The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Besides his little country, Prince Irenaeus also had a handsome fortune in cash, which remained unaffected, and so he found himself suddenly translated from the rank of a minor ruler to that of a private gentleman of means, who could order his life as he liked, in a free and easy manner, just as the fancy took him.

  Prince Irenaeus had the reputation of an educated man with a mind open to art and science. Add to this the fact that he had often suffered painfully from the tedious burden of ruling, and indeed was even once said to have expressed, in charming verse, the romantic desire to lead a solitary, idyllic life procul negotiis27 in a cottage on the banks of a murmuring brook, along with a few domestic animals, and you might have thought that now, forgetting the life of a ruler, he would settle down to the comfortable domestic existence within the grasp of an independent gentleman of means. However, that was far from being the case!

  It may be that a great lord’s love of art and science should be regarded only as one of the components of real court life. Decorum requires him to own pictures and listen to music, and it would be a shame for the court bookbinder to be idle and not constantly clothing the latest works of literature in leather and gold tooling. But if such a love is a component of court life itself, then it must perish along with that life and can provide no comfort, as something enduring in itself, for the lost throne or petty princeling’s chair upon which the lord used to sit.

  Prince Irenaeus retained both court life and his love of the arts and sciences, by bringing to life a sweet dream in which he himself figured with his entourage and the whole of Sieghartsweiler.

  He acted, in fact, like a ruler, kept on his entire household, his Chancellor of the Realm, his Finance Committee, etc., etc., bestowed the orders of his house, and gave court balls usually attended by twelve to fifteen persons, since the rules of eligibility for court28 were more strictly observed here than at the greatest of other courts. The town was kind enough to take the false brilliance of this imaginary court as something that brought it honour and renown. So the good folk of Sieghartsweiler called Prince Irenaeus their most gracious Highness, they illuminated the town on his name-day, and in general willingly sacrificed themselves for the amusement of the court, like the townsfolk of Athens in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  It could not be denied that the Prince played his part with the most impressive feeling, which he was able to communicate to his entire circle. A princely Financial Councillor, for instance, appears in his Sieghartsweiler club looking gloomy, withdrawn, taciturn! His brow is clouded, he often plunges into deep thought, and then starts, as if suddenly awakening! You hardly dare to speak aloud or tread firmly anywhere near him. The clock strikes nine, up he jumps, takes his hat, all endeavours to keep him back are in vain; he assures you with a proud smile, a smile of great significance, that stacks of files await him and he must spend the night preparing for tomorrow’s highly important, final quarterly committee meeting. He hurries away, leaving the company respectfully awe-struck by the vast importance and burden of his office. And just what is the important report for which that careworn man must prepare all night? Well, all the departments have sent in their laundry lists for the last quarter – the kitchen, the dining-room, the wardrobe, etc. – and he it is who must settle all the affairs of the laundry. Then again, the townsfolk sympathize with the unfortunate Master of the Prince’s Stables, but they are much struck by the sublime feeling expressed by the princely Finance Committee, and call it stern but just. For in accordance with his orders, the Master of the Stables has sold a half-carriage29 which could no longer be used, but the Finance Committee has commanded him, on pain of instant dismissal, to show within three days what he has done with the other half, which might still have been serviceable.

  A bright particular star at the court of Prince Irenaeus was Madame Benzon, a councillor’s widow in her mid-thirties, once a great beauty and still not without her charms, the one person there whose nobility was doubtful, yet whom the Prince had none the less definitively accepted as eligible for court. The lady’s clear, penetrating mind, her lively wit, her worldly wisdom, but above all a certain coldness of character essential to the art of ruling, exerted their full power, so that it was really she who pulled the strings of the puppet-play in this miniature court. Her daughter, who was called Julia, had grown up with Princess Hedwiga, and Madame Benzon had exerted such an influence upon the education of Hedwiga’s mind as well that she seemed a stranger within the circle of the princely family, and was in curious contrast to her brother. For Prince Ignatius was condemned to eternal childhood, and might almost have been called feeble-minded.

  Opposite Madame Benzon, equally influential and equally active in the closest concerns of the princely house, although in a very different manner, was that strange man whom you, gentle reader, have already met as maître de plaisir at the court of Prince Irenaeus, and an ironic necromancer.

  The way in which Master Abraham first came to the princely family is rather a strange story.

  Prince Irenaeus’s late Papa had been a man of mild and simple manners. He understood that any show of force would break the weak little wheels of the state machine instead of making them work better. He therefore let things go on in his little country as they always had, and if, in consequence, he lacked the opportunity to display a brilliant intellect or any other special Heaven-sent gifts, he contented himself by reflecting that everyone in his principality was comfortable, and as for what they thought in foreign parts, it was the same as with women, who are most blameless when nobody talks about them at all. If the Prince’s little court was stiff, ceremonious, old-fashioned, if the Prince couldn’t see the point of many of those good notions thought up in modern times, it was because of the immutability of the rigid framework laboriously set up in his mind by his Lord Stewards, Lord Marshals and Chamberlains. However, there was a driving wheel at work inside this framework which no steward or marshal could ever have brought to a halt. This was the Prince’s natural taste for the eccentric, strange and mysterious. To satisfy that taste, which was in the most curious contradiction to his other characteristics, or at least to seek nourishment for it, he would sometimes follow the example of good Caliph Haroun Al Rashid30 and wander through his country and its capital in disguise. At such time he wore a round hat and put on a grey overcoat, so everyone knew at first sight that the Prince was incognito.

