's son on the crest of his splendid lies until he landed the stupid lout, who could n't lie for himself, at the foot of a throne, with a princess for a bride. "Puss-in-Boots" was translated from Italian into French in 1585, and from French into English a few years later; but the story itself is very, very old. Like so many fairy tales, it may be traced to India, where the cat's part was originally played by a fox,—a fox as unscrupulous as Reineke, but more faithful, through whose cunning and devotion a peasant lad becomes the son-in-law of a king. The surpassing cynicism of the Eastern tale lies in the ingratitude of the peasant, who, having reached the summit of his ambition, has no further need of his colleague, and drives him shamefully from the palace doors. One is glad that this touch of unutterable baseness has never contaminated our nurseries; and that all children who rejoice—as good children should—in the triumphant scampishness of Puss-in-Boots, are told in ​the concluding sentence of his history that, after his master's elevation, he was so well fed, he never hunted mice any more, save for exercise and amusement.
"The White Cat," one of the prettiest and most popular of fairy stories, comes from France. The Comtesse D'Aunoy gave it to her grateful country in 1682; and if the central theme of three rival brothers bringing home the wonders of the world be nearly as old as the world itself, yet the charming figure of the Cat—as lovely in her white fur, and with pattes de velours, as after her transformation into a Princess—is distinctly modern, and marks the fast swelling tide of admiration for feline beauty, which during centuries of darkness had been stupidly and blindly ignored. In France it was Pussy's grace and sweetness which triumphed finally over prejudice. In England and in Germany it was the recognition of her domestic qualities which won her, first tolerance, then esteem, then loving and loyal devotion. Slowly and surely it dawned upon dim mortal minds that a house is transformed into a home when the small fireside Sphinx takes tranquil possession of its chimney-corner. With this discovery came the elevation of individual pussies to the scrutiny, and consequently to the admiration, of the world. The personal note was struck, and the victory of the cat was won.
​Herrick, as might be imagined, was the first of English poets to feel the charm of her presence by his hearth. In that pleasant Devonshire vicarage where each season brought its appropriate joys; which, in fancy, we see decked with the hawthorn boughs of May, and with the holly and mistletoe of Christmas tide; where the Bride-cake and the wassail-bowl,
"Spiced to the brink,"
passed cheerfully around in the glittering firelight; where the "little buttery" and "little bin" were well stocked with more than pulse and water-cress;—surely this sweet old manse, sunshiny, rose-covered, cowslip-scented, was the fitting Paradise for a cat. One envies the happy puss who spent her days amid such pastoral plenty.
"A cat I keep, that plays about my house, Grown fat With eating many a miching mouse,"
writes Herrick when counting up his "private wealth;" and when he urges the pleasures of a country life—which none knew better than he—upon his town-bred brother, this is one of the allurements he has to offer:
"Yet can thy humble roof maintaine a quire Of singing crickets by thy fire; And the brisk mouse may feast herselfe with crumbs, Till that the green-eyed kitling comes."
​Nothing could be prettier than these four lines. They surpass even the four lines in Heine's "Fireside Piece," where the poet sits meditating by the hearth, while his cat, close cuddled, drowsy with warmth, purrs a soft refrain to his rhythmic dreams. They find their echo in that charming letter of Shelley's to Peacock, which describes the shrines of the Penates, "whose hymns are the purring of kittens, the hissing of kettles, the long talks over the past and dead, the laugh of children, the warm wind of summer filling the quiet house, and the pelting storm of winter struggling in vain for entrance."
Such things bring peace to our souls; even the reading of them is fraught with an exquisite sense of tranquillity; but be it remembered that little kittens purr the first soft notes of this domestic hymn.
Herrick alone in his generation paid tribute to Pussy's fireside qualities. Other English poets had observed her valour and grace; and George Turberville, half a century earlier, had expressed in amorous verse his ardent desire to be a cat, inasmuch as his dear Mistresse greatly feared a mouse.
"The Squirrel thinking nought, That feately cracks the nut; The greedie Goshawke wanting prey, In dread of Death doth put;
​But scorning all these kindes, I would become a Cat, To combat with the creeping Mouse, And scratch the screeking Rat.
"I would be present, aye, And at my Ladie's call, To gard her from the fearfull Mouse, In Parlour and in Hall; In Kitchen, for his Lyfe, He should not shew his hed; The Pease in Poke should lie untoucht When shee were gone to Bed.
"The Mouse should stand in Feare, So should the squeaking Rat; All this would I doe if I were Converted to a Cat."
It is grateful to find Pussy's courage and devotion so happily vindicated; but we cannot ignore the fact that this glowing tribute to the joys of war is addressed—not to the valorous cat the poet envies—but to the fair coward whom he loves. In the same spirit of delicate flattery, Prior inscribes some verses to "My Lord Buckhurst, Very young, Playing with a Cat," which begin
"The am'rous youth, whose tender breast Was by his darling cat possest. Obtained of Venus his desire;"
and which go on to implore the little lord never to prefer "so rash a prayer," lest the goddess of love, ​beholding his beauty, should think her lost Adonis restored to life, and grow jealous of the kitten in his arms. These pretty conceits, in which Pussy but serves to illustrate the text, have nothing in common with the directness of Herrick, or with the personal studies of cat and kittenhood which Cowper and Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold subsequently gave to the world. They are not even akin to Gray's famous lines, half mocking and half piteous, which deplore the untimely death of Walpole's Selima, "Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes." That Horace Walpole should have delighted in cats was inevitable. Their beauty, their refinement, their delicate appreciation of luxurious surroundings, could never have appealed more surely to any nature than to his. "Not English," was the censure habitually passed upon him by his contemporaries, to whom a taste for curios, and a distaste for hard drinking, were equally unintelligible eccentricities. Even that fine statesman, Lord Minto, pronounced him "a prim, precise, pretending, conceited savage; but a most un-English one;" and in proof, either of his primness, or of the gentle character of his savagery, Walpole loved and cherished cats. When his favourite met her tragic death, he wrote to Gray, bewailing the loss he had sustained; and the poet, in doubt as to which of his friend's cats had been drowned, replied with a playful letter ​of condolence, ("Learn, my son, to bear tranquilly the misfortunes of others,") and with the charming verses which have immortalized Selima's memory.
