Cat Lovers Almanac

February 13, 1903

2012-02-13T02:13:00.000-05:00

Georges Simenon (February 13, 1903 to September 4, 1989 ) was Belgian, and his French language novels, especially those featuring Inspector Maigret, made him rich and famous. Somewhere I got these statistics: he wrote "190 potboilers signed with 17 pseudonyms, 358 novels and short stories signed Simenon, 25 autobiographical works." Still doubt remains about many aspects of his life, particularly his relations with the Germans during the occupation.

One of his stories is Le Chat, (1967) a novel about an old couple who are widow and widower when they meet, and, in their sixties when they marry. They only communicate in writing, but they depend on their mutual hatred. The plot involves the possibility the woman has poisoned an alley cat, named Joseph. This cat her husband had before he moved into the woman's house. Pierre Granier-Deferre turned this story into a film--

Le Chat (1971.)

February 12, 1982

2012-02-12T02:12:00.001-05:00

"John Dickinson: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary" is the title of an upcoming book about the American decorator and designer. Louis Bofferding is the author and he quotes approving Oscar Wilde's saying "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." R. Louis Bofferding is a famous New York antique dealer, and he has expanded his talents into writing and lecturing also.

Dickinson (1920 to February 12, 1982), a San Francisco designer, is quoted by Bofferding :"A room is finished when you cannot remove something without it being missed. Everything must earn its keep." His designs are described as "spare, cerebral, uncompromising, and original." Such as carved-wood lamp bases shaped like femurs or a table of galvanized tin ingeniously worked to resemble draped fabric. Earning its keep is a black and white cat which actually dominates the following photo of John Dickinson.

Designer John Dickinson at home in San Francisco, California, 1978. Image by Terry Schmidt for the San Francisco Chronicle.

February 11, 1853

2012-02-11T02:11:00.002-05:00

Frederick Richard Chichester (Earl of Belfast) (November 25 1827, to February 11, 1853) was the heir to "large estates" in Ireland and England. Here is how the Dictionary of Irish Biography describes him:

He was educated at Eton, despite poor health, and as a young man displayed a great interest in, and some aptitude for, music, literature, and art. He was president of two Belfast choral societies, and performed on the piano at a concert in the town. He wrote Naples, ....(1856). Lectures on nineteenth-century poetry, which he delivered to the Belfast Working Men's Association, were published in 1852, and he planned another series on American literature.

I quote at length because there is some mystery accompanying the literary output of Chichester. Here first though is a portion from a novel, Uncle Armstrong, by Lord B******m (1866). The title page describes the writer as "Author of " Masters and Workmen," "The Fate of Folly," "Naples".

A lawyer's wife is described this way:

She was quietly knitting a stocking, with a book open before her, and a cat purring on the rug beside her: ...

Though the sitting-room of this worthy couple had none of the ornaments of art, or the useless little fanciful objects which encumbered that of Mrs. Langton, and the plain old-fashioned furniture dated from the lawyer's wedding day, nearly forty years before, when Grecian couches and spider-legged chairs had not yet been replaced by sofas never meant for repose, and rococo seats of every variety of form, yet the whole was bright, comfortable, and convenient. The candles were lighted, the tea service was on the table, the kettle singing by the side of a clear fire, the red carpet and curtains reflecting its cheerful glow. A pleasanter scene of old English life could not well be imagined. Everything at Mrs. Langton's had been luxurious and fashionable; but here all was real, quiet, unpretending comfort .
....The attorney's wife was both well-born and well-informed, but she was not a fashionable woman. Her own house was the scene of her pleasures, and happy in the approbation of her husband she never sought to shine in general society. Home was her principal sphere of action, but wherever her help was needed, either by rich or poor, she was ready to assist with her advice, her purse, and active and judicious service, which in sickness was far beyond price. She had borne three children, and buried them all, so that she could fully understand a mother's wants, and sympathise with a mother's sorrows. Though the wounds of her poor heart were healed by time and her husband's tender care, her own losses and sufferings had made her keenly sensible of those of others...

The description of feminine virtues interested me. Also a lengthy excerpt allows a glimpse at a nicely written story. The question was brought up by the DIB however -- there is some doubt whether he wrote all the novels attributed to him. At least we know that cats were a sturdy symbol of domestic contentment in the early 19th century.

February 10, 1934

2012-02-10T02:10:00.001-05:00

Fleur Adcock was made an OBE in 1996, for her work as a poet and editor. She was born February 10, 1934) in New Zealand, though Britain claims her also. Her second book of verse was titled Tigers (1967), but we excerpt now from her fifth published volume The inner harbour (1979):

Our thin patient cat died purring,

her small triangular head tilted back,

the nurse's fingers caressing her throat,

my hand on her shrunken spine; the quick needle.

Fleur Adcock is happy to be considered a feminist, though her significance ideologically is the confident and solitary stance of a woman who thinks for herself.

February 9, 1855

2012-02-09T02:09:00.001-05:00

The morning snow in South Devon, England revealed a strange phenomena: tracks in the snow that no one could identify, and that traveled in a straight line for 100 miles. These tracks appearing on February 9, 1855 were quickly called the "devils footprints" and were discussed in the national newspapers for weeks as experts tried to explain the phenomena. Explaining the phenomena seems to have occupied paranormal researchers for next 150 years. Joe Nickell, (born on December 1, 1944) researcher for the Skeptical Inquirer, believes that inconsistencies in the stories reveal that in fact, there was no single straight 100 mile line, and that various animals made the tracks. He accounts for the consistency in eye witness accounts as a product of 'contaigon", wherein various people's perception is affected by what they anticipate.

One eyewitness, a vicar's daughter recalled:

A number of cats, for instance, were responsible for many of the tracks in one village, as was explained in 1923 by a woman who had been a young girl ... [in Dawlish] in 1855. ...She recalled that the footprints were all over the town of Dawlish ...[Her father] and his curates, she said, carefully examined the tracks which ran from the Vicarage to the vestry door, and came to the conclusion that they had been made by the paw-marks of many cats which had been partly washed away by the slight thaw, and expanded into the shape resembling hoofmarks by the early morning frost.

The above is one of many stories told in one of Joe Nickell's books on the paranormal, Real-life X-files: investigating the paranormal (2001). I have to wonder personally, with such a mundane explanation, that the phenomenon did not recur in the succeeding eras.

February 8, 2011

2012-02-08T02:08:00.005-05:00

Leiden University celebrated its 436th anniversary on February 8, 2011. One aspect of the festivities was the bestowal of an honorary doctorate on Ian Hodder.

Hodder is an archeologist and his fame derives from Catalhoyuk, a 9000 year old site in central Turkey. There are relief carvings and statues of many beasts, including felines excavated here. The urban setting is huge,-- a population of 8 to 10 thousand is possible -- and the clay housing resembles more a beehive in that the houses are stuck together,there are no pathways around the dwellings. The entrances are in the roof, and the original inhabitants would have descended via ladders into domestic spaces which were immaculately clean. The rooftops probably formed a plaza area for the inhabitants. When Hodder took over the excavation, in the early 1990s, he was associated with Cambridge University, and now he is affiliated with Stanford. He has recovered some 2,000 figurines, mostly animals, from Catalhoyuk.

February 7, 1863

2012-02-07T02:07:00.009-05:00

The Puritan, (a British periodical) published a short story, called "Juliana's Day", in 1899. The author was J. S. Fletcher ( (February 7, 1863 to January 30, 1935) who would in 15 years, become a major contributor to the detective story genre. Here is an excerpt:

JULIANA was nearly thirty, and she had begun to believe that she was destined to be an old maid after all. The thought disgusted her. ...Juliana had been the victim of spinster fostering circumstances which even her high spirited rebelliousness and romantic disposition toward adventure had not been able to overcome.
...
You may wonder why Juliana did not skip off ...anyhow. She was too much in awe of her godmother's ponderous wrath for one thing, and she did not know any of the boys well enough to hazard their uncertain welcome. For, in spite of her longing for freedom and joy, she had been so kept from all association with creatures of her own age and instincts that she was as awkward and frightened with them as a cat in a dog kennel.
....she was too old to make friends with the boys and girls who were then in the very thick of life and love making. She would have felt like a donkey playing lap dog, she told herself, as she caught glimpses of that other side of existence, and blushed, shying away from the strangeness of it. Sometimes she tried to enter into conversation with the little crowd waiting about the post office window. But her laughter was alien even to her own ears, her witty remarks had not that dear familiarity of friendship's nonsense which makes all words wise....

Fletcher wrote over 200 books in all, fiction and some books about Yorkshire history. His wife was

Rosamond Langbridge, an Irish writer. His detective novels featured a hero named Ronald Camberwell. His family included a son and cats. All forgotten today although the excerpt shows real talent.

February 6 1932

2012-02-06T02:06:00.003-05:00

Charles Addams (January 7, 1912 to September 29, 1988) was one of America's greatest cartoonists. His first cartoon in The New Yorker was published in the February 6, 1932 issue. His first Addams family cartoon (as it would later be called) was published in 1938 in that magazine. No doubt he made a lot of money from the spin-offs for the Addams family theme, but it was the cartoon form I believe, that best suited the macabre zaniness and aristocratic aplomb of his drawings. One cartoon has the caption: "It's the children, darling, back from camp." The drawing shows a delivery man in the door-way, holding two cat-carriers. There is a child visible in each.

February 5, 2011

2012-02-05T02:05:00.003-05:00

Cleveland Heights is a suburb of Cleveland, a major city in Ohio, (USA). The published Police Blotter, for Cleveland Heights, included this item, as an event on February 5, 2011

THEFT, LEE ROAD: A man, 22, was arrested Saturday for stealing a beer, a bottle of wine, an energy drink and a can of cat food from Zagara’s.

February 4, 1674

2012-02-04T02:04:00.000-05:00

Edward Tyson, MA of Magdalen , (January 20, 1651 to 1708), was a 17th century scientist. After notable studies, like his 'On the scent-bags in poll-cats,' published after a dissection at Oxford, on February 4, 1674, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Tyson stressed comparative anatomy and so laid the groundwork for the thinking that led to the theory of evolution. For instance, he dissected a house cat and a lion at the same time to convey his idea that a similarity of form allowed one to assume a kinship. He called this "a great chain of being." He may have been the first to employ this term in the service of anatomy--it is a philosophical concept.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Tyson was influential in preparing the modern intellectual framework for Darwin's conclusions about species. Tyson drew attention to man as part of a continuum of animals forms. Tyson realized that similarity in form indicated a real connection. Ashley Montagu calls "Tyson's demonstration ..that man stood as the natural successor to the ape in the transition and gradation of animal forms in Nature ... an epoch making event..."

February 3, 2011

2012-02-03T02:03:00.001-05:00

"Parks and Recreation," the NBC comedy, in its 3rd season, ran an episode entitled "Time Capsule." The initial release of this episode was February 3, 2011. The star, Leslie Nopes, (Amy Poehler, born September 16, 1971) holds a public forum to decide what to place in a time capsule that the Parks department wants to create. From the audience an old man suggests the ashes of his cat be included in the capsule contents. The cats's name was Turnip. The meeting was so raucous, with other odd suggestions, that the Parks and Recreation staff decide just to include a tape of this town hall meeting as the only item in the capsule.

February 2, 1882

2012-02-02T02:02:00.001-05:00

The Pinkertons famous agency was founded in 1850. Less remembered is the agency founded in 1906 in Los Angeles, "Nick Harris Detectives". Nicholas B. Harris (February 2, 1882 to 1943) was an investigative reporter turned private detective and his agency is still in business. He is "credited for solving many of the most baffling criminal cases at the turn-of-the-century..." He was also a bit odd: it is said that he "...would not handle or accept a pen from anyone. He always put his left shoe on first, and considered Friday the 13th and black cats to be lucky. Strange as it may seem, his best friends were criminals he sent to the big house."

Nick Harris had a national radio program prior to the birth of television, called "Why Crime Doesn't Pay". He is also the author of In the Shadows, Thirty Detective Stories. (1923). Nick Harris has been called "the front runner of today's who-done-its".

February 1, 1904

2012-02-01T02:01:00.001-05:00

S. J. Perelman, (February 1, 1904 to October 17, 1979), was an American humorist, and New Yorker short story writer. His unique zaniness influenced artists such as Woody Allen. One of his books was Eastward Ha, (1978), and here is a bit of that book. The set up is that Perelman, visiting Scotland, looks up someone to whom he was given a reference. That Scot winds up confiding:

"I've been told my cat's looking for me ... My cat, Magellan--named after the explorer. I left him with a couple a year ago when I went off to Italy, and they claim he's looking for me."
...I still don't twig. Is he asking people the whereabouts of his master, the Marquis of Carabas?
He shrugged, "Who knows? Cats have a way of communicating these things. All I know is I've got to find him , and as I'm rather frail at the moment, I could use your help."

Perelman's own domestic situation was less complicated. He and his wife shared their Manhattan apartment,
with a poodle called Tartuffe, and a cat named Kootzie. We learned this from the biography, S. J. Perelman, A Life, (1987) by Dorothy Hermann.

January 31, 1839

2012-01-31T01:31:00.000-05:00

When the English decided to build a memorial to Lord Nelson, they held a competition for designs. The deadline for proposals was January 31, 1839. The plan chosen involved an enormous Corinthian column with a statue of Nelson on the top, and the whole affair flanked with four lions. The government donated land across from the National Gallery in London for the project, a space which is now famous and called Trafalgar Square.

The lion finally realized was about 20 feet long, and 11 feet tall. There are four of them. A story exists that if Big Ben ever strikes thirteen times, the bronze beasts will come alive.

Jan. 30, 2000

2012-01-30T01:31:00.000-05:00

Dr. Zo Zayong died on January 30, 2000. This Harvard educated architect accumulated the largest collection of Korean folk art, called min-sok-mun-hwa, in one place. He had collected these anonymous paintings from garbage dumps during the years after the Korean war when the traditional culture was despised by the taste makers. Now Zo Zayong is considered the savior of his countries art and history. This art consisted of a huge number of tiger paintings, tigers being the Korean national animal, though not solely of course. These tigers have a peculiar distinctive presentation--they are "crazy and sweet" creatures. These tradition includes a subset of tiger paintings portraying tigers and magpies. Many times these animals are entwined around white haired sages. The whole planet is indebted to Zo Zayong for preserving this art.

January 29, 1927

2012-01-29T01:29:00.001-05:00

Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927 to March 14, 1989) was born in Pennsylvania, and later fell in love with the American southwest. He wrote ficiton and non fiction based on his experiences as a park ranger. Abbey was a Fulbright fellow from 1951 to 1952. In 1966 Abbey's novel The Brave Cowboy (1956) appeared as a movie, Lonely Are the Brave, which starred Kirk Douglas.

His Fire on the Mountain (1962) won the Western Heritage Award for Best Novel in 1963, and we excerpt it below:

The long day in the desert sun had drawn a lot of water from my body. I squatted close to the spring...scooped up water...and drank...When the last tinkle of falling drops had died away I became aware of a deep and unexpected silence. The toads had gone silent, and the water seemed to run more quietly than before. Even the fireflies had disappeared...Looking around in all directions I could see nothing but the damp weeds,... the grand trunks of the yellow pines... I looked up...On the brink of the crag above the spring I saw a pair of yellow eyes gleaming in a sleek head...I stared up at the lion and the lion stared down at me....Paralyzed I waited for death to fall on me....My grandfather called...[T]he lion turned his massive head and with his yellow eyes looked blandly, without curiosity or fear, up the pathway. I heard the old man's boots scraping on the stones of the path, coming toward me, and at last the big cat stirred himself and rose and vanished, all at once.

Fire on the Mountain was a novel, but we know it is true, not just because of the quality of the writing but because it's author was perceptive enough to notice that "Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination." In other words the book rings true because it's author rings true.