  Well, it so happened that the Prince was walking in disguise and incognito down the road leading from the castle to a remote place where only one little cottage stood, inhabited by the widow of one of the Prince’s cooks. Just as he reached this cottage the Prince saw two men wrapped in cloaks coming out of the door. He stepped aside, and the historian of the house of Irenaeus, who is my source for this story, says that the Prince wouldn’t have been noticed or recognized even if he had been wearing the most gorgeous state robe decked with the sparkling star of an order instead of his grey overcoat, on account of its being pitch dark at the time. As the two cloaked men passed slowly by the Prince, he clearly heard the following exchange.

  First man: ‘Brother, your Excellency, I do beg you to pull yourself together. Try not to be an ass, just for once! The man must go, before the Prince hears anything about him. Otherwise we’ll have that curst wizard on our backs, bringing us all to perdition with his satanic arts.’

  Second man: ‘Mon cher frère, don’t agitate yourself so! You know my sagacity, my savoir faire. I’ll fling a few gold coins that dangerous fellow’s way tomorrow, and then let him go off and do his tricks in public wherever he likes. He mustn’t stay here. What’s more, the Prince is a –’

  The voices died away, so the Prince did not discover what his Lord Marshal thought he was, for the men stealing out of the house and conducting this ill-advised conversation were none other than that personage and his brother the Master of the Hunt. The Prince had recognized both very easily by their voices.

  You may well imagine that the Prince felt he had no more pressing bus
iness than to seek out that person whose acquaintance was to be denied him, the dangerous wizard. He knocked at the cottage door, the widow came out with a light in her hand, and when she saw the Prince’s round hat and grey overcoat she asked, with distant politeness, ‘What can I do for you, Monsieur?’ Everyone addressed the Prince as Monsieur when he was in disguise and incognito. The Prince inquired after the stranger said to be lodging with the widow, and discovered that this stranger was none other than a very skilful and famous conjuror, holder of many licences, concessions and privileges, who intended to display his arts here. Only a moment ago, said the widow, two gentlemen from court had been with him, and he had astonished them so much with the extraordinary things he showed them that they left the house all pale and distracted, in fact quite beside themselves.

  The Prince immediately had himself shown in. Master Abraham (for the famous conjuror was none other) welcomed him as if he had been expecting him for some time, and closed the door.

  No one knows what Master Abraham did then, but it is certain that the Prince spent all night with him, and next morning rooms were furnished for his occupation in the castle, rooms to which the Prince could gain access from his study along a secret passage, quite unseen. It is also certain that the Prince ceased addressing the Lord Marshal as ‘mon cher ami’, and never again allowed the Master of the Hunt to tell him that wonderful tale of the white hare with horns which he (the Master of the Hunt) had failed to shoot on his first hunt in the forest, circumstances which plunged the brothers into such grief and despair that they both very soon left court. Finally, it is certain that Master Abraham amazed the court, the town and the country not only with his phantasmagorias, but also by the regard he increasingly won from the Prince.

  The aforesaid historian of the house of Irenaeus tells us so many amazing things about the tricks performed by Master Abraham that they cannot be set down without risk of forfeiting all the gentle reader’s confidence. The one which the historian thought most wonderful of all, however, and which indeed he claims to be sufficient proof of Master Abraham’s being obviously and ominously in league with strange, uncanny powers, is merely that acoustic trick which made such a stir later under the name of the Invisible Girl,31 and which even then Master Abraham could devise more ingeniously, more fantastically, and in a manner more captivating to the mind than anyone ever did afterwards.

  It was also claimed that the Prince himself performed certain magical operations with Master Abraham, operations whose purpose occasioned pleasant rivalry in the devising of silly, pointless conjectures among the ladies-in-waiting, chamberlains and other courtiers. They all agreed that Master Abraham was teaching the Prince to make gold, as might be deduced from the smoke that sometimes emanated from the laboratory, and that he had initiated him into all manner of useful conferences of spirits. Furthermore, they were all convinced that the Prince wouldn’t issue a licence appointing the new mayor of the little market town, nay, wouldn’t even allow payment of the princely furnace-heater’s fee, without first consulting his agathodemon,32 his familiar spirit or the stars.