"It would be a sensible satisfaction to me," he wrote, "before I testify my sorrow, and the sincere part I take in your calamity, to know for certain who it is I lament. I knew Zara and Selima, (Selima, was it, or Fatima?) or rather I knew them both together; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as to your 'handsome Cat,' the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one loves best; or, if one be alive and one dead, it is usually the latter which is the handsomer. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in the survivor. Oh, no! I would rather seem to mistake, and to imagine to be sure it must be the tabby one that has met with this sad accident."
The poem which accompanied the letter, and a portion of which was subsequently inscribed upon the pedestal which held the ill-omened bowl, is familiar to all readers of English verse; but no book upon cats would be complete without it.
"'T was on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow; ​Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima reclined, Gazed on the lake below.
"Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw, and purred applause.
"Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream: Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue, Through richest purple, to the view Betrayed a golden gleam.
"The hapless Nymph with wonder saw: A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize: What female heart can gold despise? What Cat's averse to fish?
"Presumptuous Maid! with looks intent, Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. (Malignant Fate sat by and smiled:) The slippery verge her feet beguiled, She tumbled headlong in.
"Eight times emerging from the flood, She mewed to every watery God Some speedy aid to send. ​No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred, Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard; A Favourite has no friend!
"From hence, ye Beauties, undeceived, Know one false step is ne'er retrieved, And be with caution bold. Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold."
Mr. Edmund Gosse, in his notes on this poem, objects to Gray's use of the word "tabby," "as if it were synonymous with female cat." "Selima," he says, "cannot have been a tabby, if, as we presently read, she was a tortoise-shell. Tabby cats are those whose fur is of a cold brindled grey, like the surface of the rich watered silk from Bagdad, called attäbi, and, in English, tabby." Mr. Harrison Weir, however, who is an excellent authority upon cats, points out conclusively that the word tabby, though derived from ribbed or watered silk, refers to the markings only, and does not designate any especial colour. He quotes, to prove his words, two lines of English verse, dating from 1682,
"Her petticoat of satin, Her gown of crimson tabby."
A brindled or brinded cat,
"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed,"
is the same as a tabby, and in Norfolk and Suffolk ​is still often called a Cyprus cat; though the cloth woven of hair and silk in wavy lines, and originally brought from Cyprus, (as were many cats,) has disappeared from English markets for perhaps two hundred years. Cats can be "brindled tortoise-shell," and are occasionally so described; though, when well-bred, the colour lies in broad deep blotches, rather than in bars. That Gray did not mean to indicate Selima's sex by the word tabby—an inaccuracy of which the precise little poet was wholly incapable—is proven by the letter in which he refers to Fatima and Selima, both plainly females, and says, "I would rather seem to mistake, and to imagine to be sure it must be the tabby one that has met with this sad accident."
After Herrick, no English poet seems to have fully recognized the domestic qualities of the cat until Cowper paid her his litttle tribute of song. From Goldsmith, indeed, we have the pretty verse which illustrates his cheerful British conception of a hermitage.
"Around, in sympathetic mirth, Its tricks the kitten tries; The cricket chirrups on the hearth, The crackling fagot flies."
But Cowper is more explicit. The well-ordered household at Olney must necessarily have been dominated by a cat. It offered precisely the ​atmosphere in which Puss is born to reign. Warm fires by which to purr and drowse; a bountiful tea-table amply provided with cream; the swirling of autumn leaves around the garden paths if a little brisk exercise was desired; a comfortable supply of over-fed mice when conscience suggested work; eight pairs of tame pigeons when Satan prompted mischief. There were, to be sure, other pets; too many of them, by far, from a cat's point of view;—gold-finches, canaries, and a caged linnet, all jealously guarded from hostility; the spaniel Beau, a foolish squirrel, two imbecile guinea-pigs, and the ever-famous hares, "canonized pets of literature," with surly tempers that brooked no liberties. "One evening," writes Lady Hesketh, "the cat giving one of the hares a sound box on the ear, the hare ran after her, and punished her by drumming on her back with two feet as hard as drumsticks, till the poor creature would actually have been killed, had not Mrs. Unwin rescued her."
This was worse than encountering vipers, or being shut up in a drawer. The tranquil home at Olney was not without its dangers and alarms, and Cowper did his cat the honour of immortalizing two of her adventures. In that "delightful 'lusus poeticus,'" as Mr. Austin Dobson has kindly christened "The Colubriad," he narrates her rescue, at his own hands, from the snake which she was softly patting with ​all the temerity of ignorance, "not in anger, but in the way of philosophic inquiry and examination."
"As curious as the kittens erst had been, To learn what this phenomenon might mean."
Cowper, who always made a point of looking at things before he described them, which habit enabled him to convince eighteenth century readers that there was such a thing as Nature, watched the three kittens gathered close around the viper, regarding him with polite attention, and speculating innocently on his possibilities as a playmate.
"Forth from his head his forkèd tongue he throws, Darting it full against a kitten's nose; Who, never having seen in field or house The like, sat still and silent as a mouse; Only projecting, with attention due, Her whiskered face, she asked him, 'Who are you?'"
He also watched on more than one occasion their sedate and serious parent, the "Retired Cat," who loved, like himself, a quiet corner in which to sit and think.
"I know not where she caught the trick,— Nature perhaps herself had cast her In such a mould philosophique, Or else she learned it of her Master. Sometimes ascending, débonnaire, An apple-tree, or lofty pear, Lodged with convenience in the fork, She watched the gardener at his work; Sometimes her ease and solace sought ​In an old empty watering-pot; There wanting nothing save a fan, To seem some nymph in her sedan, Apparelled in exactest sort, And ready to be borne to Court."
Finally her taste for seclusion beguiled her into an open drawer half full of linen, delicately laid away in fragrant lavender by Mrs. Unwin's careful fingers.
"Puss, with delight beyond expression, Surveyed the scene, and took possession. Recumbent at her ease erelong, And lulled by her own humdrum song, She left the cares of life behind, And slept as she would sleep her last; When in came, housewifely inclined, The chambermaid, and shut it fast, By no malignity impelled, But all unconscious whom it held."
For two days and a night the little prisoner remained immured in her dungeon, and then at last her
"long and melancholy mew"
reached the sleepless poet's ears, and he hastened to save another of her lives by pulling open the drawer.
The advent of a new and very frolicsome tortoise-shell kitten filled Cowper with delight, and he describes her enthusiastically in a letter to Lady Hesketh.—"In point of size, she is likely to be a ​kitten always, being extremely small for her age; but time, I suppose, that spoils everything, will make her also a cat. You will see her, I hope, before that melancholy period shall arrive; for no wisdom that she may gain by experience will compensate her for the loss of her present hilarity."