Jan. 28, 1935

2012-01-28T01:28:00.001-05:00

David Lodge, (born on January 28, 1935) author of satirical novels about academe, recently published, Deaf Sentence (2008), described by a reviewer as " a witty, original and absorbing account of one man’s effort to come to terms with deafness, ageing and mortality, and the comedy and tragedy of human lives.When the university merged his Department of English with Linguistics, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement..."

We quote this passage exactly:

"'Did you say pig or fig" said the Cat. "I said pig" replied Alice.' Maybe the Cheshire Cat was a bit deaf: it wasn't sure whether Alice had used a bi-labial plosive or a labiodental fricative....

Lodge has had two novels, Nice Work (1988) and Small World, (1984) shortliested for for the Booker Prize. In 1998 Lodge received the British honor of being made a CBE (Companion of the British Empire) for as they say "his services to literature."

January 27, 1720

2012-01-27T01:27:00.002-05:00

Samuel Foote (January 27, 1720 to October 21, 1777) was a English dramatist and actor during a heyday of both those professions. His plays seem to have all been comedies of a satirical slant. We see this in his The Nabob, which, we read, was first performed at the Haymarket Theatre on June 29, 1772. The plot involves someone who made a lot of money in India and then wants to buy his way into society. Our excerpt is a scene wherein fun is made of antiquarians, a profession which has really disappeared now but once engrossed gentlemen of means and involved their collecting physical bits of history and speculating about it. I can't resist including this bit of satire from The Nabob, which builds up to our main excerpt. The interesting thing is that the author is poking fun at intellectuals themselves, which laudable ambition is all too rare today.

[The secretary of The Antiquarian Society, begins a meeting by listing some recently acquired items]

A pair of nutcrackers, presented by Harry the Eighth to Anna Bullen the eve of their nuptials, the wood supposed to be walnut.

First Antiquarian: Which proves, that before the reformation walnut trees were planted in England.
...
A cork-screw presented by Sir John Falstaff to Harry the Fifth, with a tobacco stopper of Sir Walter Raleigh's, made of the stern of the ship in which he first compassed the globe; given to the Society [of Antiquarians] by a clergyman from the North Riding of Yorkshire.
...
A serious collection, in regular and undoubted succession, of all the tickets of Islington Turnpike, from its first institution to the twentieth of May.

Ant[iquarian]: Preserve them with care, as thev may hereafter serve to illustrate that part of the English History.

...A wooden medal of Shakespeare, made from the mulberry tree he planted himself; with a Queen Anne's farthing from the Manager of Drury Lane Playhouse.

...[Then Sir Matthew Mite, the Nabob, is announced]

(Enter Sir Matthew Mite, preceded by four Blacks;
first Black bearing a large book; second, a green chamber pot; third, some lava from the mountain Vesuvius ; fourth, a box. Sir Matthew takes his seat. [The] Secretary receives the first present, and reads the label.)

Sec: Purchased of the Abbe Montini at Naples for five hundred pounds, an illegible manuscript in Latin, containing the twelve books of Livy, supposed to be lost.

Mite: This invaluable treasure was very near falling into the hands of the Pope, who designed to deposit it in the Vatican Library, and I rescued it from idolatrous hands.

Ant: A pious, learned, and laudable purchase!

Sec [receives the second present, and reads tbe label] A sarcophagus, or Roman urn, dug from the temple " of Concord."

Mite. Supposed to have held the dust of Marc Antony's coachman.

Sec. [receives tbe third present, and reads.] A large piece of the lava, thrown from the Vesuvian volcano, at the last great eruption.

Mite. By a chymical analysis, it will be easy to discover the constituent parts of this mass; which, by properly preparing it, will make it no difficult task to propogate burning mountains in England, if encouraged by premiums.
...
Mite. Gentlemen! not contended with collecting, for the use of my country, these inestimable relics, with a large catalogue of petrefactions, bones, beetles, and butterflies, contained in that box, (pointing to tbe present borne by the fourth black.) I have likewise laboured for the advancement of national knowledge. For which end, permit me to clear up some doubts relative to a material and interesting point in the English history. Let others toil to illumine the dark annals of Greece, or of Rome; my searches are sacred only to the service of Britain!
The point I mean to clear up, is an error crept into the life of that illustrious magistrate, the great Whittington, and his no less eminent Cat: And in this disquisition four material points are in question,

1st. Did Whittington ever exist?

2d. Was Whittington Lord-Mayor of London?

3d. Was he really possessed of a Cat?

4th. Was that cat the source of his wealth?

That Whittington lived, no doubt can be made; that he was Lord Mayor of London is equally true; but as to his Cat, that, gentlemen, is the gordian knot to untie. And here, gentleman, be it permitted me to define what a Cat is. A Cat is a domestic, whiskered, four-footed animal, whose employment is catching of mice; but let Puss have been ever so subtle, let Puss have been ever so successful, to what could Puss' captures amount! no tanner can curry the skin of a mouse, no family make a meal of the meat; consequently, no Cat could give Whittington his wealth. ...

1 Ant. What a fund of learning!
2 Ant. Amazing acuteness of erudition!

...

This discussion of a cat is a topical reference, poking fun at an actual dissertation delivered by Sir Samuel Pegge, in December 1771, to the Society of Antiquarians.

January 26, 1920

2012-01-26T01:26:00.002-05:00

Hans Holzer was born on January 26, 1920, in Vienna, and though he started university there, he and his family got out of Germany in 1938. From an early age he demonstrated an interest in the paranormal, and like many with such interests, his stories were sincere. The publicity from his books resulted in his name becoming well-known, and beginning with Ghost Hunter (1963) Hans Holzer wrote more than 100 books. One of the last was co-authored, 10,000 Dreams Interpreted: A Dictionary of Dreams. (2007).

Under "Cats" the Dictionary of Dreams says
To dream of a cat, denotes ill luck, if you do not succeed in killing it or driving it from your sight. If the cat attacks you, you will have enemies who will go to any extreme to blacken your reputation and to cause you loss...To dream of a clean white cat, denotes entanglements which, while seemingly harmless, will prove a source of sorrow and loss of wealth.

According to his New York Times obituary, "He did believe in reincarnation and past lives (he vividly recalled the Battle of Glencoe in 1692 in one of his Scottish lifetimes) and was a Wiccan high priest, as well as a vegan." He died in Manhattan, April 26, 2009.

January 25, 1905 fluff

2012-01-25T01:25:00.000-05:00

Margery Sharp (January 25, 1905 to March 14, 1991) needs an introduction perhaps. In her heyday, most of the 20th century, her novels gained her a reputation as an author of romances, and most know, even now, her most famous creation, Miss Bianca, of The Rescuers, the series whose Disney incarnation it is impossible to get beyond.

There is evidence Sharp did not accept this valuation of her work, and my own assessment is that she had an Austen like aim, with the difference that Sharp's target was rather an emptier modern version of British superficiality. Her own writer's world features this author as

always neatly dressed with a characteristic froth of lace above the collar of her smartly cut dresses and suits. She writes at a beautiful mahogany desk in an exclusive London flat, she rests her feet on a petit point stool, her handsome husband brings her crimson roses as a regular tribute, and she possesses a cook who "is wonderful with biscuits and quite good with cherry cake.

This quote is from an online source which has the most biographical information I was able to find on Sharp.

From Britannia Mews‎ (1946) we have this metaphor: The growler, as its name suggests, belongs to the dog-and-daylight order of vehicles; the hansom to the cat — nocturnal and amorous.

And "The Amethyst Cat" is a short story involving a 7 pound feline Chinese artifact that may have been looted from a Royal palace in the 19th century.

Romance is associated with Margery Sharp because of the precision with which Sharp herself lived; her novels depict a comfortable but vanished and unsentimental English world. A certain Sharp heroine displays a "Beauty, [which] when not matched with malevolence, was more often than not linked with gentle stupidity. "

January 24, 1965

2012-01-24T01:24:00.003-05:00

Winston Churchill, (November 30, 1874 to January 24, 1965) led the Western resistance to the Nazi war effort and is widely considered the major leader during the war. Stalin never got over the belief however, that the Russian people were left to bear the brunt of the fighting and that the Allied forces could have distracted the Germans sooner.

The following quote shows a lighter side to the British leader. The link is to the picture and the text:

A runner-up in the extra manly cat man category, Winston Churchill was both the consummate politician, and the consummate cat man. He kicked Neville "peace for our time" Chamberlain to the kerb, and then kicked Hitler's ass all around Europe. And he did it all with the purring support of his felines (and, apparently, a profane parrot), who would sometimes deign to keep him company during important wartime meetings at 10 Downing Street.

Later in his life, Winston met perhaps his favorite cat, Jock, a white and ginger tabby he received as a birthday present. He loved Jock so much that, in Hemingway fashion, he provided for him in perpetuity. When Winston's country estate, Chartwell, was handed over the National Trust after he died, it was asked that a marmalade cat named Jock be kept there "in comfortable residence." According to somewhat differing accounts, either Jock III or IV is currently keeping a watch over things at Chartwell.

January 23, 1918

2012-01-23T01:23:00.001-05:00

H. L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 to January 29, 1956) was not just an acerbic critic of the American cultural scene, attacking what he saw as opponents of progress; he was a scholar of the American language. In this essay first printed in the New York Evening Mail, on January 23, 1918, and entitled "The Educational Process," Mencken attacks a new trend in teaching, which he calls, 'scientific pedagogy'. In place of the expert, in a field he loves, leading a class, teachers have become victims of a system that rewards "the hideous cavorting of quacks."

There are [still, in spite of the new 'scientific pedagogy] fanatics who love and venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates cat-nip. There are...school marms who would rather parse than eat...strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, who suffer under a split-infinitive as you or I would suffer under gastro-enteritis.. There are worshippers of the binomial theorems. But the system has them in its grip. It combats their enthusiasm diligently and mercilessly. It tries to convert them into technicians... It orders them to teach, not by the process of emotional osmosis which worked in the days gone by, but by formulae which are as baffling to the pupil as they are paralyzing to the teacher.

Apparenly when Mencken wrote the above, he witnessed the fact, if not the name, of college of education degree requirements.

January 22, 1929

2012-01-22T01:22:00.001-05:00

"R.C." [Rudolph Chambers] Lehmann (January 3, 1856 to January 22, 1929) was an English writer, a lawyer, and a politician (the Liberal party). His father was wealthy and his mother, Nina Chambers, had a renowned Scottish cultural heritage: her father was Robert Chambers, publisher, naturalist, and writer.(His was the Book of Days (1862-1864). Lehmann's literary privilege was also earned, but the only challenge to his talent was the criticism of his friends that he was 'indolent.' His parodies of Sherlock Holmes appeared regularly in Punch magazine, from August to November, 1894. A Cambridge alumni database mentions these books he wrote:

In Cambridge Courts, The Complete Oarsman, Mr Punch's Prize Novels, The Adventures of Picklock Holes, Reminiscences. It does not mention a small volume published in 1913, A spark divine: a book for animal-lovers. Here we read about a torty he adopted. The description is in the form of an argument against the idea that cats did not really like people so much, but rather attached themselves to houses. I never heard that idea before, but apparently it was put forth in Edwardian England. Here are R. C. Lehmann's words:

Venus was a tortoiseshell waif who appeared one morning, Heaven knows whence, in our garden. She announced her presence to me by pitiful mewings, and then, in answer to a call, she revealed herself, a thin, woebegone figure with a patchy coat and a long, stiff, attenuated tail. As soon as she had made up her mind about me her friendship; and devotion began to gush forth. She rubbed herself round and round my legs; she showed herself, as a little boy once said of another cat, extraordinarily fond of the human hand. She followed me about the garden, purring madly whenever I touched her; she came with me toward the house and accepted a bowl of milk with rapture. Thenceforward she was my intimate and affectionate friend. Yet it was only by slow degrees that I was able to coax her into the house, and her attitude in it never was one of complete ease. She was a wild free thing and could not brook the confinement of four walls. Where she slept I never discovered, but after breakfast I always found her waiting for me (and milk) near the library window. When she was about to become a mother a comfortable box was prepared for her in a shed, and it was hoped that she would use it for the interesting event. However, she preferred a thick patch of bushes in the garden, and there one morning we discovered her, supremely happy, with four plain kittens. Twice they were transferred to the box in the shed, and twice Venus bore them back to the bushes one by one. While she was carrying a kitten on one of these maternal excursions I met her. She hesitated a moment, and then deposited the kitten at my feet and mewed. The invitation was too obvious to be neglected. I took up her little burden, and carried it for her to her leafy retreat. After that she was allowed to have her way, and we rigged up an old umbrella to protect her and her young barbarians from rain. Never in the whole course of our friendship did she suffer herself to become a strictly domestic cat. She loved and trusted human beings, but she did not like their homes.

One assumes the house Venus rejected was the Lehmann home, a large house called Fieldhead, in Bourne End, (Buckinghamshire). There Lehmann and his American wife had a large litter themselves, who grew up to become artists, mostly, like the novelist, Rosamund Lehmann (1901-1990).

January 21, 1793

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Louis the 16th, the King of France, (born August 23, 1754), died at the hands of a frothing parliament on January 21, 1793. The excesses of democracy had been predicted by theorists, and their prediction seemed to be validated. None of this was apparent of course when the king shot the cat. There were many cats at the royal palaces, and Louis hated them all; they were left over by previous cat loving aristocrats. In typical clumsy fashion though,Louis did not shoot one of the wild cats that throve in the gardens; the cat he shot belonged to one of the court ladies, and he wound up replacing the pet. The ineptness was typical Louis. The cruelty was not; he was clueless but not mean, or even autocratic. Louis the 16th was just the right man for a deluge.

January 20, 1920

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Frederico Fellini (January 20, 1920 to October 31, 1993), director of film classics like La Strada (1954), had a happy childhood. As a young boy he read Il corriere dei piccoli at school. This was an Italian children’s magazine that reproduced traditional American cartoons..Cartoons like "Felix the Cat" so impressed the boy that he later collected and bound these magazines.

At the latter end of a career in film, Fellini, in 1985, received a Film Society of Lincoln Center Award for Cinematic Achievement. He was the first non-Hollywood director to receive the award, and Fellini, on June 10, received the award graciously, commenting, that he knew Americans were nice every since he saw "Felix the Cat" as a child.

January 19, 1958

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Thomas Kinkade (born January 19, 1958) has made sentimental landscapes portrayals into a very successful business. Although his sales practises and his conservative politics have received complaints, and his policy of linking his art to Chrstian themes has offended many mainstream artists, he has in fact raised a lot of money for charity, in addition to a large fortune for himself.

Here is a quote from a book review of Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall, edited by Alexis L. Boylan. Our excerpt is from the art critic of The New Republic, Jed Perl:

Karal Ann Marling, a professor at the University of Minnesota and a proud collector of all things Kinkade, strikes me as almost guileless, though I wouldn’t put it past her to be giving me a campy wink, too..... You cannot argue with her when she declares that “it is one thing to buy a Picasso at auction in New York with all the attendant hoopla, and quite another to wallow in ‘collectibles,’ including checks, pictures sold through credit-card companies, resin figurines based on old Norman Rockwell magazine covers, and the kinds of dust-catchers collected by little old ladies who also collect cats.” What seems to have eluded Marling is the fact that for most of us a Picasso is not something to buy at an auction but something to look at in a museum or in a reproduction. And here is a big part of the problem. For many of the authors involved in this book, dollar value appears to be almost the only salient value...
For true believers in Pop Americana, of course, this will be one more chapter in an updated version of Robert Venturi’s and Denise Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas. Can the intellectuals who have apotheosized the strip malls be wrong? Can the millions who have purchased a Thomas Kinkade of one sort or another be deluded? I see no reason why this cannot be the case. ...

Joan Didion elsewhere described Kinkade's pictures nicely I thought, when she wrote:

A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.

