The fireside sphinx. Agnes Repplier
to be, can doubt the love the Moslem bears—in imitation of the Prophet—for Muezza's furry kindred!
Travellers in the Orient have brought back strange and delightful tales of Pussy's dignities and high estate. According to these, probably fabulous, but always pleasing reports, the cats belonging to the Shah of Persia rival in numbers and in beauty the wives of King Solomon. At Persian banquets, troops of cats, stately and soft-footed, glide in and out among the guests with silent courtesy, offering no disturbance, but merely honouring with their presence the master of the feast. In Siam and Burmah these thrice fortunate animals are treated with becoming deference; and the Hungarian scientist, Vambery, tells of a Buddhist convent in eastern Thibet, where there were so many pussies, all sleek and fat, that he could not forbear asking the pious inmates why they deemed it necessary to keep such a feline colony. "All things have their uses," was the serene reply. "Cats are carnal-minded, clamorous, and far from cleanly; but they atone for their sins by destroying rats, mice, and weasels, and thus spare us the temptation of imbruing our hands in the blood of our fellow creatures."—For the delicate refinements of casuistry, one must still turn to the subtle and contemplative East.
It was an ill day for Pussy when she left this land of ease, and began her bleak northwestern journey. Sir John Lubbock asserts that there is no proof of her domestication in Great Britain or in France before the ninth century; but the dim records of those far-off years leave much untold, and she may have arrived quietly and without ostentation a hundred years or so earlier. That her usefulness was recognized, and that she was highly prized as long as her rarity enhanced her value, is shown by an ancient statute ascribed to Howel Dda, or Howel the Good, a Welsh prince whose life is otherwise shrouded in obscurity. This admirable ruler—assuredly the Wise as well as the Good—made a law in 948, regulating the market price of cats; a penny for a kitten before its eyes were open, twopence until it had caught its first mouse, fourpence when it was old enough for combat. He who stole a cat from the royal granaries forfeited either a milch ewe with its fleece and lamb, or as much wheat as would cover the body of the cat suspended by its tail, with its nose touching the ground. A pleasant, picturesque old law, discerning the artistic possibilities of punishment, and insuring to Pussy her place in economics. A penny was a vastly respectable coin in the tenth century.
There are few golden pages, however, in the broken annals of the cat during the long dark years of mediæval history. Feudalism with its splendours and discomforts, its swift alternations of magnificent loyalty and fierce rebellion, its restless ambitions and perpetual warfare, offered little but misery to a cat. Change of any kind has ever been abhorrent to her spirit, and those were days when nothing was permanent save death. Order and tranquillity are essential to her well-being; and the world, seething with strife, exulted in its own measureless confusion. The dog, faithful follower of man's scattered fortunes, and trusted guardian of all that was held dear, reached his apotheosis in these troubled times. Baron and knight, burgher and serf united in recognition of his merits. In castle hall, by cottage hearth, at the door of my lady's chamber, he kept loyal watch and ward. Poets praised him, kings caressed him, beggars bound him to their wretchedness; and nuns, on whom the rule of Poverty weighed not too heavily—like Chaucer's Prioresse—carried him upon blessed pilgrimages, and fed him daintily
"With rosted flessh, or mylk and wastel breed."
Carved in stone and moulded in bronze, we see him on beautiful old tombs, couchant at the feet of mailed knights and noble dames, sharing the still magnificence of death as he shared the glory and the tumult of life. Mother Church took him under her protection, for it was well known that when Saint Roch appeared at Heaven's court, his dog stood by his side; and Saint Peter, who values faithful service, smiled as he opened wide the gates. From countless altars of Catholic Christendom, Saint Roch—most pitiful because most suffering of Saints—showed, and still shows to poor humanity the plague spot on his knee; and still at his feet is the dumb friend whom no excess of misery could alienate, the animal in whose heart God has implanted a steadfastness of affection which is one of the kindly miracles of creation.