What would the poet's pleasant winter evenings have been worth, if uncheered by such gay companionship?
With the waning of the eighteenth century and the dawn of its successor, the English cat assumes a more intimate place in letters. Never granted the tender and flattering preëminence of her French sister, she is in some sort recompensed by the tranquil domestic atmosphere, the fireside warmth and glow in which we see her play her gentle part. For a hundred years and more she had not wanted friends. In 1702 the Duchess of Richmond, that fair and lovable creature who had "less wit and more beauty" than any lady at court, bequeathed a maintenance to her old servants, her old cats, and to several old gentlewomen whom she had long befriended. It was this bounty that provoked from Pope the ever-quoted line,
"Die, and endow a college or a cat:"
but to most of us it would seem as though such gracious kindness merited a less satiric ​recognition. Lord Chesterfield, to whom the urbane companionship of his cats brought many a soothing hour, also provided like an honourable gentleman for these little comrades who otherwise had been left homeless at his death. Sir Isaac Newton's affectionate solicitude for his cat and kittens is well known, while the records of humbler life show many similar instances of benignity. Fielding, in his pathetic "Voyage to Lisbon," vouches for the high regard in which the ship's cat and her troublesome young family were held by the captain and his crew. On the 11th of July, when off Spithead, he writes in his Journal:—
"A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making, as will appear, no great way, a kitten, one of the four feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water. An alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and who received it with many bitter oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favour of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands employed to recover the animal. I was, I own, surprised at this; less, indeed, at the captain's extreme tenderness, than at his conceiving any possibility of success; for if Puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had all been lost. The ​boatswain, however, was more sanguine; for having stripped himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leaped boldly into the water, and, to my great astonishment, in a few minutes returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water reader. The kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was despaired of by all.
"The captain's humanity did not so totally destroy his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to show he could bear it like one; and, after declaring he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, he betook himself to threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they passed their leisure hours."
Strange to say, this much prized kitten recovered from its prolonged submersion, only to be found smothered in a cabin bed a few days later, having recklessly squandered all its little lives before one of them reached maturity.
Steele makes constant allusions to his cat in the "Tatler,"—pretty homelike allusions, all of them, though no man was more impatient than he of the prodigal affection lavished by ladies upon their pets. ​Who does not remember how Flavia buried with equanimity two husbands and five children, but never recovered from the loss of her parrot? "I know at this Time," he complains, "a celebrated Toast, whom I allow to be one of the most agreeable of her Sex, yet who, in the presence of her Admirers, will give a Torrent of Kisses to her Cat, any one of which a Christian would be glad of."
His own caresses were of a more temperate character. The first thing he did, on reaching home, was to stir his fire and stroke his cat; and he contented himself night after night with the silent company of Pussy and her friend, a little dog whom, from long association, she had learned first to endure, then to appreciate, and then almost to love.
"They both of them sit by my Fire every Evening, and await my return with Impatience; and, at my Entrance, never fail of running up to me, and bidding me Welcome, each of them in its proper Language. As they have been bred up together from Infancy, and have seen no other Company, they have acquired each other's Manners; so that the Dog often gives himself the Airs of a Cat, and the Cat, in several of her Motions and Gestures, affects the Behaviour of the little Dog."
On one occasion some audacious rogues penetrated into this quiet sanctuary, and endeavoured to ​persuade Mr. Bickerstaff that they could turn water into wine by merely adding to it a few drops of some mysterious elixir. He asked to see and taste this potent drug, and then—forgetful of friendship and unworthy of confidence—ventured upon a most unpardonable experiment.
"My Cat at this Time sat by me on the Elbow of my Chair; and, as I did not care to make the Trial myself, I reached it to her to sip of it, which had like to cost her her Life. For notwithstanding that it flung her at first into freakish Tricks, quite contrary to her usual Gravity, in less than a Quarter of an Hour she fell into Convulsions; and, had she not been a Creature more tenacious of Life than any other, she would certainly have died under the Operation.
"I was so incensed by the Tortures of my innocent Domestick, and by the wicked dealings of these Men, that I told them if each of them had as many Lives as the injured Creature before us, they deserved to forfeit them for the pernicious Arts which they used for their Profit."
After all, who gave the cat the poisonous stuff? Steele's virtuous indignation at the consequence of his own act must have amused Dr. Johnson, who bade Miss Susan Thrale read Bickerstaff's account of his pet. It was not in such fashion that the great scholar cherished his own cats. When we ​come to them in the natural sequence of history, we feel we are on the borderland between the old life and the new; between the tepid affection or playful panegyrics which characterized the eighteenth century, and the more sincere emotions which succeeded. Dr. Johnson died sixteen years before Cowper, yet it is plain that his sentiment for Hodge was something very different from the temperate regard of the poet, based upon unworthy utilitarianism. Cowper, it is true, killed the viper, lest it should rob the Olney household of the
"only cat That was of age to combat with a rat; "
but Johnson would have slain a wilderness of vipers without thought of a mouse in the cupboard. "Indulgence" is the term applied by Boswell—who cordially hated cats—to his patron's amiable weakness; and it is plain that it cost him some effort to sympathize with so strange a partiality.
"I shall never forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat, for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants, having that trouble, should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have such an antipathy to a cat that I am uneasy when I am in the room with one; and I own I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge.
​"I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend, smiling and half whistling, rubbed down his back and pulled him by the tail; and, when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;' and then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'
"This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family: 'Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.' And then, in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite, and said, 'but Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.'"
Since Montaigne played with his cat in sleepy Périgord, there has been no simpler or finer picture than this of mutual understanding and regard. When we consider Dr. Johnson's unconcern at putting mere mortals "out of countenance," and his occasional indignation that they should presume to have their feelings crushed under the heavy sledgehammer of his wit, we cannot help feeling that this nice regard for the sensitiveness of a cat shows what a humanizing influence Hodge had upon his master. I wonder if the "white kitling," Lilly, ​was the pussy whom Johnson "liked better" than Hodge. On this point no light has ever been thrown; but Lilly was fair to see, and Hodge, though Boswell politely called him a fine cat, appears to have been but modestly endowed in respect to personal beauty. He had parts, and he had that rare gift of sympathy which is so seldom manifested by his race, perhaps because there is so little in most of us to quicken it. His was a happy fate. To sit purring on Johnson's knee, secure of kindness, safe from that forcible contempt which no one but Boswell could bear smilingly; to be fed with oysters by that generous hand, and to be immortalized by the companionship which crowned his little life with content;—this seems to me the best of feline fortunes, equalled only, and not surpassed, by the joy of being Sir Walter's cat at Abbotsford.