Thomas Kinkade may have done for art what L. Ron Hubbard did for religion -- made the bottom line base, and financially very rewarding.

January 18, 1980

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Cecil Beaton's (January 14, 1904 to January 18, 1980) famed career began with a boyhood passion for photography. His masterpieces derive not from a technical expertise so much, but his ability to pick the right moment to click the shutter. (They say the same of Henri Cartier-Bresson.)

In 1927 Vogue magazine made him a staff photographer. His work helped define a style of sophistication we associate with the 1930s. He was very popular in royal circles for his work, and their American equivalents. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, for instance, had him photograph her cat, in August of 1972.

In his Diary, --they were published before his death-- he notes that Edith Evans was fond of cats, and quotes a story, he was told, of her aplomb. When they were filming Nicholas Nickleby, her role had her holding a cat in one scene. The cat began scratching her, but she did not release him. Afterwards she scolded the cat. 'You tried to steal my scene. We are not filming Dick Whittington., '

Sadly Google Images has failed us, -- rare circumstance! -- in that though you can find a photograph of a cat Beaton photographed, most of the entries when you search, are selected based on the "cat" of catalog, and not much use to those who want to see Beaton's classic eye trained on felines. He does have two pages in Sally Eauclaire's The Cat in Photography (1990.)

January 17, 1600

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Pedro Calderón de la Barca (January 17, 1600 to May 25, 1681), was a soldier, and a priest, and a dramatist. It is of course his literary output that guarantees this native of Madrid a place in world culture: he is one of the greatest playrights we have. His topics have a serious philosophical dimension. Here is an excerpt from a play, Life is a Dream, that Calderon wrote between 1629 and 1635:

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest profit is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.

And the following is clever, though not in a superficial sense; a distinct sincerity is apparent in his writing. This is part of a dialogue from the play,The Devotion to the Cross (1637).

[ To the question, "Who art thou?" a painter replies}

....
And a painter by profession.
I to Celio Batistela,
Of Florence, this fine picture bear
Of a lady young and fair,
Call'd Madama la Florela,
By him order'd, to him sold.

[Eusebio, the questioner, continues]
Let me see it. A fair dame
Truly! but why write her name
Florela.

List! a tale doth run
Of a painter to whom sat
For her picture Puss: below her,
So that every one might know her,
He inscribed, " This is a cat."
.....
Calderon here is concerned to make clear questions about words and reality, art and reality.

He carries out the painter's thought to it's logical extreme, and says finally:

Flowers to him are like a salad;

Give him some colours and a pallet,

Let him eat of what he paints.

Calderon's point in the above dialogue is that labeling the painting, confuses, not clarifies, for when you say "this is a cat" on a painting, you are not accurate. Should the label then, read: "this is a painting of a cat?" And of course if you did this, your artistic creation would fail---because your goal was to paint something that looks like a cat, not looks like a painting of a cat. Nice post modern discussion, only it was written out over 400 years ago, and with perhaps more clarity than our 21st century contemporaries.

January 16, 1866

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Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (February 16, 1802 to January 16, 1866), was a New England (Maine) clockmaker, inventor, and philosopher. He was interested in magnetism, and practiced hypnotism. Those who knew him considered him a healer. Phineas Quimby is now labeled the father of "New Thought". He did not publish books while alive, but Quimby kept a huge notebook and the quotes from his writing I use come from these notes.

Here is a blurb summary of this interesting thinker, Phineas Quimby :

Proud of his New England heritage, passionate in his love of liberty and equality for all, outspoken in his admonitions against what he considered aristocracy and priestcraft, empathetic toward the sick and suffering, he recorded his experiences, experiments and case studies of his own life journey's explorations into humanity and spirituality, in order to leave behind, for us, what he found, for himself, to be universally applicable truths, for the benefit of all mankind.

Here are some excerpts from Quimby's notes, published as Complete Collected Works of Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.(2009).

The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in .... Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put into it the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure."
...
I will suppose a case; for sensation contains no wisdom to the person receiving it, till he is made acquainted with the substance of the thing spoken. If a Frenchman should ask a person (in French), “Have you ever seen a cat? [and] if the person addressed was ignorant of French, the phrase would contain no wisdom ...While they are talking, a cat comes into the room, and the Frenchman says, “Voila un chat.” Now he has imparted his meaning, and both have wisdom in regard to the animal; but the wisdom is in them and not in the cat. Now here is the trinity in the principles of reason. The word is the name of the Father; the cat [word as in 'the cat'] (... matter), [is] the Son [and then theory, that is the]... application of the word to the animal was the Holy Ghost (or explanation) of the union of the Father and Son.

My brackets may have made it worse, but I was impressed with Quimby's appreciation of the necessity for three factors to compose a moment of understanding --word, matter, and theory, in the case of the cat. He healed Mary Baker Eddy and she later developed his ideas. Wonder if Freud was influenced by Quimby's idea of talking to heal.

January 15, 1955

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Peggy Guggenheim is remembered as a generous supporter of the arts, and this is a sound judgment. She slept with some of the artists, like Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 to January 15, 1955), the French surrealist painter. Tanguy had been a secretive child, though when he was 14 years old, he was expelled from Lycee Montaigne for possessing ether. He embraced the intra war bohemian lifestyle. Of course he was impoverished, so when Guggenheim arranged a show for him at her London gallery (July 6, 1938), and he sold some canvases, it is lovely to recall his generosity. A fellow artist, Victor Brauner, was too proud to take money, but Tanguy sent him 1 pound a week to care for the Tanguys' Manx cat, left in Paris as they traveled to England for the exhibition.

January 14, 1904

2012-01-14T01:14:00.000-05:00

Cecil Beaton ( January 14, 1904 to January 18, 1980) has enduring fame as a fashion and society photographer. He photographed the British royal family,for example, including the famous wedding picture of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. His many credits include Lady Christabel Aberconway's cat, Antonia. I have taken the liberty of putting the picture below. It was taken in 1950.

"Lady Aberconway's cat, Antonia, Bodnant, 1950 "

Bodnant, the location where Antonia was photographed, is the estate of the Aberconways, in Wales. And Antonia was not just a rich cat, but her mistress, Lady Christabel Aberconway, (1890 - 1974) was a scholar: she is the author of the Dictionary of Cat Lovers (1949). The wife of the second Baron Aberconway, Christabel Macnaghten McLaren, would be described privately by Beaton in his diary, making an entrance in the 1960s, in these words:
The last to make a theatrical entrance with a cane was pie-eyed, pissed, Christabel Aberconway.

January 13, 1941

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Of course, being a genius, and given to deliberately providing fodder for the scholarly industry, James Joyce (February 2, 1882 to January 13, 1941) was compatible, comcatible I suppose is a better word, with the feline species. They inhabit his literature also:

In the 4th chapter (Calypso) of Ulysses,(1922) Leopold Bloom feeds a cat. And in Finnegans Wake,(1939) line 116.2 (Tindall's numbering) mentions "Esra, the cat". This is from a Joycean parody of "As I was going to St. Ives." The reference is to Ezra Pound, a famous cat lover.

Perhaps I should have described Joyce as compatcatible. Perhaps William Tindall's A reader's guide to James Joyce (1995) will have an opinion on that sometime.

January 12, 1976

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Agatha Christie (September 15, 1890 to January 12, 1976) was the prolific English author of detective stories. Sixty-six novels according to the Guiness Book of World Records. There are naturally cats in her stories, set as the tales are among various social classes and locales. These excerpts speak to the integral part cats can play in her work:

"The window was open just wide enough for a cat to get through.” “But it was not fixed in that position." ... “Yes, but I know it was a cat.” “You did not see a cat?” Blake said perplexedly and slowly: “No, I did not see it..." (Five Little Pigs)

'The cat,' declaimed Poirot, 'was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. It is still regarded as a symbol of good luck'...("The Adventure of the Cheap Flat".)

It is part of the cat. 'It can't be. It's a black cat.' 'A black cat, yes, but you see the tip of the black cat's tail happens to be white.' 'Why, so it does! How clever of you!' (Evil Under the Sun)

In fact cats are not a typically critical element in Christie's stories, even though -- cats were her first audience. She mentions this in her autobiography, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography.(1977). As a child, she told stories to "the kittens in the garden."

And as time goes by, one is ever more appreciative of having a positive role model in Miss Marple, for being a snoopy old lady.

Jan. 11, 2011

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Banksy is the graffitti artist whose own anonymity he protects. It is therefore hard to link him to a date in the almanac. However a Bonhams sale on January 11, 2011 includes a poster he made for Greenpeace. The poster shows characters from Disney's Jungle Book film, blindfolded and tied before a figure with an axe, obviously a representative of environmental degradation. There is in the background a ruined forest sketched.

Below is a quote from a blurb for the sale:

An original art work by the legendary street artist, Banksy, for a Greenpeace Save or Delete campaign photographic poster, is to be sold at Bonhams, New Bond Street, as part of its Urban Art sale on 11 January 2011. Estimated at £60,000 - 80,000, the unique piece (lot 67) was given to the vendor by the artist himself. The art work was commissioned by Greenpeace to highlight the problems of global deforestation as part of their Save or Delete campaign. The image, which features some of the main characters from Disneys The Jungle Book transposed onto a picture of a devastated forest, was intended for use on posters, billboards and postcards. While it was printed, it was never put into circulation because of the protectionist policies at Disney. A version of this poster is illustrated in Banksys Wall and Piece book.

One of the figures bound and blindfolded is a tiger.

January 10, 1900

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The Wellesley Club of Rochester, N. Y., will hold a cat show, January 8, 9 and 10. This notice appeared in the collected issues of The Poultry monthly, (Volume 23, 1901) and, published in Albany NY, which contained other excerpts of interest. For example, scientific conjecture was deemed of interest to poultry farmers:

Whether the European Wild cat is one of the progenitors of the ordinary house cat, or whether the house cat imported North, is the progenitor of the Wild cat, is not sure. This we know, that they are anatomically different, i. e. the intestines of the house cat are nine times the length of the cat; the intestines of the Wild cat are just three times the length of the animal. The origin of many of our domestic animals is lost in antiquity. In the near future, with the attention that is being paid to cats. I hope we shall know a great deal more of existing breeds than we do now, and I think shows and fanciers might... help and not make the confusion worse...

and some letters to the editor concerned cats:

Mrs. H. V. James, our best Smoke breeder, writes:—"Now that Smokes are coming into fashion so strongly in England and America, perhaps the novice may be glad of a few hints on this charming breed, and a description of a Smoke. English breeders and exhibitors at present strive after the following points: A Smoke should be a shaded cat, entirely without markings, shading from dense cinder color to dark grey. The under coat should be almost white, the mask and paws black and the frill grey, the eyes orange. At present the dark Smokes are the more popular, and I certainly think them more beautiful than the lighter ones, as the contrast between the dark outer and white inner coat, is more marked; but I think the time will come when the light ones will also have a better chance in the show pen. In breeding Smokes, great care should be taken to avoid mating with a Tabby of any kind; if you can find a Smoke sire for your Smoke queen, so much the better. If not and she is light, mate with a good black, or if on the dark side, with a shaded Silver or Chinchilla. Be careful to select a heavily coated sire, as a long coat of true Persian flakiness is very important, so that, as the cat moves the dark coat may divide and show the soft white undercoat..... Smokes are very hardy and love an outdoor life. "Jogram" has lived all his life in an unheated wooden house with a covered run, and has never been ill." I consider his wealth of coat is also due to his out-door life. ....

[and other readers write in]

Sir,—I quite endorse Mrs. Barton Collier's opinion that "the best creams are not bred from creams." For instance, my tortoiseshell "Brunette" had an unmarked cream kitten in her spring litter last year by my silver tabby stud cat "The Judge." This kitten I showed at the Botanic Gardens, and I know that by several breeders it was considered the best there. Unfortunately, its intended pen companion died a few days before the show, so it could not compete, as it was entered in the pair class. "Princess Beauty" (a light sable tabby, a daughter of "Champion Prince Charlie" and Miss Eggett's brown tabby "Cleopatra") had two creams in her last autumn litter by "The Judge." Unfortunately I lost both of them. She has now had another litter by him, and again two creams; they had faint narrow bars when born, but now at a little over a fortnight old, they are nearly unmarked. They are both bonny kittens, and if not gone to new homes before the Summer show I shall hope to exhibit them here.

January 9, 1900

2012-01-09T01:09:00.003-05:00

The Poultry Monthly issues, collected in a Volume 23, and published in Albany, New York, had several interesting items, in 1901. There was an advertisement for a cat show:

The Wellesley Club of Rochester, N. Y., will hold a cat show, January 8, 9 and 10. There are 53 classes for different colors and breeds. First prize, $4; 2nd prize, $2, besides eight B. C. C. medals and numerous specials. The object of this show is to raise money for a charitable purpose, and the profits of the show will go to that object. It is hoped it will be well supported. Mr. E. N. Barker, Albany, N. Y., will judge all classes.

and there was a notice posted by an "educated woman," for employment. Her current situation and the desired position were described thusly:

[She has] excellent recommendations as to character and capability, of wide experience in various lines of work. She is capable of managing a household without supervision, of acting as seamstress, doing clerical work, etc., and wishes to locate on an up-to-date poultry farm of good capacity, in order to get an insight into the work as a whole. She is willing to help wherever needed, asking only moderate compensation with a home for her four-year-old girl, among refined people. It is significant that she looks towards poultry keeping as a permanent business, a means of making a home and earning a livelihood. Any one interested, who can give good references, and means business, can learn further particulars by addressing the Editor.

And, this notice about cat club officers being elected. I include it, not just because of the historical interest since cat clubs were new, in the early 20th century, but because of the description here of what were conceived then, as the job of a cat club.

CAT CLUB ELECTS OFFICERS.
The second annual meeting of the Beresford Cat Club was held at the club rooms March 30, and the following officers were elected:
President, Mrs. Clinton Locke; first vice president, Mrs Charles Hampton Lane; second vice president, Mrs. P. A. Howe; recording secretary, Miss Lucy Johnston; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Albert E. Michelson; treasurer, Mrs. Edward Tolman; board of directors, Mrs. J. H. Pratt, Mrs M. Fisk-Green, Miss L. L. Fergus, Mrs. B. P. Robinson and Mrs. Vincent E. Gregg. The treasurer's report showed money received from all sources. $1,714.53; money disbursed, $1,114.38, leaving a balance in the treasury of $600.15. iiie club is free from all debt. The membership numbers nearly 300, over 100 of whom are non-resident members in all parts of the United States, Canada and Mexico. The club has taken up the humane side of the work and nominated Mrs. M.Fisk-Green, assisted by Miss Bessie Saul and Miss Edytha Gregg, whose duties will be to find homes for homeless cats, and to dispose of such as are sick and maimed.
The new officers may certainly be dubbed a corps of workers. The stud book Is the largest in America and bids fair to be a good-sized book of useful and necessary information to a breeder. We find the first volume a great help and shall welcome another.

January 8, 1824

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We remember Wilkie Collins, (January 8, 1824 to September 23, 1889) , as the author of The Moonstone, (1868) considered by many to be the first detective story. It tends to be the English who consider this Englishman to have a superior claim to the American Edgar Allen Poe (his Murders in the Rue Morgue is dated to 1841) regarding the invention of this genre.

In 1866. Wilkie Collins wrote to Nina Chambers, the daughter of author and publisher Robert Chambers, and described the following scene:

I went to show my friend Pigott the grave of the illustrious Shelley [at Rome—in the Protestant Cemetery]. Approaching the resting-place of the divine poet in a bright sunlight, the finest black Tom you ever saw discovered at an incredible distance that a catanthropist had entered the cemetery —rushed up at a gallop with his tail at right angles to his spine—turned over on his back with his four paws in the air, and said in the language of cats: 'Shelley be hanged! Come and tickle me!' I stooped and tickled him. We were both profoundly affected. I have wandered far from the statement that a cat is at her best in a room, and yet I cling to it. For in a room a cat confers and diffuses comfort in the very act of accepting it. Place her on a cushion with her front paws either folded and tucked beneath her or kneading her soft couch with a luxurious movement, and she will make, not merely a corner, but a whole library cozy. Her presence can ennoble a hovel and invest a semi detached cottage with an appearance of feudal and heraldic repose. If you call her she blinks and purrs; if you leave her to herself she is willing to pass hours in serene abstraction from the business of the world, conscious only of her own comfortable decorative quality and of her self-respecting dignity.

