by L A Vocelle
Figure 8.22. Charles Dicken’s Cat Paw Letter Opener, Berg Collection, New York Public Library
Edward Lear (1812-1888), known for writing The Owl and the Pussy Cat, came from a large family, the 20th of 21 children. His father had been well off but lost his money in stocks and the family became impoverished. When he was 15, he started selling sketches to shopkeepers for “bread and cheese”. Two years later he became well-known for his drawings of animals and birds at the London Zoo, and by age 19, he had compiled a monograph on parrots which was recognized as the first of its kind. From the age of 15 to 25, Lear suffered from depression, asthma and bronchitis as well as epilepsy.
In 1873, Lear met the kitten, Foss. Foss was a tabby who had had his tail shortened by the servants in the belief that it would keep him from straying away. As Foss aged, he came to have a rotund body and with his shortened tail was deemed an unattractive cat. Even so, Lear loved his cat and made many drawings of him (figure 8.23).When it became necessary for Lear to move, he requested that the architects design an exact duplicate of his former abode so that Foss would not be upset by the relocation (Vinegar, 2012). At the age of 17, Foss died in November, 1887. Lear devotedly buried him in his Italian garden at San Remo with a large tombstone to commemorate his life. Lear himself died only two months later in January, 1888.
He has many friends, lay men and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.
THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
II
Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III
“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon (Lear, 1894).
Figure 8.23. Edward Lear and Foss
Even though the cat had gained love and respect from some, the uneducated still clung to the superstitions of previous centuries, as Elizabeth Gaskell describes in her novel North and South (1855), in which an old peasant woman learns that Betty Barnes has stolen her cat and roasted it alive in a magical spell to appease her husband’s anger. She believes that the cat’s cries would summon the dark demons much as they were claimed to do during Taigherm (Rogers, 2006, p. 51).
English poets of the age found the cat a most willing subject for their poetic musings. Rosamond Marriott Watson (1860-1911) a Victorian poet dedicated a poem to her cat.
TO MY CAT
HALF loving-kindliness and half disdain,
Thou comest to my call serenely suave,
With humming speech and gracious gestures grave,
In salutation courtly and urbane;
Yet must I humble me thy grace to gain,
For wiles may win thee though no arts enslave,
And nowhere gladly thou abidest save
Where naught disturbs the concord of thy reign.
Sphinx of my quiet hearth! who deign’st to dwell
Friend of my toil, companion of mine ease,
Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses;
That men forget doest thou remember well,
Beholden still in blinking reveries
With somber, sea-green gaze inscrutable (Stedman, 1895; Watson, 1892).
James William Elliott (1833-1915) collected nursery rhymes and set them to music. Famous for having written the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, the following rhyme was completed in 1870. The rhyme instructs children on how not to annoy a cat.
I love little pussy,
Her coat is so warm,
And if I don’t hurt her,
She’ll do me no harm.
So I’ll not pull her tail,
Nor drive her away,
But pussy and I,
Very gently will play.
She shall sit by my side
And I’ll give her some food;
And pussy will love me
Because I am good.
I’ll pat pretty pussy,
And then she will purr;
And thus show her thanks
For my kindness to her.
I’ll not pinch her ears,
Nor tread on her paw,
Lest I should provoke her
To use her sharp claw.
I never will vex her
Nor make her displeased:
For pussy don’t like
To be worried and teased (Elliot, 1870).
The romantic English poet John Keats (1795-1821) penned the following poem To Mrs. Reynold’s Cat. Even though not fully appreciated during his lifetime, his odes, especially Ode on a Grecian Urn, became quite famous.
TO MRS. REYNOLDS’ CAT
Cat! who hast pass’d grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green,
and prick
Those velvet ears – but pr’y thee do not stick
They latent talons in me—and upraise
Thy gentle mew – and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists –
For all thy wheezy asthma – and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off – and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft, as when the lists
In youth thou enter’dest on glass-bottled wall (Keats, 1884).
One of the earliest poems written by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is A Cat in Distress. Written sometime between 1809-1811 when he was just ten years old, the poem describes his concern for the local tenant farmers as well as his love of nature. His sister Elizabeth copied the poem out and painted the watercolor picture of the cat on top and most probably gave it to their younger sister, Hellen, as a gift. Hellen then mentioned it to Percy Shelley’s biographer, “I have in my possession a very early effusion of Bysshe’s, with a cat painted on the top of the sheet, I will try and find it: but there is not promise of future excellence in the lines, the versification is defective.” The poem was first published in Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1858).
A CAT IN DISTRESS
Verses On A Cat
I.
A cat in distress,
Nothing more, nor less;
Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye,
As I am a sinner,
It waits for some dinner
To stuff out its own little belly.
II.
You would not easily guess
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils,
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.
III.
Some a living require,
And others desire
An old fellow out of the way;
And which is the best
I leave to be guessed,
For I cannot pretend to say.