Of Hinse of Hinsefeld it becomes us to speak with respect. Staid in demeanour, irreproachable in conduct, happily mingling affability with reserve, a courteous cat along old-fashioned, gentlemanly lines, he maintained the dignity of his position through many tranquil years. For his master he entertained a steadfast affection, the affection which, as we well know, Scott inspired in every animal he met. Cat or dog, pig or hen, it mattered not. There lived no beast nor bird so stupid or so ill-conditioned as to withhold allegiance.
​The delightful thing to remember is that Scott, who was not by nature a lover of cats, granted to Hinse a fair share of friendship. He was wont to say that his growing esteem for cats in general, and for Hinse in particular, was a sign of old age, of chimney-corner life,—dogs having been his boon companions in the vigorous years of manhood. Maida is a name to conjure by, and there is nothing in the wide world of English letters more touching than that first lament for Abbotsford, when the clouds were gathering fast, and the hopes of his heart were broken. "I feel my dogs' feet on my knees. I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere."
Yet Hinse lorded it over the great hound with all the arrogance of his race, and no one enjoyed more than Sir Walter such superb and unwarranted effrontery. Soon after the coming of Maida, he wrote in high glee to Joanna Baillie:—
"I have added a most romantic inmate to my family,—a large bloodhound, allowed to be the finest dog of the kind in Scotland; perfectly gentle, affectionate and good-natured, and the darling of all the children. I had him a present from Glengarry, who has refused the breed to people of the very first rank. He is between the deer-greyhound and mastiff, with a shaggy mane like a lion; and always sits beside me at dinner, his head as high ​as the back of my chair. Yet it will gratify you to know that a favourite cat keeps him in the greatest possible order, insists upon all rights of precedence, and scratches with impunity the nose of an animal who would make no bones of a wolf, and pulls down a red deer without fear or difficulty. I heard my friend set up some most piteous howls, and I assure you the noise was no joke, all occasioned by his fear of passing Puss, who had stationed himself on the stairs."
That other dogs were less forbearing than Maida, Hinse found to his cost, when Nimrod arrived to share the wide hospitality of Abbotsford. Maida's tolerance extended to all creatures, save deer, that he had been trained to hunt, and artists, whom he hated because of the weary hours spent in sitting for his portraits. The mere sight of a palette or a box of colours would send him yawning from the room. But Hinse's vanity was stimulated by having his picture hung on the library wall, and by the ever increasing respect and affection in which he was held. When his placid career came to its tragic close, Scott wrote to Richardson words of genuine regret.—"Alack-a-day! my poor cat, Hinse, my acquaintance, and, in some sort, my friend of fifteen years, was snapped at even by that paynim Nimrod. What could I say to him, but what Brantôme said to some ferrailleur who had ​been too successful in a duel? 'Ah! mon grand ami, vous avez tué mon autre grand ami.'"
To have been, even "in some sort," Sir Walter's friend for fifteen happy years was as enviable a lot as to have shared Dr. Johnson's London lodgings. "Canonized pets of literature!" Why, here are two who may lord it in Elysium through all the centuries to come.
When Scott was absent from Abbotsford, he was not insensible to the charms of other cats who assiduously sought his society. "There are no dogs in the hotel where I live," he wrote on one occasion from London; "but a tolerably conversable cat, who eats a mess of cream with me in the morning." While at Naples, he visited the Archbishop of Taranto,—"a most interesting old man, whose foible is a passion for cats,"—and was delighted with the ecclesiastical pets. "One of them," he noted in his journal, "is a superb brindled Persian, a great beauty, and a particular favourite. I remember seeing at Lord Yarmouth's house a Persian cat, but not so fine as the Bishop's." These pussies were famous in their day, and Scott was not the only traveller to sing their praises. Sir Henry Holland scarcely knew which he admired the more,—the prelate or his cat. Each was the exact picture of what each should be; and, as they sat side by side, the cat seemed ​as grand a dignitary, if not as austere an ecclesiastic, as his master.
It was perhaps by way of compensation for their evil repute, and for the unholy nature of their associations throughout the Middle Ages, that cats, when struggling back to respectability, should have been so widely patronized and encouraged by the Church. The shadow that rested on their fair fame gave them, it may be, an added interest to the clerical mind, which has ever a turn for exorcism. Washington Irving, sitting in the library of Abbotsford, observed how attentively Hinse listened to the Arthurian legends which Scott was reading aloud. "Ah!" said the wise Sir Walter, "cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of. It comes no doubt from their being so familiar with warlocks and witches."
By this time they were equally familiar with the Christian hierarchy. Gregory the Great was not the only Pope who delighted to honour his cat. Richelieu and Mazarin were not the only Cardinals who cultivated the companionship of kittens. The Abbé Galiani was not the only ecclesiastic who had a passion for the race, though few others manifested it in so strenuous a manner. Losing one of his pets through the negligence of a servant, the inconsolable Abbé marked the severity of his displeasure ​by dismissing his entire household. The Church of Rome, indeed, was not long permitted the exclusive privilege of sheltering and petting the cat. The day came fast when her Sister of England followed pliantly in her wake. If the poet Rogers felt genuine delight at being allowed to dine in Italy with a Cardinal and his cats, the guests of Bishop Thirlwall were destined to enjoy the same simple pleasure at Saint David's. His pussies sat on the arms of his chair at table, and shared—or dispensed—the hospitality of the palace. Of other luxuries they appear to have had the monopoly. A visitor who observed that his host looked wearied and uncomfortable, asked him why he did not take an easy chair. "Don't you see who is in it already?" said the Bishop, pointing to a grey cat fast asleep on the cushion.