Wilkie Collins shared with his good friend Charles Dickins a concern to portray and thereby ameliorate the social ills of Victorian society, in ways besides cat ownership, too.

January 7, 1912

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Charles Addams (January 7, 1912 to September 29, 1988) is the only New Yorker cartoonist to see his art so inspirational in so many media. Still for some, the wit of the cartoons exactly fits their original linear sketches.

Charles Addams, between wives, dated many, including, Axie Whitney. Her family was old California money and her father owned La Valencia hotel (La Jolla). She was a sculptor in the challenging medium of bronze. Whitney and Addams met at a party around 1964. She would later recall how kind he was to her children.

Addams was in the habit of bringing his own art as a gift, in various social situations,say, as a hostess gift at a party. So when Axie Whitney's cat died, Addams came to visit, bringing his 1961 cartoon showing two salesmen regarding a "Beware of the Cat" sign in a yard. As they enter the space, one says to the other, 'there's a silly sign if I ever saw one;' they do not notice, up in the treetops, the Cheshire cat.

Most of the above account is from a biography of Charles Addams, Chas Addams: a cartoonist's life,(2006). Linda H. Davis, wrote it.

January 6, 1859

2012-01-06T01:06:00.001-05:00

Samuel Alexander (January 6, 1859, to September 13, 1938) was an Oxford educated philosopher. A recipient of the Order of Merit (1930), his major contribution to philosophy is Space, Time, and Deity (1920). His colleague Ernest Rutherford, "The father of nuclear physics" said to Samuel Alexander at some point, "When you think about all those years you've been talking about those things, Alexander, and what does it all add up to? Hot air, nothing but hot air." Rutherford would make his own contribution to hot air, hot hot air: his research was instrumental in the development of the bomb. For most of his colleagues and students, though, Alexander was a revered figure.

After his retirement in 1924, the University of Manchester commissioned a bust of him to be displayed on campus and we quote from his speech of acknowledgement of this honor, which quite delighted him. Samuel Alexander said ...It is a great thing, I feel, to have secured the affection of my pupils and my colleagues, and my other friends. ...I cannot tell how I have won this affection; unless it be that I possess a fair stock of affection myself, which extends to all children and to dogs and cats and other animals...

Which is an odd comment.

January 5

2012-01-05T01:05:00.003-05:00

By most accounts George Washington and the woman he married (on January 5, 1759, though some sources say January 6) Martha Dandridge Custis had a happy union. That does not mean there were not historians who painted critical pictures of the marraige. We have the details below from an article, "The Loves of the Presidents," written by Frank. G. Carpenter and published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, and reprinted in the October 1885 issue of Parry's Literary Journal.

. By the death of her first husband [Martha Custis] was left wealthy, and she brought to her new husband about one hundred thousand dollars in money and a large amount of real estate.
...She was under middle size, and had dark brown eyes and hair. Washington is said to have been a homely young man and a very good-looking old one. Martha Washington was a very pretty girl, but not a very good-looking old woman. As she matured she grew stout; and, though her pictures represent her as a beauty, the current history of the times says she was a plainly-dressed, robust old woman who looked older than her husband. She was not noted for her social nor her intellectual qualities. She could not spell, and probably did not read a book from one end of the year to the other. She was a sort of goodygoody woman, who almost always had knitting-needles in her hands, and who thought she did a great thing when she saved the ravellings of a lot of old black silk stockings and wornout chair-covers and wove them into a dress for herself. She was very proud of her husband; and... she secluded herself after his death, seeing no one for months, and allowing only a cat to enter the room through a hole which was cut under the door.

Lytton Strachey published Eminent Victorians in 1918, a book which is said to have started the trend of irreverent biography. I think Mr. Carpenter got a head start on him.

Jan. 4, 2011

2012-01-04T01:12:00.000-05:00

Dick King-Smith ( March 27, 1922 til January 4, 2011) was the British author of children's books, whose story about Babe (1983) (UK title The Sheep-Pig) was made into a movie of great fame. He later wrote a story for children called The Catlady (2004) about Isabel Ponsonby who inherited her parents' house and, who never married because she had spent her youth taking care of her parents. She indulged the cats and had twenty (including kittens) at the time the book starts.

Back to Babe, it was startling to learn that the original of Fly, the sheepdog, ended up run over by a train. King-Smith was made an OBE in 2010.

January 3, 1856

2012-01-03T01:03:00.000-05:00

Rudolph Chambers Lehmann (January 3, 1856 to January 22, 1929) was better known as "R.C." Lehmann, a noted writer for Punch magazine. He was a major contributor to the British humor periodical for 30 years, and some of his many books, were collections of his columns, just as writers do today. An example of this is the book, The Adventures of Picklock Holes (1901,) which collected his parodies of Sherlock Holmes. Lehmann was the first to see the parodic potential of Doyle's ratiocinative hero. His Cambridge bio lists Lehmann as a master of parody.

I don't know how much press attention a little 70 page book published in 1913 got. The book was A spark divine: a book for animal-lovers, and I don't pick up any hint of parody in what then and now might be considered sentimental essays. It is actually a pleasant quick read, and here is a humorous sample:

With what a dignity and grace and discretion does a cat make her offer. She tells you plainly it is there for the taking, but she would scorn to force it upon you, for she has her reserve and is proud of her independence. "If you like me," she seems to say, "and are willing to respect me, count me your faithful cat. I shall make few claims on you. An armchair, a cushion, a saucer of milk, a plate of fish will satisfy my wants.

In the book Lehmann recounts a few dog and horse stories, also. He ends with these words,

And from their beasts ...[men] have learnt how to be good to one another, bearing themselves humbly and loyally in the sight of Him who ordained life in its various forms, allotting to one a furry coat, to another wings, to a third the gift of speech, and to all a heart where love can make its home.

Okay, the first world war was about to start, perhaps he was giving a bit of a punch in the ribs, but to human ribs, not animal ribs.

January 2, 1866

2012-01-02T01:02:00.005-05:00

Gilbert Murray (January 2, 1866 to May 20, 1957) was a socially well-connected scholar who wrote poetry and achieved fame as a translator of Greek plays, and as an historian. This latter refers to books like his 1913
Four Stages of Greek Religion. After 1908 Murray was the Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. All his five chldren became independent thinkers; his daughter Rosalind married Arnold Toynbee. Murray also led an active public life, and though known for his distrust of organized religion, he actually had a sensitive recollection of the unknown which surrounded man's rational talents. He also was very tender toward animals. The author in his memoirs, published in 1960 under the title Gilbert Murray: an unfinished autobiography [it includes essays by his friends] recalls as a youth, that "Ruddy came round...and we walked in Kensington Gardens, and talked about books.His surname I should mention was Kipling. I thought him extraordinarily clever and exciting though there was something in him that repelled me. He threw his stick at a cat..."

His biographer Francis West expands upon the connection between religion and tenderness for animals:

"Gilbert Murray offered another explanation of his strong feelings against organized religion which had little to do with his own direct religious experience. The roots ....were indeed to be found in his childhood. It was the cruelty to animals that had revolted him to the point of contemplating suicide at ...school. The miracle of the Gadarene swine set off a moral rebellion in him; it seemed ...'monstrously cruel to drive...a lot of unoffending pigs over a precipice'...As an older man his nerves could be shattered for the day by seeing a cat run over in a London street."

This is recounted in Gilbert Murray, a life, by Francis West (1984).

January 1, 1877

2012-01-01T01:01:00.000-05:00

"We trust that the present occasion may tend to unite in bonds of close affection ourselves and our subjects;
that from the highest to the humblest, all may feel that under our rule the great principles of liberty, equity,
and justice are secured to them; and to promote their happiness, to add to their prosperity, and advance their
welfare, are the ever present aims and objects of our Empire."

Above are the words of Queen Victoria, read to her Indian subjects on January 1, 1877. She had used the title, "Empress of India." since May 1, 1876, but the event on January 1, called the " Proclamation Durbar" was the official announcement, meant to include the transfer of India from the East India Company to the British government. This durbar, (a durbar is a court, a term used in Moghul history first) the first of three, was only attended by a British monarch, in 1911.

She did not write the speech herself, but the sentiments were close to those she felt for her pets. These included cats and dogs. She had a Persian named "White Heather", and another of that breed, named "Flypie." Both these cats survived their mistress and they were both cared for by King Edward and his wife Alexandra after Victoria died.

December 31, 1955

2011-12-31T00:31:00.000-05:00

Ludwig Lewisohn, (May 30, 1882, to December 31, 1955) was an American novelist and translator. His book, The Case of Mr. Crump, (1926) features a cat that becomes emblematic of the general misery of Lewisohn's first marriage. Tiddles, is a white cat, whose kittens are left to run and ruin the home. That was literature: in reality Lewishohn was devoted to cats. Stories exist of him climbing trees in his sixties to rescue cats.

Lewisohn was was associate editor for the Nation from 1920-24. He was a prominent Zionist. Besides his novels he wrote The Creative Life (1924) and Cities and Men (1927). Lewisohn was one of the founders of Brandeis University.

Dec. 30, 1774

2011-12-30T00:30:00.001-05:00

Whitehead, Paul (February 6 ,1710- December 30,1774), was an English satirist of the 18th century.

His satirical treatment of political figures, of common fads, of people he saw as enemies of himself or his friends, took the form of verse. He was often mentioned along with Alexander Pope, though his writing was not of the calibre of Pope's. Whitehead was aware of this as this excerpt shows:

Pope writes unhurt but know,, 'tis different! quite

To beard the lion, and to crush the mite.

Safe may he dash the Statesman in each line ;.

Those dread his satire, who dare punish mine

Still, Whitehead would live to receive rewards from the government, as well as an annuity from a fellow member of the Hellfire Club, a group which prided itself on its wicked behavior. This group was one of several in 18th century England which set a precedent for the 19th century epater le boourgeoisie sentiment, and the 20th century revolt against common proprieties in the 1960s. Here is a bit of Whitehead's writing which makes this attitude clear (Moorfields is the setting for club festivities):

Midst the mad mansions of Moorfields,

I'd be A straw crown'd monarch, in mock majesty ;

Rather than sov' reign rule Britannia's fate,

Curs'd with the follies, and the farce of state.

Rather in Newgate walls, O let me dwell,

A doleful tenant of the darkling cell,

Than swell in palaces the mighty store

Of fortune's fools, and parasites of power;

Than crowns, ye gods ! be any state my doom,

Or any dungeon — but a drawing-room !‎

One suspects these sentiments were easy to voice when in the company of fellow revelers, His wife was rich and stupid, and Whitehead always treated her tenderly, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Our excerpts are from: The poems and miscellaneous compositions of Paul Whitehead (1777).

Dec 29, 1925

2011-12-29T01:29:00.001-05:00

Felix Vallotton (December 28, 1865 to December 29, 1925) was a Swiss artist who lived mainly in France. He is famous not just for his oil paintings, but is considered a leader in the 19th century revival of the art of woodcuts. His illustrations helped pay the bills, and as he became famous, clients like Tiffany bought designs from him. He married a widow whose father was an art dealer. His work is very distinctive, but firmly in the modern school. Leo Stein bought Vallotton's Nude Lying on Yellow Cushion, in 1905. He painted many nudes, some which include cats. His "Women with Cats". features two naked women sitting on a carpet with three cats, (two calicos and an orange and white cat.).

His woodcuts are often starkly black and white without the modulations of shadows. His work seems on the verge of becoming pure pattern, typically, but his portraits are astonishing. His 1898 series, Les Intimites, featured a table of contents that consisted of impressions from chopped up pieces of the wood blocks he had used, thus also demonstrating the album was a limited edition. Vallotton's woodcuts that feature cats, like La Paresse, which shows a naked woman on a patterned bedspread, with a white cat stretching to reach her hand, are among his most famous work.

Dec. 28, 2010

2011-12-28T02:28:00.002-05:00

According to the blurb of a recent book Denis Dutton (February 9, 1944 to December 28, 2010) was "the founder and editor of the hugely popular Web site "Arts & Letters Daily," named by the "Guardian" as the best Web site in the world. He also founded ... the journal "Philosophy and Literature," and ...[was] a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand."

The recent book is The art instinct: beauty, pleasure, & human evolution (2009) Here Dutton says, in discussing the beginning of Eric Hebborn's career as an art forger in the 1950s:

...Hebborn was repainting large areas of old works, cleverly "improving" them. An insignificant landscape became, with the additon of a balloon in its gray sky, an important (and expensive) painting documenting the early history of aviation. As Hebborn wrote, "adding a cat to the foreground guaranteed the sale of the dullest landscape.." Such "improved" pictures went straight into gold frames and the plush surroundings of a dealer gallery...
...This charming rogue died from a hammer blow to the back of his skull received in a dark alley in Rome in 1996. Police were never able to make an arrest for the murder.

It is Dutton's assessment that because of the enormous artistic talent of Hebborn, (as opposed to many forgers) the complete identification of his forgeries will probably never be accomplished, and thereby weeded out of the museums and private collection where they still reside.

December 27, 1782

2011-12-27T00:27:00.001-05:00

Henry Home, later to be addressed as Lord Kames (1696 to December 27, 1782) was a member of the Scottish Enlightenment, and he has been called a mentor of such writers of philosophy, as David Hume. He himself was also a lawyer and concerned with agricultural improvement, in addition to carefully considering philosophical issues. As with many intellectuals in this transitional century, Home turned a quizzical and fresh eye on everything in his environment.

In one of his later works, Gentleman Farmer (1776) Henry Home addresses issues involving hedges. and other agricultural problems:

We are now arrived at the most important article of all, that of training up a thorn-hedge after it is planted. ....[After experimenting with different techniques Home observes of the ideal hedge] The sides [of the thorn hedge] have been pruned, but the top left entire... leaving all above 'full "freedom of growth. ... This form gives free access to rain, sun, and air: every twig has its share, [and this hedge] is impenetrable even by a bull.... Plashing an old hedge, an ordinary practice in England, makes indeed a good interim fence; but at the long run is destructive to the plants.... A cat is said among the vulgar to have nine lives: is it their opinion, that a thorn, like a cat, may be cut and slashed at will without suffering by it? A thorn is a tree of long life. If instead of being massacred by plashing, it were raised and dressed in the way here described, it would continue a firm hedge perhaps five hundred years.

Plashing is a weaving of hedge branches, and I take this to mean that all the branches do not have access to sunlight and rain, which Home has observed is the ideal situation.

The variety of his thought and questions may be noticed in his book, Sketches of the History of Man (1774). Lord Kames derives four stages in the history of man: First was hunter-gatherers, where people did not work together, and second was herder of animals, which needed more human interaction, and larger groups. The third stage, of agriculture, again saw a necessary growth of social complexity and the fourth stage encompassed a move from villages to sea ports and markets. This last stage made it necessary for man to create a complex legal structure.

A unifying theme in Home's books is the stress on observation as a conduit for knowledge. He said he saw all four stages of the history of man in his Scottish homeland.