IV.
One wants society,
Another variety,
Others a tranquil life;
Some want food,
Others, as good,
Only want a wife.
V.
But this poor little cat
Only wanted a rat,
To stuff out its own little maw;
And it were as good
Some people had such food,
To make them hold their jaw!
Quite often poets composed poems in remembrance of their beloved cats. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was a British romantic poet who dearly missed her cat and wrote the following poem.
ON THE DEATH OF A CAT
Who shall tell the lady's grief
When her Cat was past relief?
Who shall number the hot tears
Shed o'er her, belov'd for years?
Who shall say the dark dismay
Which her dying caused that day?
Come, ye Muses, one and all,
Come obedient to my call;
Come and mourn with tuneful breath
Each one for a separate death;
And, while you in numbers sigh,
I will sing her elegy.
Of a noble race she came,
And Grimalkin was her name
Young and old fully many a mouse
Felt the prowess of her house;
Weak and strong fully many a rat
Cowered beneath her crushing pat;
And the birds around the place
Shrank from her too close embrace.
But one night, reft of her strength,
She lay down and died at length;
Lay a kitten by her side
In whose life the mother died.
Spare her line and lineage,
Guard her kitten's tender age,
And that kitten's name as wide
Shall be known as hers that died.
And whoever passes by
The poor grave where Puss doth lie,
Softly, softly let him tread,
Nor disturb her narrow bed (Rossetti, 1904, p. 89).
The famous writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) who also had a fondness for cats immortalizes a beloved feline companion in Last Words to a Dumb Friend.
LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND
Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall -
Foot suspended in its fall -
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.
Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid his memory fade,
Better blot each mark he made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve his prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.
From the chair whereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.
Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should - by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance -
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.
As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by him forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.
Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played (Hardy, 1994, p. 621).
The English poet and novelist Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was generally regarded in his youth as a decadent rebel, but after a serious illness, he settled down to a life of social respectability. In his poem To a Cat Swinburne captures the cat’s independence and beauty, and compares its innate superiority to the commonness of the dog.
TO A CAT
STATELY, kindly, lordly friend,
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous mead,
On the golden page I read.
All your wondrous wealth of hair,
Dark and fair,
Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness.
Dogs may fawn on all and some
As they come;
You, a friend of loftier mind,
Answer friends alone in kind.
Just your foot upon my hand
Softly bids it understand.
Morning round this silent sweet
Garden-seat
Sheds its wealth of gathering light,
Thrills the gradual clouds with might,
Changes woodland, orchard, heath,
Lawn, and garden there beneath.
Fair and dim they gleamed below:
Now they glow
Deep as even your sunbright eyes,
Fair as even the wakening skies.
Can it not or can it be
Now that you give thanks to see?
May not you rejoice as I,
Seeing the sky
Change to heaven revealed, and bid
Earth reveal the heaven it hid
All night long from stars and moon,
Now the sun sets all in tune?
What within you wakes with day
Who can say?
All too little may we tell,
Friends who like each other well,
What might haply, if we might,
Bid us read our lives aright.
Wild on woodland ways your sires
Flashed like fires;
Fair as flame and fierce and fleet
As with wings on wingless feet
Shone and sprang your mother, free,
Bright and brave as wind or sea.
Free and proud and glad as they,
Here to-day
Rests or roams their radiant child,
Vanquished not, but reconciled,
Free from curb of aught above
Save the lovely curb of love.
Love through dreams of souls divine
Fain would shine
/> Round a dawn whose light and song
Then should right our mutual wrong---
Speak, and seal the love-lit law
Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw.
Dreams were theirs; yet haply may
Dawn a day
When such friends and fellows born,
Seeing our earth as fair at morn,
May for wiser love's sake see
More of heaven's deep heart than we (Swinburne, 1911, p. 255).
Ever cherishing nature, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an integral part of the romanticist movement. Perhaps influenced by Lady Sydney Morgan (1783-1859) who said, “The playful kitten with its pretty little tigerish gambole is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in this world.” Wordsworth wrote the following poem to a kitten in 1804. The kitten symbolizes the struggle that the tree must endure as the kitten plays with the leaves. The new vigorous life of the kitten is juxtaposed against the death of the tree’s leaves. There is also a hint of the typical symbolism of the cat being a magical creature in the line, “Now she works with three or four like an Indian conjuror.”
THE KITTEN AND THE FALLING LEAVES
THAT way look, my Infant, lo!
What a pretty baby-show!
See the Kitten on the wall,
Sporting with the leaves that fall,
Withered leaves--one--two--and three--
From the lofty elder-tree!
Through the calm and frosty air
Of this morning bright and fair,
Eddying round and round they sink
Softly, slowly: one might think,
From the motions that are made,
Every little leaf conveyed
Sylph or Faery hither tending,--
To this lower world descending,
Each invisible and mute,
In his wavering parachute.
----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