Canon Liddon's "extravagant partiality" was equally pronounced, and, let us hope, equally agreeable to his friends. He was the proud possessor of a number of cats, who appear to have all had different residences assigned them. Two handsome brothers, christened stupidly Tweedledum and Tweedledee, lived at Amen Corner; another shared his chambers; a fourth, named Campion, was boarded out, and only visited the Canon occasionally; and a fifth preferred the Common room at Christ Church to any other quarters. This cat was ​of a reserved nature, presenting invariably the same cold insolence of demeanour, the same "heartless and deliberate rudeness" to all church dignitaries save Liddon, whom he loved to distraction, and whom it was his delight to entertain with acrobatic feats. He would jump upon a bust of Dr. Busby which stood on a bracket near the door, balance himself for one instant upon that severe and reverent brow, take a flying leap to the mantelpiece, and returning, land with exquisite and unvarying accuracy on the bust, repeating this performance as often as his master desired. Liddon's great amusement was to stand with his back to the bracket, and fling a biscuit at Dr. Busby's head, the cat catching it dexterously, and without losing his precarious foothold.
One shivers even now at the thought of any man who had once been a little boy, or of any cat who had once been a little kitten, taking such unpardonable liberties with Dr. Busby. His awful shadow looms dark and terrible in the history of childhood. The brilliant scholars, the successful statesmen, the pious and learned divines whom his rod had assisted to eminence, trembled secretly when they heard his name; yet here were a canon and his cat encouraging each other in ribald acts of desecration. Was there no lesser light whose "animated bust" could have served as a pedestal for athletic sports?
​That sound scholar and true lover of animals, Archbishop Whately, he who "ignored metaphysics and minimized theology," was wont to say that only one English noun had a true vocative case. "Nominative, cat. Vocative, Puss." And it is a happy circumstance which gives us this soft and pretty appellation, this endearing diminutive, so well suited to the little animal it summons. The French are less fortunate, and all their loving efforts to provide the cat with a permanent vocative serve only to show the greater fitness and sweetness of the English word; in frank recognition of which superiority, M. Taine drops Moumoutte and Mimi, and fits "Puss" prettily into his loving tribute of verse.
"Le plaisir, comme il vient; la douleur, s'il le faut, Puss, vous acceptez tout, et le soleil là-haut, Quand il finit son tour dans l'immensité bleue, Vous voit, couchée en circle, au soir comme au matin, Heureuse sans effort, résignée au destin, Lisser nonchalamment les polls de votre queue."
We could ill spare this ancient patronymic, since a somewhat ponderous Saxon humour is wont to wax sportive over the naming of cats. Instead of studying simplicity, as in Hodge and Hinse, or grace, as in Selima and Fatima,—on such points Walpole could not go astray,—we find too often either sheer stupidity, like Canon Liddon's Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or the fantastic foolishness ​which made possible this often quoted passage in a letter of Southey's to Bedford.
"Alas, Grosvenor, to-day poor Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. His full titles were: The Most Noble, the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Marcus Macbum, Earl Tomlefnagne, Baron Raticide, Waowhler and Scratch. There should be a court-mourning in Catland, and if the Dragon "(Bedford's cat)" wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape à la militaire round one of his forepaws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect."
People who admired "The Cataract of Lodore," or "The March to Moscow," may possibly have thought this letter amusing. We, if less easily entertained, should at least forgive it, remembering that Southey loved his cats, though he could joke clumsily over their graves. He was sincerely attached, not only to Rumpel, but to Othello, and "the Zombi,"—which sounds like a litter, but was in reality a single puss, named after the chief of the Palmares negroes. All these animals enjoyed as much consideration and respect as Bentham's famous cat, who began life as simple Langbourne, was subsequently knighted, and known as Sir John Langbourne, and ended his dignified days as Rev. Sir John Langbourne, D. D.
​Turn where we may in this Augustan age, we see the same consoling picture,—from Sterne's cat purring by the fire, to Charles Lamb's faithful old Pussy decorated with green ribbons to fit her for her pastoral part in Edmonton. Lamb, as we know, admired Miss Grey's "kitten eyes," with their sweet pretence of innocence; and offered his own solution of a hitherto unanswered problem. "I made a pun the other day," he writes to Manning, "and palmed it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire?—Because it was once a county palatine, and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in it.)"
Even Christopher North, guilty as he appears in the matter of that brutal sport, cat-worrying, had a sincere and well-founded admiration for his own puss, who was a Nimrod among hunters, a Cœur de Lion among fighters, and an Autolycus among thieves. The genial depravity of this gifted cat, and his wonderful readiness of resource, delighted Wilson's soul. He it was who, having adroitly removed the pigeon from a well-built pie, stuffed up the hole with his master's ink-sponge, as matter better suited to the literary appetite. He it was whose clamorous battle-cry, ringing through the frosty night, summoned all the warriors of the wall to mortal combat, until Wilson's back green ​was "absolutely composed of cats." And he it was whose passionate love-songs banished slumber from the eyes of men, and stirred the gentle Ettrick Shepherd into an unwonted fury of denunciation. "I've often thocht it aneuch to sicken ane o' love a' their days," he observes indignantly in the "Noctes," "just to reflect that a' that hissin', and spitting, and snuffing, and squeaking, and squealing, and howling, and growling, and groaning, a' mixed up into ae infernal gallemaufry o' din, onlike onything else even in this noisy world, was wi' these creatures the saftest, sweetest expression o' the same tender passion that from Adam's lips whispered persuasion into Eve's ear, in the bowers o' Paradise."
Perhaps, indeed, much of the unreasonable fear and hatred with which the mediæval peasant regarded his cat may be traceable to its extraordinary vocal powers. Those long-drawn notes which suddenly pierce the silence of the night, so inhumanly human in their swelling cadences; those rising tides of passion, those sudden plunges into unveiled horror,—what wonder that they carried consternation to minds always attuned to the supernatural! One remembers how Coleridge wrote of the cats of Malta, who were in the habit of meeting under his bedroom window, and to whose nocturnal symphonies he listened with quaking heart. "It is the discord of Torment, and of Rage, and of Hate, of ​paroxysms of Revenge, and every note grumbles away into Despair."