December 26, 1890

2011-12-26T00:26:00.001-05:00

Heinrich Schliemann ((January 6, 1822 to December 26, 1890) was a colorful character in the history of archeology. His conviction that Homer's stories were based on real events led to the discovery of the actual site of the Trojan War. Schliemann also excavated at Tiryns, and as was his want, a book was quickly published to communicate his results. This was Tiryns: The prehistoric palace of the kings of Tiryns, (1885). Here he recounts some of the stories surrounding this Greek city, specifically the description of a chimaera:, or "Chimaira, the unconquerable. Of divine birth was she, and not of men, in front a lion and behind a serpent, and in the midst a goat; and she breathed dread fierceness of blazing fire." Schliemann found gold artifacts, like the Mask of Agamemnon, at more than one site he excavated.

December 25, 1995

2011-12-25T01:22:00.001-05:00

Nicholas Slonimsky (April 27, 1894 to December 25, 1995) was a Russian composer, conductor and scholar. He wrote studies entitled things like Sex and the Music Librarian. Among his many books is a Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns (1947). Slonimsky was the first conductor of many avant garde pieces, such as some by Charles Ives. He had the grace and humility of real genius. Frank Zappa was a friend and Slonimsky not only performed his own work occasionally at Zappa concerts, Nicholas Slonimsky named his cat Grody-to-the-Max after he learned this phrase from Zappa's daughter.

December 24, 1955

2011-12-24T00:24:00.003-05:00

Gary Lachman, a New Jersey native, was born on December 24, 1955. He has written a pile of books on occult subjects, as well as gained fame as a rockinroller with the band Blondie.

In his book, A secret history of consciousness (2003) we find a cat's attention held up to a mystical analysis:

If no one plays with it and nothing else arouses its attention, a cat will stare into space and eventually fall asleep. Compared to it, the viewers of the worst sitcom are virtual Prousts.

Lachman's biography of Ouspensky --In Search of P.D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff (2006) is one of a long list of books he wrote, including:

The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the modern world .(2011)
The Dedalus book of literary suicide: dead letters, (2008)
Rudolf Steiner: an introduction to his life and work (2007)
Jung the mystic: the esoteric dimensions of Carl Jung's life and teachings (2010)
and (as a contributor) Around the Outsider: Essays Presented to Colin Wilson on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday.(2011).

Busy guy--is he looking for something or hiding from something?

December 23, 1790

2011-12-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

Jean-Jacques Champollion, December 23, 1790 to March 4, 1832) despite being from a poor family, developed his extraordinary gift for languages as a youth and was conversant in a number of ancient and modern languages. His publication of Précis du système hiéroglyphiquegave (1824) the result of his study of the Rosetta Stone, created the subject of Egyptian studies. Thus, though no evidence is apparent of a life with cats, because of his talent and industry we are able to discover more details of the long known Egyptian deity Bastet, one of several deities with cat like features in Egyptian history.

December 22, 1905

2011-12-22T00:22:00.002-05:00

Kenneth Rexroth (December 22, 1905 to June 6, 1982) the American poet, "...was among the first poets in the United States to explore traditional Japanese poetic forms such as haiku. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance." Thus the standard summary of Rexroth's significance. We also find out he introduced Ginsberg the night Howl was read publicly the first time. His stature is indicated by the fact that Rexroth wrote the article on "Literature" for the Encyclopedia Britannica (1973.) He certainly ranks in our own private canon. Here is an excerpt from his poem "Only Years."
...
Sometimes we went out and gathered
Cigarette butts by flashlight.
But we went swimming every day,
All year round. We had a dog
Called Proclus, a vast yellow
Mongrel, and a white cat named
Cyprian. We had our first
Joint art show, and they began
To publish my poems in Paris.
....

December 21, 1821

2011-12-21T00:21:00.001-05:00

The Rev. Samuel Haughton, M.D., F.R.S (December 21, 1821 to October 31, 1897) was president of the Royal Irish Academy, serving from 1886 to 1891, and for twenty years he was secretary of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland. Haughton succeeded Sir Samuel Ferguson in the presidency and it is actually in a book about Ferguson where we find some illuminating details about Haughton, tigers, and zoos, in the Victorian era.

According to the authors of Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of His Day, Haughton "is a man eminent in the scientific world, the author of ' Principles of Animal Mechanics,' 1873, and 'Lectures on Physical Geography,' 1880. He is Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and he takes an active interest in the work of the Dublin Hospitals, and in the Zoological Gardens.

Haughton's tiger stories fascinated these authors and they recount: "He has found it a difficult matter to raise the funds necessary for the support of the Zoo, and on an occasion when it was urgently in need of funds Professor Haugfiton called on his friends and fellow-citizens to become subscribers to the Institution. 'I have applied in vain to the Bank of Ireland for an advance of one hundred pounds [he stated]. The directors have demurred, although I have offered ample security for twice the amount. I proposed to hand over and deposit with them a fine young tiger well worth two hundred pounds; but, strange to relate, they have declined my offer.'

Regarding the Rev. Haughton, the text continues:

One of the finest tigers in the collection has shown its gratitude for services rendered by the courageous and resourceful Professor. The beast—a noble specimen—was threatened with gangrene in its paw, the claw having become distorted and grown into the foot. It was believed that amputation would be necessary to save its life; but how to perform the operation was the question, and what surgeon would volunteer to beard the tiger in his den? Dr Haughton undertook the dangerous experiment. In conjunction with his confreres he devised a net-work which was thrown over the animal, his mate having been secured in a side-den. Thus entangled, the tiger was drawn forward to the partially opened door, its feet, excepting the diseased one, firmly held by the assistant surgeons in the network, so that the beast, though much excited, was unable to strike at the operator. The infuriated animal had almost freed himself by a bound which brought his head in contact with the roof of his den, and blood flowed freely from the wound thus inflicted. The rage of the tigress looking on through the bars of the side-den was terrible. She flung herself against the barrier with an impetus which threatened to shatter it, and knocked off the hat of Professor Haughton. The efforts of the powerful beasts were, however, unavailing. The tiger was again drawn to the front, and the diseased paw operated on by Dr Haughton, who found it would suffice to cut away the offending claw, the suffering beast angrily endeavouring to strike at the operator who put him to so much pain. As soon as the wound was dressed and the network withdrawn the tigress was re-admitted. She had watched the surgical operation, and at once turned up the tiger's paw and inspected the work done; then she licked her mate, as a cat its kittens, and soothed him speedily, and soon the operators withdrew. A week later Dr Haughton was again at the Zoo to see how his patient got on. It was the dining hour of the carnivora, and the house was filled with children and other spectators. Professor Haughton kept in the background; but the animal espied him, and dropping the bone at which he was gnawing, began to purr like a cat, and rub himself against the bars. Seeing himself in this friendly fashion recognised, Dr Haughton came forward, got the keeper to open a part of the door of the den, and the tiger, still purring and rubbing his shoulder as a pleased cat is wont to do, allowed the paw to be examined, and evidently recognised in the operator who had enraged him previously a benefactor to whom he desired to express gratitude for service done to him. "Next day, and for years after, the tigress showed herself most friendly and grateful for what I had done," writes Dr Haughton.

The above details may be found in the book Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his day, Volume 2, (1896), written and compiled by "Mary Catherine (Guiness) Ferguson (lady)" and Sir Samuel Ferguson.

And so we find that the ancient story of the wild beast grateful to a human for removing a thorn, casts a long shadow in European cultural history.

December 20, 1862

2011-12-20T00:20:00.002-05:00

Robert Knox (September 4, 1791 to December 20, 1862) was a famous Scottish surgeon associated with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, for some of his career.

In a book titled Great artists and great anatomists (1852) Knox presents a quixotic approach to the organization of human knowledge, which is interesting in that it recalls for us a Victorian flux in establishing modern standards of knowledge.

... Art[s],... distinguish man from the mere animal. All men are not destined merely to wield a sabre and to feed a pig. The connexion of Art, with some knowledge on the part of the artist of the interior structure of man, has never been questioned ; but the precise relation which Anatomy bears to Art, has not yet been, in the Author's opinion, determined. —What is the relation of Science to Art? ...

The author of the following ... has been long persuaded that the true relation of anatomy to science, philosophy, and art, has not yet received from thinking men the attention it merits. To supply a deficiency which he believes to exist in the history of the progress of the human mind from error to truth, the discovery of which he presumes to be the only rational end of human existence, he ventures to offer to the public, in a biography of George Cuvier and [others the] ...application of anatomy, transcendental and abstract, but still essentially descriptive, to philosophy...

..... Cuvier,... made of zoology a science. But, above all, by this method, by this new element of knowledge, was he enabled to read the true character of the fossil remains of all epochs, and, for the first time, to present man with a " History of the Earth," not founded on fables, but on facts.

From the beginning to the end of his career, the nature of his inquiries was either mistaken or misrepresented in Britain. His philosophic discourse on the changes which the surface of the globe and its living inhabitants had undergone "in time," was presented to the British public as a " Theory of the Earth," a " New Theory of the Earth!" He gave us instead a " History of the Earth," whereon to build a theory. It was the old mistake of Bolingbroke, who called history, philosophy teaching by examples. But history is not philosophy. Cuvier gave us a history of the world; the philosophy of that history he never attempted.

Prior to Cuvier, geology, paleontology, cosmogony, had really no existence ; what passed for such were dreams. ...before Goethe, the origin of life, the phases and metamorphoses of living beings, from the period when this orb commenced its wild but measured career through space, had been wholly misunderstood; a slavish terror of free inquiry hung over men's minds, dark as the pall of night.

.... [N]aturalists ... belong... to a class of men who investigate the external characters of animals, with a view to discover how far they differ from each other; in what a dog, for example, differs from a cat; a gull from an oyster-catcher; a sparrow from a linnet;.... Their definitions of animals, plants, and minerals, are generally diverting, often ludicrous. They take the trouble to prove, that man is not a monkey, and never was a monkey, ..... They give you rules and definitions of character, to enable you to distinguish..., a whelk from a periwinkle....In this endeavour to create terminology, the terminology, too, of beings for which man has no sympathies, into a science, they forgot and forget the principles of all education, and the nature of the human mind.... [Typically, for example] Minerals of exquisite beauty he tramples under foot, converts into metal for his roads, or hews into blocks for walls and bridges.

Knox in the above excerpt sees some science as misleading because the obvious is used to destroy the factual. His conflation of the factual with art is interesting, because he sees that "it is all utility with man."

Utility indeed. This was written after a scandal in 1828 when Knox was found to have bought corpses from men who murdered the homeless in order to supply the medical school's pedagogical need for such.

December 19, 1878

2011-12-19T00:19:00.001-05:00

Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 to December 19, 1878), essayist and diplomat, is a forgotten name today but in his time he was ranked among the highest literary lights in American culture. He is listed in this title of Sherwin Cody's, from which we draw some interesting details about Taylor's life: Four famous American writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor; a book for young Americans (1899).

Bayard Taylor traveled widely and in 1846 published Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff. He later represented the United States at embassies in St. Petersburg and Berlin.

Cody quotes Bayard Taylor about his encounters with fauna:

On Sunday," says he, "I took [Schiller's] 'Don Carlos' with me in our boat, and rowed myself out of sight of the village into the solitude of the autumn woods. The sky was blue and bright as that of Eden, and the bright trees waved over me like gorgeous banners from the hilltops. I sat on a sunny slope and read for hours; it was a rare enjoyment! As I moved to rise I found a snake, which had crept up to me for warmth, and was coiled up quietly under my arm. I was somewhat startled, but the reptile slid noiselessly away, and I could not harm it."...
[Another story is told by one] who called on him when he was on one of his lecture tours. He was a stranger in the house of strangers, and no doubt as much a stranger to the cat as to any of the people; but it did not take him long to slip into easy intercourse with men or animals. '' I had listened for some time to his intelligent descriptions,...when Tom, a large Maltese cat, entered the room. At Mr. Taylor's invitation Tom approached him, and as he stroked the fur of the handsome cat, a sort of magnetism seemed to be imparted to the family pet, for he rolled over at the feet of his new-made friend, and seemed delighted with the beginning of the interview. In the most natural manner possible, Mr. Taylor slid off, as it were, from the sofa on which he had been sitting, and assumed the position of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, playing with delighted Tom in the most buoyant manner, still continuing his conversation, but changing the subject, for the nonce, to that of cats, and narrating many stories respecting the weird and wise conduct of these animals, which are at once loved and feared by the human race." ...

Such is the gentle man whose gossip reeks of American literature, as he writes letters with such details as these:

"Reached Boston Sunday morning, galloped out to Cambridge, and spent the evening with Lowell;... got up early on Tuesday .... and rambled over the Merrimac hills with Whittier;...; back in the afternoon to Cambridge, where I smoked a cigar with Lowell, and then stayed all night at Longfellow's."

December 18, 1954

2011-12-18T00:18:00.001-05:00

Robert K. Massie (born January 5, 1929)and Suzanne Rohrbach are both writers and they were married on December 18, 1954.Some of her books include Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, (1980) and Pavlovsk: The Life of a Russian Palace, (1990).

Robert Massie's books about Russian history are well-known, and include Nicholas and Alexandra,(1967) and Peter the Great: His Life and World,(1980). His book on Catherine the Great is just published (2011).

Their son Robert K. Massie, IV, has hemophilia, and together Robert and Suzanne Massie wrote about their experiences treating their son, and their encounters with the American health care system. That book, Journey, was published in 1975. In Journey we learn about many pets, including a "series of prolific and durable cats, all of them from Maine, all of them with good, sturdy, no-nonsense characters..." Durable seems to mean they avoided getting run over by cars.

Robert and Suzanne divorced in 1990; she married Seymour Papert (born February 29, 1928) an MIT mathematician,and computer scientist. Robert Massie married Deborah Karl, in 1992.

December 17, 1915

2011-12-17T00:17:00.000-05:00

Sir John Rhys ( June 21, 1840 to December 17, 1915) was a native of Wales, and scholar of the Celtic language. He became the first Professor of Celtic at Oxford University, in 1876. He also maintained an interest in improving the educational system in the British Isles, and was knighted in 1907. Some of his books include:
Lectures on Welsh Philology (1877)
Celtic Britain (1882 )
Celtic Heathendom (1886).

Of interest to us now is a footnote in his book, Celtic folklore: Welsh and Manx, (1901).
His purpose in this book is to illuminate the medieval Welsh stories in the Mabinogian, which he accomplishes by gathering recent tellings of old folk tales. In one instance there is a puzzling translation of the Welsh, a place name, which he glosses in this manner:

This is commonly pronounced 'Y Gath Dorwen,' but the people of the neighbourhood wish to explain away a farm name which could, strangely enough, only mean ' the white-bellied cat'; but y Garth Dorwen, 'the whitebellied garth or hill,' is not a very likely name either.

December 16, 1928

2011-12-16T00:16:00.001-05:00

Philip K, Dick (December 16, 1928 to March 2, 1982) was an American writer whose novels have devoted fans. His novels include VALIS, (1980) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.(1982) among many others. The themes of VALIS have been described by one critic in a series of questions:

"is the force running the universe deranged?... to have put us in the black prison of self, with death and suffering inevitable. ...[And] what about my dead cat? [one character] envisages being at heaven's gate and pulling the dead cat from under his coat, and demanding an explanation. For Fat Kevin's cat is a symbol of everything in the universe he doesn't understant. The cat corpse refutes the goodness of god."

December 15, 1929

2011-12-15T00:15:00.000-05:00

Marian Babson (born December 15, 1929) a pseudonym for Ruth Stenstreem. She is a mystery author with a large body of work that rotates in and out of print. She was born in Salem, Massachusetts, but has lived most her life in London, England. From 1976 to 1986 Babson served as secretary for the Crime Writers Association. Her mysteries often feature cats, as is obvious from glancing at some titles:

Murder at the Cat Show, 1972

Paws for Alarm.1984.

Nine Lives to Murder, 1992

The Company of Cats, 1999
To Catch a Cat, 2000
The Cat Next Door, 2001.
The Cat Who Wasn't A Dog, 2003.
Please Do Feed the Cat,. 2004
Only the Cat Knows, 2005

And Canapes for the Kitties, (1996), which I have not, alas, read, is summarized this way:
"When writer Lucinda Lucas tries to dispose of three fictional characters, Lucas's hometown of Brimful Coffers, a writer's colony, dissolves into a chaos involving Lucas and her cats--Had-I, Roscoe, and But-Known."