  When the old Prince died, and Irenaeus succeeded him as ruler, Master Abraham left the country. The young Prince, who had inherited none of his father’s taste for the unusual and wonderful, let him go, but soon found that Master Abraham’s magic power consisted chiefly in exorcizing a certain evil spirit only too willing to take up residence at small courts, the diabolical spirit of boredom. Moreover, the regard in which his father held Master Abraham had taken deep root in the young Prince’s mind. There were moments when it seemed to Prince Irenaeus that Master Abraham was a supernatural being elevated above the rest of humanity, however high its rank. They say that this particular feeling arose from a crucial moment in the Prince’s youthful history, one he was never to forget. As a boy, he had once entered Master Abraham’s room, full of the irritating curiosity of childhood, and foolishly broke a little machine the Master had just finished making and upon which he had lavished great pains and much art. Infuriated by this clumsy, destructive accident, the Master had boxed the little Prince’s ears soundly and turned him straight out of the room and into the corridor, none too gently. Tears starting from his eyes, the young Prince could only stammer out, with difficulty, the words, ‘Abraham – soufflet!’33 so that the Lord Controller of the Household, alarmed, thought it would be a dangerous venture to probe any further into the terrible secret at which he could only guess.

  The Prince felt a pressing need to have Master Abraham with him, as the animating principle of the courtly machine; however, all his efforts to bring him back were in vain. Only after that fateful walk when Prince Irenaeus lost his little country and set up his imaginary court at Sieghartsweiler did Master Abraham return, and indeed he could not have done so at a more opportune moment. For apart from the fact that –

  M. cont. – remarkable event which, to employ the expression usual among clever biographers, marked a watershed in my life.

  O my readers! Young folk, men and women, beneath whose fur there beats a feeling heart, you who have a sense of virtue – you who recognize those sweet bonds in which Nature entwines us – you will understand me – and love me!

  It had been a hot day, and I had spent it asleep under the stove. Evening twilight was now drawing in, and cool breezes wafted through my master’s open window. I woke from sleep and my breast expanded, imbued by that ineffable emotion which, being pain and pleasure at once, kindles the sweetest premonitions. Quite overcome by these premonitions, I rose with that expressive movement described by prosaic mankind merely as the arching of a cat’s back! I felt an urge to get out, out into the open air, so I went up on the roof to take a stroll in the rays of the setting sun. Then I heard sounds rising from the attic, sounds so gentle, so secret, so familiar, so enticing, that an unknown Something drew me down with irresistible force. I abandoned the beauties of Nature and clambered through a little skylight into the attic. Once I had jumped down, I immediately perceived a large and beautiful cat with a mottled black and white coat who was uttering those alluring sounds, seated in a comfortable position on her hindquarters, and who now flashed inquiring glances at me. I immediately sat down opposite her, and giving way to my inner urge, attempted to join in the song the black and white cat had struck up. I did exceedingly well, though I say it myself, and I will just mention here, for the benefit of the psychologists studying me and my life, that my belief in my natural talent for music dates from that moment, and with that belief, as may well be imagined, so does the talent itself. The black and white cat looked at me harder and more keenly, suddenly fell silent, and leaped at me with a mighty bound! Expecting no good, I unsheathed my claws, but at that moment, bright tears gushing from her eyes, the black and white cat cried, ‘Son – my son, come, oh come to my paws!’ And she added, embracing me and pressing me fervently to her breast: ‘It is indeed you, my son, my dear son whom I brought forth in no pain and travail to speak of!’

  I felt my heart deeply moved, and this feeling in itself could not but convince me that the black and white cat really was my mother. All the same, I asked if she was quite sure of it.

  ‘Ah, that likeness!’ said the black and white cat, ‘that likeness, those eyes, those features, those whiskers, that coat – they all remind me only too vividly of the faithless ingrate who abandoned me. You are the spitting image of your father, dear Murr (for such is your name), but I hope that with your father’s good looks you will also have inherited the gentler disposition and mild ways of your mother Mina. Your father had very distinguished manners; imposing dignity sat on his brow, his green eyes sparkled with intelligence, and a delightful smile would often play around his cheeks and whiskers. These physical attractions, with his alert mind and a certain charming ease in his manner of catching mice, helped him to win my heart. But soon a harsh, tyrannical disposition which he had long and cunningly contrived to conceal showed itself! I say it with horror, but no sooner were you born than your father felt a dreadful
appetite to devour you and your brothers and sisters!’34

  ‘Dearest Mother,’ said I, interrupting the black and white cat, ‘dearest Mother, do not condemn that propensity entirely. The most cultivated people on earth35 credited the race of the gods with a strange appetite for eating their children, yet Jupiter was saved, and so was I!’

  ‘I don’t understand you, my son,’ replied Mina, ‘but it sounds to me as if you were talking nonsense, or actually wanted to defend your father. Don’t be ungrateful; the bloodthirsty tyrant would certainly have strangled and eaten you had I not defended you so b bravely with these sharp claws – had I not, fleeing this way and that, to cellar, attic and stables, hidden you from the persecutions of that unnatural barbarian. In the end he left me! I never saw him again, yet my heart still beats for him. Ah, he was a handsome tomcat! Many folk took him for a Count on his travels, because of his demeanour and his elegant manners. Well, I thought I could now lead a quiet, peaceful life, carrying out my maternal duties in a small domestic circle, but the most dreadful blow of all was yet to fall on me. When I came home from a little stroll one day, you and your brothers and sisters were gone! An old woman had found me in my hiding-place the day before, and made various sinister remarks about throwing into water, and so forth! Well, what luck you were saved, my son! Come to my breast once more, beloved!’