More sympathetic and less nervous hearers have found much to interest them in the cat's vocalism, with its flexibility and astonishing variations, "Le chat mise en possession d'une belle et grande voix," wrote Moncrif appreciatively. M. Dupont de Nemours, a close and loving student of animals, maintained that, whereas the dog possesses only vowel sounds, the cat uses in her language no less than six consonants,—m, n, g, h, v, and f. M. Champfleury professed to have counted sixty-three notes in the mewing of cats, though he acknowledged that it took an accurate ear and much practice to distinguish them. He also considered the sign or gesture language used by cats to be even more copious and expressive than their audible tongue. The Abbé Galiani could discern only twenty notes in the most elaborate mewing; but insisted that these sounds represent a complete vocabulary, inasmuch as a cat always makes use of the same note to express the same sentiment. He was able to distinguish clearly between the male and female tones, which he held to be as different in the cry of animals as in the singing of birds. It was his opinion, moreover, that not a single quaver in all the "infernal gallemaufry o' din," which we hear from the moon-lit wall, voices that tender passion ​which the Ettrick Shepherd fancied to vibrate in every scale. Two cats, systematically separated by him from all other companionship, did their love-making silently, only a faint amorous purr or sigh betraying the nature of their emotions. Those clarion notes, those long wailing sobs, associated with feline dalliance, are rather calls to the absent, vituperations of rival suitors, jealous upbraidings, protestations of innocence, clangorous summons to battle, and pæans of victory over a routed foe. Courtship, without these attendant agitations, must be rather a colourless affair. To woo in a corner, instead of in a tournament, is dull work for a spirited cat.
For that Puss is, above all things, a hunter and a fighter must never be forgotten nor ignored. Little beast of prey unwearyingly pursuing her quarry, little denizen of woods and caves installed under our roofs, and softened into domesticity,—the cat has retained her wild instincts through centuries of repression. Chosen companion of students, valued friend of careful housewives, and genius of the quiet fireside, she gives to man, in return for his protection, nothing but her gracious presence by his hearth. The serenity of her habitual attitude, which veils a stubborn fierceness of soul, her indolent enjoyment of cushioned ease and warmth, have endeared her naturally to men of ​thought rather than to men of action. Shelley basking by the fire, Johnson immured in shabby London lodgings, Scott, when his increasing lameness deprived him of the outdoor pleasures that he loved, Matthew Arnold in the simple country life that pleased him best,—all learned to appreciate the gentleness, the composure, the exquisite urbanity of the cat. Statesmen have ever been partial to an animal whose subtlety of spirit far exceeds their own. Colbert, following the example of Richelieu, was wont to play for hours with his kittens, and Canning wrote verses in praise of his cat. It has even happened that sailors and soldiers, like Admiral Doria and Marshal Turenne, have frankly avowed the engrossing nature of their preference. Doria was painted with his cat by his side; Turenne had whole families of pussies whom he loved and cared for. Lord Heathfield, when Gibraltar was besieged by the Spaniards, used to appear every day on the walls, attended by his cats,—quiet, composed beasts, who kept close to their master, and seemed in no wise disturbed by the roar and rattle of artillery. More strange and more pitiful to relate, there were found, after the battle of Sebastopol, a number of cats clinging, frightened and forlorn, to the knapsacks of the dead Russian soldiers. They had followed their only friends into the midst of that terrible carnage, and, desperate with terror, refused to be driven from the field.
​Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the feline war record, so far as it is known in history, is not a brilliant one. The unwritten annals of the race are dark, indeed, with strife. For matchless courage, and for an animated joy in battle, the cat can hardly be surpassed. But the combat must be of his own choosing, and with his own kindred. To the perpetual wrangling of humanity he offers a mortifying indifference. That splendid spirit of partisanship which made Prince Rupert's dog fly at a Roundhead's throat is all unknown to the cat. That intelligent understanding of a political situation which induced the wise and wary greyhound, Math, to desert King Richard the Second, who had reared him from puppyhood, and fawn upon the victorious Bolingbroke; or which inspired the favourite spaniel of Charles of Blois to quit his master's side before the battle of Auray, and seek the safer shelter of John de Montfort's tent, would be impossible—let us hope—for the cat. When Puss has taken an active part in any warfare,—as in the dastardly attack of Cambyses upon the pious Egyptians,—he was but an irresponsible and unwilling agent. Therefore he has seldom been the admitted friend of fighting men. Be it remembered with regret that Napoleon detested cats as cordially all his life as Lord Roberts detests them now.
The irritable race of authors have, on the other ​hand, found in Pussy's gentle presence a balm for their sensitive souls. Lord Byron stands forth, a striking exception to this rule. He was sensitive enough, and irritable enough, Heaven knows, and he had plenty of cats—five at one time in Ravenna — to have afforded him all the consolation of which he stood in need; but he harboured them rather from a passionate fancy for every kind of animal than from a particular grace in selection. They shared his indiscriminate hospitality with eight dogs, ten horses, three monkeys, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, five peacocks, two guinea-hens and an Egyptian crane; and must have had scant pleasure in such varied and over-animated society. There was even at one time a civet-cat added to this ménagerie intime; but it wisely ran away, after scratching one of the monkeys, and was never heard of again. Shelley, being of a nervous temperament, was made unspeakably wretched by the superabundance of birds and beasts in the Ravenna palace, and expressed his views forcibly to Byron, who could not be made to understand such discomfort. He himself found them all delightful, and noted down with deep concern in his journal the temporary lameness of the crow, and his apprehension lest "some fool" had trodden on its foot.
​grey cat of the Brontës, watching Emily's bread-making with wise, attentive eyes. She was the silent sister's favourite, and Charlotte has recorded the grief at Haworth when the poor little creature died. There dwelt the cheerful colony of Edgeworthstown cats, or such of them, at least, as were not on police duty in the stables. Miss Edgeworth, though no enthusiast, has left us a pleasant description of these pussies, and of their delight at the reappearance of a maid who had been absent with the family at Longford. "I forgot to tell you a remarkable feature of our return," she writes to her cousin, Sophy Ruxton. "All the cats, even those who properly belong to the stable, and who had never been admitted to the honours of a sitting in the kitchen, crowded around Kitty with congratulatory faces, crawling up her gown, insisting upon caressing and being caressed, when she reappeared in the lower regions. Mr. Gilpin's slander against cats, as selfish, unfeeling creatures, is refuted by stubborn facts."
That is a pretty touch of "congratulatory faces," and worthy of the writer's pen. We can see the topaz eyes gleaming softly in the firelight; we can hear the welcoming purr, and feel the gentle rubbing of the furry sides. It is from Miss Edgeworth, too, that we learn of Joanna Baillie's cat, a splendid Amazon, who once avenged the wrongs of her race ​by worrying a dog, to the huge delight of Sir Walter Scott; yet who, combining courtesy with valour, was wont to awaken her mistress when she lay late abed, by very gently placing one paw "with its glove on" upon the closed lids. Perhaps this peerless creature was also, in the main, a kitchen cat, Miss Baillie having strict views of her own as to the nature of feline duties.