The Diamond Cat (1996) is also one I would like to read; here is the setup: "Boarding four cats for her neighbors during a long holiday weekend, Bettina Bilby is astonished when a freak storm brings a carrier pigeon bearing a tiny sack of diamonds, which one of the cats swallows up."

Dec. 14, 1951

2011-12-14T00:14:00.003-05:00

Amy Hempel's literary form is typically the short story. This American writer, born on December 14, 1951, in the middle west (Chicago), has won major awards including a Guggenheim, and, in 2009, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Her The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel edition (2006) has 24 cat references in 407 pages. This from the lady who co-edited Unleashed–Poems by Writers’ Dogs (1995). Yes she earned her mention in this almanac, and I particularly appreciated this appercu:

A good day. The mound in the road was not cat but tread.

Amy Hempel makes a living teaching fiction in academe, most recently Harvard.

December 13, 1797

2011-12-13T00:13:00.000-05:00

Heinrich Heine(December 13, 1797 to February 17, 1856) was a major German poet during the 19th century. He lived in France because of the censorship in Germany. He felt romanticism failed through a saccharine quality in the verse, but there is an ease and beauty in his verse which reminds one of Keats. here is a selection from a novel he never finished, titled From the Memoirs Of Herr Von Schnalewopski (1833):

My father was named Schnabelewopski, my mother Schnabelewopska. I was born as legitimate son of both, the 1st of April 1795, in Schnabelewops. My great aunt, the old lady von Pipitzka, nursed me as a child, and told me pretty tales, and often sang me to sleep with a song of which I have forgotten both the words and tune; but I can never forget the strange, mysterious way in which she nodded as she sang, aud how mournfully her only tooth, the solitary hermit of her mouth, peeped out. And I can remember, too, much about the parrot, whose death she so bitterly bewailed. My old great aunt is dead now herself, and I am the only one in the world who still thinks of her parrot. Our cat was called Mimi, and our dog Joli. ...

Nietzsche shared the world's regard for Heine, and wrote this in Ecce Homo (1888):

The highest conception of the lyric poet was given to me by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain in all the realms of millenia for an equally sweet and passionate music. He possessed that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection... And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language.

December 12, 1731

2011-12-12T00:12:00.002-05:00

Erasmus Darwin (December 12, 1731 to April 18, 1802) was an English doctor, and the center of an intellectual community in Lichfield,(Staffordshire) where all manner of fresh ideas about natural science and society were debated by humane and intelligent people, in settings of bourgeois refinement. Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, himself spoke of the connectedness of all life, and even formulated a statement about evolution. Also, this exemplar of the English Enlightenment referred

"In his Zoonomia (1794) [to]... the efficient cause of the various colors of the eggs of birds and of the hair and feathers of animals which are adapted to the purpose of concealment....'Thus the snake, and wild cat, and leopard are so colored as to resemble dark leaves and their light interstices '"

This particular formulation was actually found in a book about Lamarck titled: Lamarck, the founder of evolution: his life and work : with translations of his writings on organic evolution (1901) by Alpheus Spring Packard.

December 11, 1988

2011-12-11T00:11:00.002-05:00

Nica Koenigswarter (December 10, 1913 to November 30, 1988) is remembered as the Jazz Baroness. Born a Rothschild, she married Baron Jules de Koenigswarter (1904-1995) on 15 October 1935. Their marriage did not last, but the money did. Nica Koenigswarter would help many jazz musicians including Charlie Parker and Theolonius Monk. Her home in Weehawken, New Jersey was a haven for not just hep cats, but cat cats: she sheltered 300 of the latter. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography her "funeral was held on 11 December at St Peter's Lutheran Church, New York-known as the 'jazz church'-and in accordance with her request her ashes were scattered on the Hudson River, 'round midnight'."

December 10, 1951

2011-12-10T00:10:00.001-05:00

Algernon Blackwood, (March 14, 1869 to December 10, 1951) was a prolific writer, of short stories mainly. He is considered a master of the horror genre. However in Blackwood's case, his writing seems to be concerned with inducing a sense of awe often also. He himself said; "My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. " This approach,--mixing the uncanny and the ungodly, which is foreign to some religious ambitions, is not rare. Modern writers like Colin Wilson apparently share it. Such writers do not appreciate the rarity of the religious gift.

Blackwood was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as other organizations like The Ghost Club. His long short story, "A Psychical Invasion," appears in Carl Van Vechten's anthology of cat stories, The Lords of the Housetops, (1921). This volume is available free at books.google.com; Van Vechten is one of the most literate and devoted of cat people. Our excerpt from Blackwood's story he includes, the main plot of which involves a man who investigates a haunted house, discusses the cat and dog our hero selects to accompany him on his investigation:

The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended to test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of the building, Dr. Silence selected with care and judgment. He believed (and had already made curious experiments to prove it) that animals were more often, and more truly, clairvoyant than human beings. Many of them, he felt convinced, possessed powers of perception far superior to that mere keenness of the senses common to all dwellers in the wilds where the senses grow specially alert; they had what he termed "animal clairvoyance," and from his experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and even birds, he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, need not be referred to in detail here.
Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost continuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too detailed even for a photographic camera, and quite beyond the reach of normal human organs. He had, further, observed that while dogs were usually terrified in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the other hand were soothed and satisfied. They welcomed manifestations as something belonging peculiarly to their own region.

December 9, 1964

2011-12-09T00:09:00.001-05:00

Edith Sitwell (September 7, 1887 to December 9. 1964) was a writer, a poet, and she with her two brothers, Osbert and Sachervelle) all achieved fame. In addition to poetry Edith Sitwell studied genealogy (she claimed to trace her descent back to the Plantagenets). Other of Edith's many titles include non fiction like English Eccentrics (1933) and even a novel, I Live under a Black Sun, (1937) drawing on Swift's life.

In her autobiography, Taken Care Of (1964) Sitwell recalls her youth in London, as part of a literary and upper claass family. She and her brothers edited Wheels, an annual poetic anthology between 1916 and 1921. She tells the story of an aspiring writer, around this time, who wanted her brother Osbert to read a manuscript, in blank verse, presented as a stack of papers as large as the a "week's laundry." Osbert could not gracefully refuse, and Edith resolved the situation by hiding the manuscript, reusing it as lining for a cat bed. She pretended at the time, to be puzzled by the disappearance no doubt, but her air of smug omniscience in her memoir reveals the person who disposed of the unwanted, unwieldy manuscript. This, of course, was before the days of xerox .We are not told whether the author had a copy of their work, but presumably not. Her account continues:
"It was not until many months afterwards, on one of the infrequent occasions when both the cat and her offspring were absent from her basket at the same time that it was discovered that the drama has been used to line this. Unfortuantely when found the work bore not only evident traces that it has been subjected to the inevitable va-et-vient and general wear and tear attendent on the cats frequent accouchements and nursing operations, but it looked also as if it had been torn by tigers.
My brother wished to have the manuscript retyped but not a line was decipherable."

But if in fact the details are not exaggerated we have to assume they did not clean out the cat's basket very often. Is that possible? Did they let the cat have more than one litter, or even go days, without having the lining of their basket changed? Even in the days before kitty litter was invented, and cats had unfettered access to the outdoors, it seems like a dirty practise.

There is no need to doubt Edith Sitwell's reputation as a cat lover, however. I assume the above story was exaggerated for literary intent. The name of one of her cats has come down to us as Leo.

December 8, 1949

2011-12-08T00:08:00.001-05:00

Although Blll Bryson (born December 8, 1951, in Des Moines, Iowa) is an American , he married a British nurse and his writing career blossomed in Great Britain. He is the author of many books, and has a history in journalism, as the copy editor of the business section of The Times, and similar work at The Independent. He is currently Chancellor of Durham University.

In 2004 he won the Aventius Prize for best general science book, for A Short History of Nearly Everything.(2003). In 2007 he was awarded the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin. Our excerpt is from A Short History of Private Life, (2010). Here, discussing 19th century domestic realities, Bryson notes that, in reference to Victorian bakeries--

It wasn't always that foreign substances were introduced with the intention of bulking things up. Sometimes they just fell in. A parliamentary investigation of bakeries in 1862 found many of them filled with "masses of cobwebs, weighted down with flour dust that had accumulated upon them, and, hanging in strips, ready to drop into any passing pot or tray. Insects and vermin scurried along walls and countertops. A sample of ice cream sold in London in 1881 was found to contain human hair, cat hair, insects, cotton fibers,and several other insalubrious constituents, but this probably reflected a lack of hygiene rather than the fraudulent addition of bulking agents...The very fact that these matters attracted the attention of newspapers indicates that they were exceptional events rather than routine ones.

Also in 2010 he edited: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society.
His many other books include The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way (1990).

December 7, 1847

2011-12-07T00:07:00.001-05:00

Robert Liston, (October 28, 1794 to December 7, 1847) was a Scottish surgeon, famous for his medical research as well as his speed on the operating table. This was before anesthesia, and disease was poorly understood, but it was apparent that speedy surgery helped saved lives. And this gentleman and scholar also had a cat named Tom, who became famous for being "a unique specimen of the feline tribe...so one would think, to see the passionate fondness which he manifests for it. This cat is always perched on Liston's shoulder, at breakfast, dinner, and tea, in his carriage, and out of his carriage. It is quite ludicrous to witness the devotion which the great operator exhibits towards his favourite." So spoke a contemporary of the doctor, one Forbes Winslow.

This information is gathered in a lovely book, a precursor to a type familiar today:
Heads and tales; or, Anecdotes and stories of quadrupeds and other beasts, (1870) written by
Adam White.

December 6, 1893

2011-12-06T00:06:00.001-05:00

Sylvia Townsend Warner (December 6 1893 to May 1, 1978) was an English writer with a unique thematic perspective. A vein of matter of fact fantasy runs through her writing. Lolly Willowes, (1926) her first novel, which made her name, has as a major character a figure of a warlock who presents a refreshing and original outlook on human society. Not much overt fantasy in the poem we excerpt however, from the Collected Poems (1982):

IN A LONDON SUBURB

Quadruped on a bough,
Cat absolute,
Cat behind
All cat-shows of your kind,
I see and salute you now:
Massive, tenacious, bland,

December 5, 1484

2011-12-05T00:05:00.001-05:00

On December 5, 1484, the Pope, Innocent VIII issued a bull, titled Summis desiderantes affectibus. which in English means: Desiring with supreme ardor (that certain behavior be eliminated). Now this bull is widely considered to be against witchcraft, but critics of the church at the time knew it was directed against critics in general. The reasons the Bull was needed, include:

...[M]any persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother's womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture-land, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce [the]... Faith ....

Many people would suffer as part of this aspect of Renaissance history, a phenomenon widely mislabeled as medieval . This Pope is said to have hated cats, and certainly many of them also suffered.

December 4, 1585

2011-12-04T06:51:00.001-05:00

Cardinal Richelieu (September 9, 1585 to December 4, 1642) is associated with cats. This powerful French minister during the reign of Louis XIV, is said to have enjoyed the sight of kittens, and kept them around to combat a melancholic streak the Cardinal possessed. There are several stories. One reads that Richelieu provided for his cats in his will. Which seems to contradict the character that is also said to have disposed of his kittens when they reached the age of three months. They would be discarded and fresh kittens obtained to entertain one of the most powerful men in the world. (Recall that in this pre-vehicular era, cats had different options, and while it sounds dreadful that someone would discard cats, it was in a different setting. No doubt the life of a stray cat was difficult but not for the same reasons we consider today. And, cats were valuable in that they controlled vermin. Nowadays we have poorly controlled and wastefully applied pesticides to do what cats used to do, in the cleanest possible manner.) Actually it is hard to pin down the facts of Richelieu's infatuation with felines. Similar stories are told of other powerful English and French ministers.

December 3, 1684

2011-12-03T00:03:00.012-05:00

Ludvig Holberg (December 3, 1684 to January 28, 1754) ) was a Scandinavian writer, an author of comedies, and an historian. He also wrote books on the law, and his comedies reflect this background. We read that he,was a deist and "critical of the notion of original sin, instead subscribing to the notion of man's free will."

One of his play is Hexerie eller Blind Allarm, (1723) (translated as Witchcraft or False Alert) is a comedy which gets laughter at the thought of pacts with the devil and magical arts.

Our excerpt though comes from Jeppe paa Bjerget eller den forvandlede Bonde, (1722) (translated as Jeppe of the Hill). Jeppe is a peasant who is tricked into believing he is nobility, and later, even, a poisoned thief. The characterizations of all the players in this comedy are vivid and one assumes this is to the credit of the author, not the translator. In our excerpt Jeppe is in court for reasons which are not clear to him; he winds up believing he is poisoned.

First Lawyer-... whether ...a person intends to steal, or does steal, he is a thief.
Jeppe—Ah, my gracious judge, I should gladly be hanged, if that lawyer could be hanged at my side.
Second Lawyer—Don't talk that way, Jeppe, you only injure your own cause by it.
....

Jeppe—Ah, poor me! Have I already taken the poison? Ah, goodbye, .... Goodbye, my daughter Martha; goodbye, the apple of my eye! You have your father's face; we look as much alike as two drops of water. Goodbye, my dappled horse, and thanks for every time I have ridden on you...next to my own children I have loved no beast as much as you. Goodbye, Fairfax! My faithful dog and watch; goodbye Moens, my black cat! Goodbye, my oxen, my sheep, my hogs, and thanks for good Company and for every day I have known you. Goodbye— Ah! Now I can say nothing more, I am so weak and helpless....

Ludvig Holberg deserves a wider English audience.

December 2, 1948

2011-12-02T00:02:00.002-05:00

"Tooth and Claw" is a short story by T. C. Boyle (born on December 2, 1948) and features a guy caring for an feral cat. It is one story in a volume by the same name, published in 2005. Boyle's sixth book of short stories came after his acclaimed novel "The Inner Circle" (2004) based on Alfred Kinsey. Boyle is an amazing talent, whose attitude to subject matter makes most writers seem to pander in comparison. This New York native has been an English professor at USC for many years. He has received many awards, but not enough.

December 1, 1947

2011-12-01T00:01:00.002-05:00

Aleister Crowley (October 12, 1875 to December 1, 1947) became famous by the simple expedient of doing stupid things just to be talked about. Standard case of the weak leading those begging to be deceived. Like most of course he did not guess at the dimensions of freedom. At one point the least scandal surrounding his name was that "a young man died at Crowley's villa in Italy after killing a cat and drinking its blood. ..." Crowley visited various so-called mystical groups, and it is enough to remember one of them was authentic: Gurdjieff said of Crowley that he was "dirty."

Nov. 30, 2010

2011-11-30T13:09:00.002-05:00

Jeanne Toussaint (1887-1978) designed the panther broach and bracelet which items were among the jewelry the Duchess of Windsor accumulated. Toussaint, a woman of beauty and glamor, was the director of fine jewelry for the Cartier company starting in 1933. When Paris fell to the Nazis, Cartier had a broach in the figure of a bird in a cage, and after the liberation event, their Paris windows featured that design with the cage door open. It was Toussaint, one reads, who pushed for the trend of figural jewelry and away from the Art Deco abstraction as a style.

Toussaint's fondness for panthers, sparked perhaps by a trip to Africa, resulted in her nickname, "the panther." Her Parisian abode was decorated with panther skins, and she wore panther coats. The bracelet she designed for the Duke of WIndsor to give his wife, in 1952, a diamond and onyx panther, was auctioned, for the second time, at Sothebys, on November 30, 2010, for over 7 million dollars. The bracelet, lot 19, was a record for Cartier jewelry.