The colder temperament of the cat, her self-sufficing independence of character, her impenetrable reserve, her love of gentleness and luxury, unfitted her for the stern rude life of the Middle Ages. She was no loyal servant, no follower of camps, no votaress of martial joys. Only in the cities, where some semblance of order was usually preserved, and some snug comforts guaranteed, could she have found a home. It is a significant circumstance that the commercial legend of Dick Whittington is the only pleasant story in which the English cat figures with prominence during several centuries; and surely no tale could better illustrate the exact nature of her position.
In the first place, she was of trifling value. A poor boy, who owned nothing else in the world, owned a cat. Like the miller's son in "Puss-in-Boots," Dick possessed something which nobody thought it worth while to take from him. That he had little love for this cat is proven by the alacrity with which he parted from her, sending her away upon a long and perilous voyage, on the bare chance of her yielding him a profit. She was in no wise his friend and companion; she was merely his property, to be disposed of as any other piece of merchandise. Dick was a tradesman to his finger tips, and worthy of all the civic honours heaped upon him. That his first speculation proved successful was due wholly to the accident which carried poor Pussy to a catless land, overrun by rats and mice. Utilitarianism, commercialism, a flavour of export and import pervade the tale. There is no graceful sentiment to hallow it; and the utmost we can claim for young Richard is that he was not a weakling like the miller's son, who had to be dragged by his cat to affluence and a throne. Once started on the way, Dick built up his own fortunes with a steady hand. Indeed, a boy who could so lightly part with the only living thing he might have held by his side, was in no danger of being outstripped in the hard race for wealth.
Commonplace as is the story of Whittington's cat, it is nevertheless a legacy which we have no mind to lose; and all conscientious chroniclers should protest against the grovelling preciseness which would banish it from England's annals. There are records to show that "Richard Whityngdon" was thrice Lord Mayor of London, serving in 1397, 1406, and 1409; that he was born in Gloucestershire, was a mercer by trade, that he married Alice Fitzwarren, and that he lent one thousand pounds—doubtless at goodly interest—to King Henry the Fourth. There is also the evidence of that venerable stone which was found in the garden of a house in Westgate Street, Gloucester, where the grand-nephew of the Lord Mayor is known to have lived in 1460. This stone represents in bas-relief a boy holding in his arms a cat, the ever-famous cat that lifted her young master from penury; and it is a pleasant proof that the Whityngdons were not unmindful of the source whence sprang their wealth and distinction.
What makes the historian so eager to dwell long and lovingly upon every page gilded by Pussy's triumphs is the deepening gloom through which we see her little figure steal frightened and forlorn. For centuries she is hidden from our sight; and, when she emerges out of the unknown, a strange and melancholy change has come over her fortunes. Here and there we find such scanty proof as I have offered of toleration, and even of esteem, on the score of usefulness; but, as she grew in time to be a familiar object in the homes of men, they looked at her askance with cruel and troubled eyes. The god of Egypt, the plaything of Rome, became, by some sad ill chance, a symbol of evil things. Her beauty, her grace, her gentleness availed her nothing. She was the witch's friend, and on many a murky midnight had gazed unblinkingly upon shameful spells. The Prince of the Power of Darkness had taken her for his own, and she dwelt by the hearths of men to lure them to destruction. The cat that served seven masters, each for seven years, carried the soul of the seventh into Hell. Like the were-wolf, she set free the primitive, bestial impulses of humanity. The wife who left her sleeping husband's side to share the obscene revels of warlocks and of witches, stole through the lattice window as a sleek black cat. Perchance some passing traveller, seeing her glide by, wounded her with stone or sword; and the next morning she was found maimed and bleeding beneath the counterpane. In ruined churches, pillaged and desecrated by the unsparing wickedness of war, there assembled, on the eve of Saint John, hags and wizards and young girls caught in Satan's toils, all creeping through the darkness under the forms of cats, and all afire with impious relish for sorcery and sin.
Innumerable legends cluster around the cat during these picturesque centuries of superstition, when men were