"Still be thou deemed by housewife fat, A comely, careful, mousing cat, "Whose dish is, for the public good, Replenished oft with savoury food;"
is the sober future she holds out to the kitten sporting by the fire,—the tiny comedian whose irresponsible gayety beguiled her heart, and prompted some of her prettiest lines.
"Backwards coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eye-balls watch thy foe, The housewife's spindle whirling round, Or thread or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly Held out to lure thy roving eye; Then, onward stealing, fiercely spring Upon the futile, faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still, And oft, beyond thy curving side, Its jetty tip is seen to glide. ..... The nimblest tumbler, stage-bedight, To thee is but a clumsy wight, ​Who every limb and sinew strains To do what costs thee little pains. But, stopped the while thy wanton play, Applauses too thy feats repay: For then, beneath some childish hand, With modest pride thou takest thy stand; Dilated then thy glossy fur, And loudly swells thy busy purr; As, timing well the equal sound, Thy clutching feet bepat the ground, And all their harmless claws disclose, Like prickles of an early rose."
If this verse be far less graceful and poetic than that in which Wordsworth has described for us the kitten playing with the fallen leaves, it has the merit of plain fidelity to facts. Joanna Baillie understood how dear to kittenhood are attention and applause, how much of the irresistible prancing and paddling is pure comedy, designed to dazzle an audience. Wordsworth, gazing serenely at the small impostor on the wall, was deceived by a specious show of innocence. With touching simplicity, he fancied her unconscious of the admiration she was exciting, and philosophized over the absence of that coquetry which was rampant in her little bosom.
"But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one, and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow; There are many now,—now one,— Now they stop, and there are none. ​What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger leap half way, Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again. Now she works with three or four, Like an Indian conjurer; Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics played in the eye Of a thousand standers-by, Clapping hands with shout and stare, What would little Tabby care For the plaudits of the crowd? Over happy to be proud; Over wealthy in the treasure Of her own exceeding pleasure."
Little Tabby was an arrant hussy to so shamelessly deceive a great poet; but when any living creature contrives to look as supernaturally innocent as a kitten, we had best remember "L'Ecole des Femmes," and be sure qu'elle fait l' Agnès.
For Pussy at her very best, we must still turn to homely hearths where her place is held sacred, where her labours warrant her welcome, where her sleepy ease suggests comfort, and her beauty gives an indescribable touch of distinction to all her plain surroundings. It is in such a humdrum song as that of Auld Bawthren in the chimney-corner that we see the domestic sweetness of the cat.
"The gudewife birrs wi' the wheel a' day,
Three threeds an' a thrum;
A walth o' wark, an' sma' time for play,
Wi' the lint sae white and worset grey
Work hard she maun, while sing I may,
Three threeds an' a thrum.
"The gudewife rises frae out her bed,
Wi' her cozey nicht-mutch round her head,
To steer the fire to a blaze sae red,
An' her feet I rub wi' welcome glad.
"I daunder round her wi' blythesome birr,
An' rub on her legs my sleek warm fur ;
Wi' sweeps o' my tail I welcome her.
An' round her rin, wherever she stir.
"The men-folk's time for rest is sma',
They 're out in the sunshine, an' out in the snaw,
Tho' cauld winds whistle, or rain should fa',
I, in the ingle, dae nought ava'.
"I like the gudeman, but loe the wife.
Days mony they 've seen o' leil and strife ;
O' sorrow human hours are rife ;
Their haud's been mine a' the days o' my life.
"Auld Bawthren grey, she kitten'd me here,
An' wha was my sire I didna spier ;
Brithers an' sisters smoor'd i' the weir,
Left me alane to my mither dear.
"As I grew a cat wi' look sae douse,
She taught me to catch the pilf'rin mouse ;
Wi' the thievish rottons I had nae truce.
But banished them a' frae the maister's house.
​"Mither got fushionless, auld, an' blin, The bluid in her veins was cauld an' thin, Her claws were blunt, an' she couldna rin, An' t' her forbears was sune gathered in.
"Now I sit hurklin' aye in the ase. The queen I am o' that cozey place; As wi' ilka paw I dicht my face, I sing an' purr wi' mickle grace, Three threeds an' a thrum, Three threeds an' a thrum."
There was one hearth, humble enough for the most part, where the cat led but a chequered and comfortless career; there was one great writer whose supremely irritable soul she might have soothed into serenity, had she been granted fuller and sweeter sway. Carlyle should always have had a cat at his elbow. It was the influence he needed most, and which he vaguely welcomed, without understanding its tranquillizing power. The wisdom of the centuries is embodied in the contemplative self-sufficiency of the cat. Her superb repose modifies the restless fidgeting of men, and Carlyle fidgeted more than is permissible, even for a man. Unhappily, his incomparable wife surpassed him on this score, and it was she, alas! who made Pussy's post untenable. Her letters show as constant a succession of cats as of servants. Each new animal, like each new domestic, was received with enthusiasm; and each was found, after a trial, to ​be as far removed from an impossible standard of perfection.
One feline Sybarite took an unworthy advantage of Mr. Carlyle's absence to kitten on his bed; and another stole the red herring which the maid-of-all-work had cooked for her own dinner. There was at no time a superfluity of good cheer beneath that meagre roof, and who, save the aggrieved maid, could have censured so natural and necessary a theft? This hapless cat was afterwards—while its mistress was away—ruthlessly drowned, "for unexampled dishonesty," being expected, apparently, to live upon nothing but mice.
The next incumbent was a vivacious black pussy, known by the pretty name of Columbine. There is an amusing letter from Mrs. Carlyle,—when is she not amusing!—in which Nero, the little dog, gives his absent master a graphic picture of the unhomelike home, with its Spartan rigours, and bleak, clean, fussy discomfort. He winds up ruefully: "There was no dinner yesterday, to speak of. I had, for my share, only a piece of biscuit that might have been round the world; and if Columbine got anything at all, I did n't see it."
Possibly Columbine foraged for herself, after the free-booting fashion of her race; but the white cat that succeeded her departed immediately from such dinnerless quarters. Then Mr. Darwin offered ​Mrs. Carlyle his own excellent mouser, if she could tolerate "a cat with a bad heart." Apparently she could n't; but preferred one that was admittedly clever, though "of an unsettled turn of mind." This beast, wise in its restlessness, withdrew after a brief experience; and was followed by "a kitten, black as soot,—a most agile kitten, and wonderfully confiding."