November 29, 1832

2011-11-29T11:29:00.003-05:00

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 to March 6, 1888) is famous for her family and her stories about families. Here is an excerpt from Little Women (1868):

What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?’ asked Meg one snowy afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. ‘Going out for exercise,’ answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It’s cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as I do,’ said Meg with a shiver. ‘Never take advice! Can’t keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, I don’t like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.’”

For all that her father was criticized for not providing better for his family, Louisa May Alcott's books are excellent in their depictions of strong and gentle men. She did not marry and died two days after her father.

November 28, 1942

2011-11-28T11:28:00.000-05:00

Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881 to February 22, 1942) was a Austrian writer, paticularly remembered for his biographies of literary figures. He was far more famous during his lifetime than he is now. Here is a description of Zweig excerpted from the introduction to a reissue (2010) of his autobiography (The World of Yesterday, published first in German in 1942.) The introduction is written by André Aciman:

Stefan Zweig was a cosmopolite, a prototypically Pan-European emancipated Jew, who managed to shed all belief systems with the exception of pacifism. To this day he remains, paradoxically enough, Europe's most gracefully defeated and disabused optimist. As of the early 1920s, he had picked up the menacing rumbles in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. By 1933 he showed sufficient prescience to see that life was no longer viable for Jews in the German-speaking world and soon moved to England.
.....Distressed by the war in Europe, he moved to the United States, then settled in a villa in Brazil, where, in 1942...he and his second wife took their own lives. ...for the startling reason, as he put it in his suicide note, that he simply didn't have it in him to "make a new beginning." .....

[Zweig in his heyday] appears everywhere, knows everyone, and is translated into more languages than any of his contemporaries. Just about everything he put his mind to is stamped with the telltale ease, polish, and effortless grace of people whose success, literary and otherwise, seemed given from the day they were born or picked up a pen. He never quarreled with his tools; his tools were happy to oblige. He didn't spend nights searching for the mot juste; the mot juste simply came. Agony was not his style. In his work there is not one trace of difficulty overcome. Difficulty never came. There is—and one spots it from the very first sentence in almost everything he wrote—an unmistakable lightness of touch that makes him at once solemn and sociable, humble and patrician, scholar and raconteur.
The irony is seldom overblown, the drama never overstretched, and the psychology, for all its unsparing, disquieting probes into "spiritual upheavals … unknown and unsuspected," remains spot-on and mischievously subtle. You won't hear the lumpish footfalls of over-the-top sorrow or pick up the false accents of fin de siècle melancholia. Zweig is firm and fluent. Everything in its time, everything just right, never a false move, not one sleight of hand. The story almost writes itself, from beginning to end. He'll stop either when he has nothing more to say or when it's no longer safe or necessary to go any further....

Zweig was an incredibly prolific writer; here are just a few titles, with the dates of the original German publication:

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, (1932)
Mental Healers: Franz Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, (1932)
Erasmus of Rotterdam, (1934)
Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1935)
Brazil, Land of the Future (1941)

Zweig's biography, titled Paul Verlaine, was first published in 1913, here is a bit from it:

....[A]n evil influence had broken into his life, perhaps the most destructive, "the one unpardonable vice," as he himself confesses. Verlaine began to drink. At first it was bravado, recklessness, persuasion; later it was desire, torture, flight from the qualms of his conscience, "the forgetfulness, sought in execrable potions."

He drank absinthe, a sweetish, greenish liquid, which is false as cat's eyes and treacherous and murderous like a diseased harlot. Baudelaire's hashish is comprehensible. It was the magician who raised fantastic landscapes, it quieted the nerves, it was the poet of the poet. Verlaine's absinthe is only destructive and obliterating, .... Even when the high-arched churches and the figures of the Madonnas no longer offered him a place of refuge, " the atrocious green sorceress " was still his only comforter, into whose arms he willingly cast himself..
Thus Zweig on Verlaine in 1913. I wonder if it is possible that the wars disabused Zweig, not of his optimism, but of his pessimism.

Nov. 27, 1935

2011-11-27T01:12:00.003-05:00

Verity Lambert (November 27, 1935 to November 22, 2007) was the youngest and first female, BBC producer when her series, Dr. Who, premiered in November of 1963. After a career as a producer for the BBC and other studios, with credits including, Saigon: Year of the Cat (1983), she received an OBE in 2002.

November 26, 1731

2011-11-26T11:26:00.001-05:00

William Cowper (November 26, 1731 to April 25, 1800) was an English poet, and a very religious person, who was haunted with fears of damnation, and suffered bouts of insanity. In the mean times he wrote some wonderful poetry. His productivity was made possible to some extent by his gift for caring about good women.

Here is one poem,written in 1791, and quoted in full. It is not counted among his best, but it is very charming:

THE RETIRED CAT

A Poet's cat, sedate and grave,

As poet well could wish to have,

Was much addicted to inquire

For nooks, to which she might retire,

And where, secure as mouse in chink,

She might repose, or 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 learn'd it of her master.

Sometimes ascending, debonair,

An apple-tree or lofty pear,

Lodg'd with convenience in the fork,

She watched the gard'ner at his work;

Sometimes her ease and solace sought

In an old empty wat'ring 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.

But love of change it seems has place
Not only in our wiser race;
Cats also feel as well as we
That passion's force, and so did she.

Her climbing, she began to find,

Expos'd her too much to the wind,

And the old utensil of tin

Was cold and comfortless within:

She therefore wish'd instead of those,

Some place of more serene repose,

Where neither cold might come, nor air

Too rudely wanton with her hair,

And sought it in the likeliest mode

Within her master's snug abode.

A draw'r,—it chanc'd, at bottom lin'd
With linen of the softest kind,
With such as merchants introduce
From India, for the ladies' use,—
A draw'r impending o'er the rest,
Half open in the topmost chest,

Of depth enough, and none to spare,
Invited her to slumber there.
Puss with delight beyond expression,
Survey'd the scene, and took possession.
Recumbent at her ease ere long,
And lull'd by her own hum-drum song,
She left the cares of life behind,
And slept as she would sleep her last,
When in came, housewifely inclin'd,
The chambermaid, and shut it fast,

By no malignity impell'd,
But all unconscious whom it held.

Awaken'd by the shock (cried puss)
Was ever cat attended thus!
The open draw'r was left, I see,
Merely to prove a nest for me,
For soon as I was well compos'd,
Then came the maid, and it was closed :
How smooth these 'kerchiefs, and how sweet,

0 what a delicate retreat!

I will resign myself to rest
Till Sol, declining in the west,

Shall call to supper; when, no doubt,
Susan will come and let me out.

The evening came, the sun descended,
And puss remain'd still unattended.
The night roll'd tardily away,
(With her indeed 'twas never day)
The sprightly morn her course renew'd,
The evening gray again ensued,

And puss came into mind no more
Than if entomb'd the day before.

With hunger pinch'd, and pinch'd for room,
She now presag'd approaching doom,
Not slept a single wink, or purr'd,
Conscious of jeopardy incurr'd.

That night, by chance, the poet watching,
Heard an inexplicable scratching,
His noble heart went pit-a-pat,
And to himself he said—what's that?

He drew the curtain at his side,
And forth he peep'd, but nothing spied.
Yet, by his ear directed, guess'd
Something imprison'd in the chest,
And doubtful what, with prudent care,
Resolv'd it should continue there.
At length a voice, which well he knew,
A long and melancholy mew,
Saluting his poetic ears,

Consol'd him, and dispell'd his fears;

He left his bed, he trod the floor,
He 'gan in haste the draw'rs explore,
The lowest first, and without stop,
The rest in order to the top.
For 'tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it come to light,
In ev'ry cranny but the right.
Forth skipp'd the cat; not now replete
As erst with airy self-conceit,

Nor in her own fond apprehension,
A theme for all the world's attention,
But modest, sober, cur'd of all
Her notions hyberbolical,
And wishing for a place of rest
Any thing rather than a chest:
Then stept the poet into bed,
With this reflexion in his head:

Moral

Beware of too sublime a sense

Of your own worth and consequence !

The man who dreams himself so great,

And his importance of such weight,

That all around, in all that's done,

Must move and act for him alone,

Will learn, in school of tribulation,

The folly of his expectation.

Cowper's dates and topics remind one of his contemporary, Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 to May 21, 1771), though I am not aware they were personally known to each other.

November 25, 1562

2011-11-25T11:25:00.001-05:00

Félix Lope de Vega (November 25, 1562 to August 27,1635) was a contemporary of Cervantes, who called Lope de Vega "The Phoenix of Wits". Together they defined a golden age of Spanish literature. One of the playwright's later works was a "burlesque epic called The Battle of the Cats". Lope de Vega published this poem which has a feline heroine, Zapaquilda, in 1634.

According to a modern explication, the point of the parody, La Gatomaquia, was the "chasm between the ideal and the reality of those imperialist practices" which used medieval epic descriptions to justify an aristocratic assumption of power in ealry modern Spain. Such is the thesis of Barbars Simerka (assistant professor of hispanic studies at Queens College, CUNY).in her 2008 book Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain.

November 24, 1840

2011-11-24T11:24:00.000-05:00

Emma Lavinia Gifford was born on 24 November 1840 and her place in history is assured since she was Thomas Hardy's first wife. They grew apart after their 1874 marriage but they always shared a love of literature and of cats. She considered herself better born than he was, and in her latter years could seem scatter brained in speech. She called his family peasants. But his biographer Claire Tomalin, took care to specify Emma was just eccentric, not crazy, as some of their friends had said. She was interested in women's suffrage, and wrote many letters to the press -- including letters complaining about cruelty to circus tigers. Emma Hardy died on November 27, 1912 at Max Gate, their home in Dorchester.

Nov. 23, 1966

2011-11-23T01:31:00.000-05:00

Alvin Langdon Coburn was a photographer whose portraits of Yeats, D. T. Suzuki. Twain, are among many masterpieces of his. He might be more famous today had he not pursued his mystical interests and found a group which stressed the value of anonymity for mystical achievement. So, although we do not know the name of his teacher, we are glad he wrote what is called an autobiography, where we learn of his delight in going to the silent pictures with family and friends to watch "Felix the Cat" cartoons. This book, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photographer. was published after his death, and may not represent his own wishes about details. It is mainly photographs anyway. He died on November 23, 1966, and the book was published in 1978 with editing credits.

Nov. 22, 1857

2011-11-22T01:21:00.001-05:00

George Gissing, ( November 22, 1857 to December 28, 1903), the English novelist, is classified by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, specifically by Pierre Coustillas ...

as an intellectual who rose to be the conscience of his time. An apt analyst of the female mind, Gissing was perhaps at his strongest, as he himself declared in 1895, when he described 'a class of young men distinctive of our time-well educated, fairly bred, but without money' ... His unremitting cultural commitment has endeared him to successive generations of discerning readers. However unpalatable a particular truth was, he courageously voiced it, and his lucid, if pessimistic, judgements on human affairs, as well as the sterling originality of his art, have secured his place in the history of the English novel.

I include the above since perhaps others, will, like myself, find Gissing hard to place. Here is an excerpt from an early novel, The Unclassed, (1884). The setup is a woman, who has been falsely accused of theft, and her good friend checks on her cat while she is in prison.

From the porter he learned that the police had made that afternoon an inspection of Ida's rooms, though with what result was not known. The couple had clearly formed their own opinion as to Waymark's interest in the accused girl, but took the position in a very matter-of-fact way, and were eager to hear more than they succeeded in getting out of the police.

"My main object in coming," Waymark explained, "was to look after her cat. I see you have been good enough to anticipate me."

"The poor thing takes on sadly," said the woman. "Of course I shouldn't have known nothing if the hofficers hadn't come, and it 'ud just have starved to death. It seems to know you, sir?"

"Yes, yes, I dare say. Do you think you could make it convenient to keep the cat for the present, if I paid you for its food?"

"Well, I don't see why not, sir; we ain't got none of our own."

"And you would promise me to be kind to it? I don't mind the expense; keep it well, and let me know what you spend . And of course I should consider your trouble."

So that matter was satisfactorily arranged, and Waymark went home.

The stories Gissing tells are interesting in their picture of urban society after agnosticism became a respectable option. He is an excellent writer, and fond of cats. I suspect he will be remembered for his portrait of an historical era rather than his insight into psychology.

Nov. 21, 1852

2011-11-21T02:10:00.001-05:00

A comparative view of the social life of England and France from the Restoration of Charles the Second to the French Revolution (1828) was a history written by Mary Berry, (March 16 1763 to November 21 1852). Berry was a friend of Thomas Macauley, and other intellectual luminaries, of the late 18th century. This volume enhanced her fame, but she was already known for her editing of Horace Walpole's correspondence, and other books also. I am gong to briefly quote from the preface because it gives a good sense of an ahistorical past which governed the imaginations of writers until about this period. You can see her need to defend her history because if things really changed, that might cast doubt on the fundamentals of the 18th century world. (If things did NOT change the reason to write history is different or non-existent). Nowadays we are accustomed to the view that fundamental world views can shift in an historical time, but our view was itself an historical development. So this introduces Mary Berry:

... the great moral principles upon which all social order in an advanced state of civilisation is necessarily formed, remain at all times nearly the same, the modifications imposed by law, or induced by custom, in different eras of society—the duties exacted by the one, and the licence often obtained by the other — produce occasional, accidental ebbs and flows in the morals as well as in the manners of private life. These form an interesting and not unuseful subject of contemplation to such minds as, in society, by an intimate acquaintance with their contemporaries, have been enlightened, not contracted; who have learnt, in and from the world, indulgence to its follies without participation in its thoughtlessness, and a severe adherence to general principles, with great lenity to individual deviations from them. ...

Mary Berry and her sister and father led an adventurous life of travel, and their salon was attended by many names we remember today, though we have forgotten Berry's. Mary died the same year as her sister.

After her own death her correspondence was edited by a good freind of hers and published in 1865:
Extracts of the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783 to 1852, Volume 1.
Included in this book is a poem written by the cousin of Mary Berry, graciously ending a long visit with her family.

MISS SETON'S LINES TO THE 'TEA-CADDY

Dear Caddy, since no more from thee
I now shall draw each morning's tea,
This envied place no more be mine,
And I, like ministers, resign;
Since from these scenes I must retire
To humble Causham's cottage fire,
Where dog, and cat, and I, and mother,
Sit and make much of one another;
And quit this house where best I see
The charms of true society;

This excerpt, (the original is about a hundred lines) with its artful conceits, gives a glimpse of a privileged class which produced more women writers than we have counted.

November 20, 1750

2011-11-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

Tipu Sultan (November 20, 1750 to 4 May 4, 1799), was the ruler of the Indian kingdom of Mysore. He was a brilliant and ruthless man. He never stopped hating the British, and used alliances with the French to contain and defeat them. Ultimately Tipu Sultan, died in battle against the English, and his astounding collection of jewels was among the loot.

One of his them came up for auction recently: (2010). It is described as "gold pendant is set with a 38 carat emerald surrounded by nine precious stones including topaz, blue sapphire, ruby, diamond and pearl. It is one of the very few pieces of jewellery from Tipu Sultan’s fabulous treasury to have survived in its original setting."

Tipu Sultan was known during his lifetime as the Tiger of Mysore; he encouraged this informal title. The story he told was that while hunting in the forest a tiger attacked him. His gun would not fire and the tiger knocked his dagger out of his hand when jumping him. Tipu Sultan managed to reach the dagger and then stab the tiger to death. The king decorated his palaces with tiger relics, and used an image of one on his banners.

November 19, 1819

2011-11-19T11:19:00.000-05:00

Vacquerie (November 19, 1819 to February 19, 1895) is the name of a minor French writer. He was an in-law of Victor Hugo, whose political sympathies he shared. Here is a brief bibliography for Vacquerie:

L'Enfer de l'esprit (1840) (poetry)

Antigone(1844) (translation)

Tragaldabas(1848) (play.)