Dear little kit! How long she stayed, or was permitted to stay, we do not know. There is but one more letter on the subject, and that one is not included in the published volumes. It was unearthed recently, and printed in the "Glasgow News." Its recipient was Mrs. Carlyle' s maid, Jessie, of whom, in other epistles, she makes bitter complaint; but with whom she appears to have corresponded on the most intimate and animated terms. Writing from Folkestone, whither she has gone for sea air, she implores Jessie to have everything in readiness for Mr. Carlyle's return. He is visiting his brother in Annandale, and she has been trying hard to persuade him to remain there, or at Aldersley Park, for another week.
"I hold out the inducement that I should be in London, after Monday the twenty-eighth, to welcome him. But I don't know. Man is born to contradiction, as the sparks fly upward. The very persuasion that he should absent himself a few days ​more may give him an unconscious but irresistible impulse towards home.
"Anyhow, you and Mrs. Warren will not be found, like the foolish virgins, with lamps without oil; and, besides, you may be sure of his giving you due warning. Having his bedroom all right, and the upstairs room fit to be seen, no other preparation need be made 'till the day and hour of his coming have been announced to you by himself. I still hope that he may not come 'till I myself am home first; but, if he should, there is one thing which you must attend to, and which you would not think of without being told. That cat! I wish she were dead! But I can't shorten her days, because, you see, my poor, dear, wee dog liked her. Well, there she is! And as long as she attends Mr. C. at his meals (and she does n't care a sheaf of tobacco for him at any other time), so long will Mr. C. continue to give her bits of meat and driblets of milk, to the ruination of carpets and hearthrugs! I have over and over again pointed out to him the stains she has made, but he won't believe them her doings. And the dining-room carpet was so old and ugly that it was n't worth rows with one's husband about. Now, however, that nice new cloth must be protected against the cat abuse. So what I wish is that you would shut up the creature when Mr. C. has breakfast, dinner, or tea; and, if he remarks on her absence, say it ​was my express wish. He has no idea what a selfish, immoral, improper beast she is, nor what mischief she does to the carpets. Kind regards to Mrs. Warren.Yours sincerely,
Jane Carlyle."
Poor Pussy! Poor clean, sad, catless dining-room! Poor Mrs. Carlyle! In another year she was dead, and we can hardly fancy her resting unfretted in her grave. But it is pleasant to picture the great historian, whose disagreeable aspects have been put forward so relentlessly for the consideration of the world, feeding his cat with "driblets of milk," and excusing—or denying—the mess she made. There is a touch of Dr. Johnson's human kindness about the simple deed. Had Carlyle been permitted to live on terms of easy intimacy with Columbine or the soot-black kitten, he might have learned from
"The perfect balance of their ways"
some useful lessons in philosophy.
Happily there are other and brighter prospects to consider, even on England's uncongenial soil; there are other and brighter glimpses into homes which seem to have been made—like Herrick's vicarage—for Pussy's tranquil sway. To understand the character of a cat, to respect her independence, to recognize and deplore her pitiless instincts, ​to be charmed by her gentler moods, to admire her beauty, to appreciate her intelligence, and to love her steadfastly without being loved in return,—these things are not often possible to the Anglo-Saxon nature. It is an upright nature, but ironbound and exacting. It is wont to overrate the virtues it possesses, and to underrate those to which it lays no claim. It prizes the frank fidelity of the dog, it mistrusts the suavity and subtlety of the cat; but then, as the cat remarks to the dog in Mr. Froude's "Pilgrimage," "There may be truth in what you say, but I think your view is limited." It is at least worthy of note that the Englishman who so deeply offended his country-people by his admiration for French traits and French literature, embodied the one, and rivalled the other, in the few admirable lines that immortalize his cat. Mr. Arnold's Atossa is no "comely, careful" mouser, no guileless kitling, innocent of sin. She is a red-handed murderess, whose blandishments win easy pardon for her crimes. His letters prove the affection he felt for her; his poetry proves the clearness with which he saw the depths of her misdoing. He cheerfully fills page after page of his correspondence with minute descriptions of her behaviour by night and day, winding up with the heartfelt assurance; "She is a most interesting cat, and we get fonder and fonder of her all the time."
​"I have just been called to the door," he writes from Cobham to his mother, "by the sweet voice of Toss, whose morning proceedings are wonderful. She sleeps—She has just jumped on my lap, and her beautiful tail has made this smudge, but I have put her down again. I was going to say that she sleeps on an arm-chair before the drawing-room fire; descends the moment she hears the servants about in the morning, and makes them let her out; comes back and enters Flu's room with Eliza regularly at half-past seven. Then she comes to my door and gives a mew, and then—especially if I let her in, and go on writing or reading without taking any notice of her—there is a real demonstration of affection, such as never again occurs in the day. She purrs, she walks round and round me, she jumps in my lap, she turns to me and rubs her head and nose against my chin, she opens her mouth and raps her pretty white teeth against my pen. Then she leaps down, settles herself by the fire, and never shows any more affection all day."
Did ever another Englishman relate such infinitesimal details about a cat? "Morning proceedings are wonderful!" Why, all well-bred pussies give a courteous, and, in some sort, affectionate salutation, by way of beginning the day. None are so unwise as to prolong their caresses to the point of ​weariness. The same enviable instinct which prompts them to offer their gentle tokens of regard, teaches them sobriety and reserve.
Mr. Arnold had a second and less distinguished cat named Blacky, about whom we are told little, save that he lost one of his legs by some sad accident, and went about contentedly on the remaining three all the years of his life, the cheeriest and most agile of cripples. Atossa was a very beautiful Persian; and who that has read the pathetic lament for "Poor Matthias," can forget the description of her compelling and sinister loveliness?
"Thou hast seen Atossa sage Sit for hours beside thy cage; Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird, Flutter, chirp,—she never stirred! What were now these toys to her? Down she sank amid her fur; Eyed thee with a soul resign'd, And thou deemedst cats were kind! —Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable, and grand; So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat."
And so Montaigne might have written, had Montaigne been a poet. The attitude of the two men towards the animals they loved, but could not hope to understand,—an unmoral, unjudicial attitude, as remote from vindication as from denunciation, shows ​them to have been serene students of natural laws. "Thus freely speaketh Montaigne concerning cats," observes Isaac Walton with gravity; and thus freely speaketh Matthew Arnold. Both knew whereof they spoke.