Souvent homme varie (1859), (comedy in verse)

Jean Baudry (1863) (play)

Le Rappel (1869 ff) (periodical which he co-founded, edited, and wrote for)

In addition to photographing the Hugo family, Vacquerie immortalized his cats with that medium. One cat had long hair . His cats are collected in Sally Eauclaire's book The Cat in Photography, (1990).

November 18, 1939

2011-11-18T11:18:00.001-05:00

Margaret Atwood, born on November 18, 1939, is a Canadian novelist and poet. She has won many awards and her novels have titles we all recognise, like The Handmaiden's Tale,(1985) and The Cat's Eye (1988). The latter was a Booker Prize (1989) finalist. She is a very prolific and much honored writer.

We have this excerpt from Margaret Atwood's poem "February":
...
... it's love that does us in. Over and over
Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and the pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You're the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Nov. 17 1946

2011-11-17T02:12:00.000-05:00

Baron Max von Oppenheim (July 15, 1860, to November 17, 1946) was a member of the German diplomatic corps in Cairo, and so could satisfy his interest in travel and history. An amateur archeologist he accumulated artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria). Oppenheim served his country on several levels--as early as 1898 he outlined to the Kaiser the advantages of manipulating an Islamist identity to destabilize their perceived rivals, by, for instance, instigating Moslem rebellion in British India, in French North Africa, and Russian Asia. This information is outlined in the book Islam in inter-war Europe, written by Nathalie Clayer, and Eric Germain. (2008).
Oppenheim's collection of 3,000 year old art, was shattered, destroyed-- in November, 1943, by an incendiary bomb. Because Oppenheim's collection was in private hands it was not protected along with other German treasures, during the war. Oppenheim envisaged the damage being repaired, and by 2010, 30 sculpture and relief panels were restored, though not to their original state. The restored statuary includes a sphinx.

November 16 1968

2011-11-16T11:16:00.001-05:00

Mervyn Peake (July 9, 1911, to the night of November 16/17, 1968) was a British artist, whose novels and drawings portray an intensely imagined and unexpected world. We quote passages from the article about Peake in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to convey a sense of his achievement.

"[His illustrations for ] The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1943); ... is considered to be his greatest achievement as an illustrator and he was praised for adding a new spiritual dimension to the work...[After the war] he was commissioned by The Leader magazine to tour western Europe with the journalist Tom Pocock. They witnessed the first war crimes trial at Bad Neuenahr in June 1945 and Peake sent back haunting drawings of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp... Titus Groan was published in 1946. It was the first in a projected series in which Titus, the seventy-seventh earl of Groan, rebels against his ancestral home Gormenghast Castle and its restrictive duties, and attempts to find a new identity for himself in another land. Although showing the influence of Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Kafka, the Titus books defy ready classification....In 1951 Gormenghast, which confounded critics who described it as 'wonderfully weird' and the 'finest imaginative feat in the English novel since Ulysses' (Punch), and The Glassblowers (a collection of poetry based on Peake's war work) won the W. H. Heinemann Foundation prize of £100 and Peake was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature."

The critics' inability to deal with Peake's unique imagination meant, though, that years went by when he was out of public notice. We note this excerpted verse, which seems to project a lighter spirit than much of Peake's work:

My Uncle Paul of Pimlico
Has seven cats as white as snow,
Who sit at his enormous feet
And watch him, as a special treat,
Play the piano up side-down,
In his delightful dressing-gown;
The firelight leaps, the parlour glows,
And while the music ebbs and flows
They smile (while purring the refrains)
At little thoughts that cross their brains.

November 15, 1708

2011-11-15T11:15:00.001-05:00

William Pitt Turner was a doctor and the brother of a doctor and the son of Dr. Philip Turner, all good Conncticut citizens in post revolutionary America, in 1787 to be exact. William and John were members of a local musical society, to which they contributed their collection of dance tunes. William also wrote verse describing members of this Norwich Assembly and we quote:

...the lads with merry glee,
...
Have spent of shillings not a few;
the fair to please, night-errants stout,
they've turn'd their purses wrong-side out;
And to maintain, their dancing sett,
All head and ears they've run in debt;
Some to the Cobler for their shoes,
Some to the Merchants for their cloaths,
Of jackets, stocks and cambrick ruffles,
....

A Dokt-r trimmed with fur of cat.
Gives orders out and does proceed,
In managing to take the lead;
....

A self portrait perhaps, of youth in a young nation. We found this in
Dance and its music in America, 1528-1789, (2007) by Kate Van Winkle Keller. We assume that our subject was named after William Pitt (the elder) (November 15, 1708 to May 11, 1778) since that British Prime Minister was sympathetic to the American argument in the leadup to war, and since such a practise of naming was common then.

Nov. 14, 1939

2011-11-14T01:14:00.001-05:00

Wendy Carlos (born on November 14, 1939) is an electronic musician, who pioneered the use of the Moog synthesizer. She did the soundtrack, famously, for A Clockwork Orange. Now (2006) Wendy lives in a Greenwich Village loft, with pets, including a Siamese named Pandora.

November 13, 1916

2011-11-13T11:13:00.000-05:00

H. H. Munro (December 18, 1870 to November 13, 1916), or Saki, as he is often called by his pen name, wrote with an eye for literalism that shaded into horror. It is as if he knew he would die young, and worked well under pressure.

The setting of the satirical story, "The Unkindest Blow," is a strike by zoo workers at the London Zoo.

The Navy has been called in as strike breakers because of their familiarity with parrots. The alternative is that the striking zoo workers might make good on their threat to let the large carnivores at the zoo loose in the streets of the city.

The First Lord of the Admiralty who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department. "If he inssits on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in defiance of its mother's wishes, there may be another by-election in the north," said one of his colleagues with a hopeful inflection in his voice.

This vignette is from Beasts, and Super-Beasts (1914), a collection of short stories. His sister destroyed his personal papers after his death.

November 12, 1916

2011-11-12T11:12:00.001-05:00

Percival Lowell (March 13, 1855–November 12, 1916) wrote several books about his travels in Japan, and one of these Occult Japan: or, The way of the gods; an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession, was published in 1894.

One of possession cults Lowell wrote about was the Ryobu, which we now recall has a karate aspect. He describes scenes of possession which sound like some kind of hypnosis. Accompanying the rituals around these events, which involved receiving comunications from a god, were special finger and hand gestures of a complexity remarkable to the western observer. "There is quite an esoteric library on the subject, and so thoroughly defined is the system that the several finger-joints bear special names," Lowell records. One such gesture involved overlapping the fingers of both hands so that a grid with a gate function was formed. They only used 9 fingers in this symbolic gate though, not all ten. The reason, Lowell says, for leaving a finger out was

'"...due to the far-eastern practice of always providing an enemy with a possible way of escape. If the Japanese devils could not thus run away it is said they would become dangerous. For, as a far-eastern proverb hath it, —

"The cornered rat
Will bite the cat." '

So the finger arrangement bears the symbolic burden of protecting the users by making a gate to keep out evil spirits, or providing a means of escape should such a spirit be trapped.

We remember Percival Lowell for other reasons now.He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona so that ideal viewing conditions could enhance sky watching. Lowell was the brother of the President of Harvard, from where Percival graduated, with mathematics as a specialty. He was not the first to find Mars an object of particular fascination, nor the first to speculate on the existence of canals there. Lowell did produce detailed maps of the canals based on his telescopic observations. He cited their non-natural symmetry as grounds for deciding the canals were evidence of life. Subsequent observations have discounted Lowell's maps, and even during his life many scientists reported they could not actually see the canals.

There is a connection between these stories -- about Lowell's life: his interest in exotic religions, and his scientific accounts of Martian life, but I am not sure what it is.

November 11, 1860

2011-11-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

The author of The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff (1891) was convinced of the value of her diary. This is from the preface:

If I do not die in my youth, I hope to remain as a great artist; but if I die young, I wish my journal to be published, and it can not fail to interest. But, since I look for publicity, it may be asked, will not the idea that I am to be read, spoil, or rather destroy, the only merit such a book possesses? I answer frankly, no! In the first place, because I wrote for a long time without dreaming of readers, and for the rest, the very thought that I hope to be read, has made me absolutely sincere. If this book is not exact, absolute, strict truth, it has no reason for being. ....

The author did become a painter, a good one, though I am not sure if she painted that picture on some editions of her Journal

Marie Bashkirtseff was a Russian painter who achieved some acclaim before her death at the age of 25 years. So her confidence seems prescient. She was talented and her writing insightful. Here are some more excerpts, chosen not to tell a story but illustrate a sensibility.

Promenade Des Anglais, Nice.

January.1 Age, twelve years.....Poor grandmamma! how unhappy I am to have you no longer with us! How you loved me, and I you; but I was a little too young to love you as you deserved. I am deeply moved by the recollection. The memory of grandmamma is a respected, sacred, beloved memory, but not a living one! Oh, my God, grant me happiness in my life, and I shall be thankful! But what am I saying? It seems to me that I am placed in this world to be happy. Make me happy, Oh, my God!

...

Suppose, first of all, that I am illustrious. Let us begin:
I was born on the 11th of November,1860....My father was the son of Gen. Paul Gregorievitch Bashkirtseff, a provincial nobleman, brave, stubborn, unyielding— even fierce.....

[Skipping ahead after her family has settled in Italy, and a romantic interest has undertaken a monastic retreat] It is a pretty thing to be shut up in a monastery! How he must be bored, poor fellow! ...

[Later] Friday, April 7th.—I am worried to death. Oh, how expressive is the Russian saying: "To have a cat in the heart." I have a cat in my heart. It gives me constant and incredible pain to think that a man I care for can not love me. Pietro has not come; he left the monastery only this evening. ....

Such experiences would lead Marie Bashkirtseff to formulate this credo:
Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures.

Another sample of her self-awareness:

A vain girl like me should devote herself to painting, for it is an imperishable art. I shall never be a poet, nor a philosopher, nor a savant. I can be only a singer and a painter. That, in itself, is a good deal. And then, I want to be in everyone's mouth, and that is the principal thing. Stern moralists, don't shrug your shoulders or criticise me... To tell the truth, you are the same at heart. You take very good care not to let it be seen, but that does not prevent you from knowing in your inmost souls that what I say is true.

November 10, 1879

2011-11-10T11:10:00.001-05:00

Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 to December 5, 1931) was famous during his lifetime for his poetry. He both came from the Middle West (USA) and wrote about those values. A surprising number of major American writers also come from that geographical area, but most of those artists cast their origins in a bitter light. Not so Lindsay and that may play into his current lack of critical attention. There are reasons to remember his originality in themes and techniques. You can see his instructions for reading ""A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten," published with the poem:

A DIRGE FOR A RIGHTEOUS KITTEN

To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way.

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.
Here lies a kitten good, who kept
A kitten's proper place.
He stole no pantry eatables,
Nor scratched the baby's face.
He let the alley-cats alone.
He had no yowling vice.
His shirt was always laundried well,
He freed the house of mice.
Until his death he had not caused
His little mistress tears,
He wore his ribbon prettily,
He washed behind his ears.
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.
The Congo and other poems (1914), included this text.

November 9, 1620

2011-11-09T11:09:00.001-05:00

The passengers aboard the Mayflower sighted the land that we now call Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. The passengers included "one or two cats." We learn this from a book titled Everything Cats Expect You to Know.(2007) The author, Elizabeth Martyn has a series of popular interest books about cats, and there is no need to expect any of them are well-researched. There is no reason to doubt her information about the Mayflower though, or her assertion that the Mayflower cats arrived after the Jesuits brought cats to what we now consider Quebec in the 1500s.

November 8, 1935

2011-11-08T11:08:00.000-05:00

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (July 10, 1846,to to November 8, 1935), was the sister of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. She was the kind of woman who, incapable of rigourous thought, parrot the views of their husbands. Thus, after her husband, a rabid anit-semite, died, and she was her brother's caretaker in his last feeble years, she retold the story of Nietzshce's ideas in such a manner as would glorify Nazism.
From The Young Nietzsche (1912, translated by Anthony M. Ludovici) we see the feminine universe at it's most pathetic. Here is a sample of what she includes, speaking of a time in their youth, when they set up housekeeping together.

In his letters to his friends, written from Bonndorf, [1875] there is, in spite of all, a feeling of great content.
"Everywhere I see despair !" he says, " and yet I do not feel it myself, although I am not in Bayreuth! Do you understand how this can be? I hardly can. And yet I am there in spirit for over three-quarters of the day, and like a ghost I am perpetually hovering round it. Do not have any qualms about making my soul die of longing, but just tell me all about it, dear friend. On my walks, I conduct whole passages of the music which I know by heart, and hum to myself. Remember me most kindly to the Wagners! ..."
My brother returned to Bale in the middle of August, and was full of admiration and childlike joy at the sight of his new home, which I had been arranging in the meantime. Everything was pleasant and comfortable; but it was far from being "sybaritic in its luxury," as a certain critic declared our simple and somewhat old-fashioned establishment to be. During the whole of this period, from the middle of August to the end of November, my brother's health was really excellent. From early in the morning till late in the evening he was radiant and cheerful, and declared himself exceptionally pleased with everything.....We enjoyed watching the strange formations of the clouds, the effects of light, and the flight of birds over the bare fields. We loved to walk on green fields and along country lanes, and to stop and look at the most simple things: now we would be amused at a dog that sprang to catch a partridge and slunk away with a most comical expression of shame when it missed its prey, and anon at a cat which would fawn upon my brother, purring affectionately the while, and rubbing its arched back against his leg. We rejoiced over the children who brought us flowers or played their games with zest, and in doing so revealed human nature free from all artificiality.
She would speak of Nietzsche's idea of a will to power, which he used to specify the labor of the individual against the herd thinking of the masses, to justify Hitler. Hitler attended her funeral. Her vile taint is not yet erased.

Nov. 7, 1938

2011-11-07T01:17:00.001-05:00

Robert Brault, the American writer who was born on November 7, 1938, says of his career, that he worked as a journalist for little money and no acclaim, and now he writes for no money and some acclaim. Here are examples of his writing:

"If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit."

:"Psychologists now recognize that the need in some people to have a dozen cats is really a sublimated desire to have two dozen cats."

November 6, 1836

2011-11-06T11:06:00.001-05:00

Charles X (October 9 1757 to November 6, 1836) ruled France as the last Bourbon king. The youngest brother of Louis XVI, (who would be guillotined in 1792,) Charles, was described by Louis XVI as "more royalist than the king". Charles had to connive til 1814, and the defeat of Napoleon, before another brother of his, would rule France ( Louis XVIII.) Charles was next in line to succeed Louis XVIII. Louis was concerned Charles, would get them both kicked out of power again, for Charles's conservatism was widely known. Charles for instance disapproved of compromises made by Louis XVIII to regain Bourbon control, concessions such as granting freedom of religion for the French citizens. Charles was Catholic as was the family, and the Jesuits, were seen as supporting the throne and other forces of reaction. When Charles took the throne on his brother's death (1824) his conservatism was put into play, with laws like that providing indemnities to those nobles who lost their estates during the revolution.

We have this quote about Charles, the Jesuits, and the symbol of the cat at this time:

"The Jesuits have long been satirised under the semblance of a cat; but never more thoroughly than in France, under the reign of Charles X., who lost his throne battling with that imagery."

The people of France were by now not interested in royal ploys like dissolving parliaments whose laws they did not like. Charles X was forced to abdicate in 1832 and his long life, spent mainly scheming to get in power, ended a few years later, out of power and out of the country.

We are indebted to a letter to the editor, reprinted in Notes and Queries, a periodical collection (1858) for this connection between Charles X and a symbolic cat. The journal is described this way on the title page: Notes and Queries: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists etc. The motto of this journal is "When found, make a note of", advice attributed to Captain Cuttle. We did so, happily, and glad to discover this proto internet.