Cats and Daffodils, or, Arch Duchess Knurry-murry-purry-hurry-skurry

I never liked Southey. It was his letter to Charlotte Bronte that did the business. When she was twenty-one, she wrote to ask the then Poet Laureate (1837) for his advice on a writing career, and he responded with, "Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.” Charlotte wrote back, politely but not without sarcasm, "I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print; if the wish should rise, I'll look at Southey's letter, and suppress it."

Daffodils at Ullwater






















Yet I came across a quote about Southey that was positively endearing, and won me to him, for the man had a nicer side. He liked cats! Yes, he did, and he sounds quite as silly about them as I am. This catly quote comes from the excellent book by Kathleen Jones, A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets:

"Southey once remarked that a home was not complete unless it contained a three-year- old child and a six-week-old kitten. [He had] a whole tribe of cats with names like Pulcheria, Madame Bianchi, Lord Nelson, Bona Fidelia, Baron Chinchilla, Rumpelstilzchen, Hurlyburlybuss and the Arch Duchess Knurry-murry-purry-hurry-skurry. Prester John gave birth to a litter of kittens and had to be renamed Pope Joan. Their lineages, escapades and 'cat-astrophes' were recorded by Southey in 'Memoirs of Cats Eden,' an essay written for Edith May and subsequently published in The Doctor. Cats Eden was often given as the address on his letter-headings. Southey loved children and became a benevolent father-substitute to his niece and nephews. He regularly wrote stories and poems for them, the most famous of which is the tale of the Three Bears."
























"The Three Bears" illustration by Arthur Rackham (with a suspicious resemblance to my three cats)

A Passionate Sisterhood is a good companion piece to Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens, which is about the life of Fanny Imlay and gives much insight into the Shelley/Byron circle, and the way the not-so-Romantic poets treated their women. Jones's book shows that Coleridge and Wordsworth, like Shelley and Byron, were social idealists in theory, but the lives of their women tell another story. Typically, Coleridge wrote, "I can neither retain my Happiness nor my Faculties, unless I move, live, & love, in perfect Freedom..." A woman did not have the right to expect a man to love only one woman, and Coleridge does not say what is to happen to a woman's need for "perfect freedom." He also wrote, "The perfection of every woman is to be characterless. Creatures who, though they may not always understand you, always feel you and feel with you."


A very private love: Martial on my lap






















Sara Hutchinson, whom Southey loved, took a different view. "Old Maid as I am, don't think that, though I firmly believe that the balance of comfort is on our side, I am a favorer of a single life - comfort is but a meagre thing after all - but I have seen such misery in the marriage life as would appal you if you had seen it. Such millstones about the neck of worthy men! Of course you will not suppose that I think all the fault belongs to the women."

Coleridge's daughter, Sara Coleridge, was a literary lady, and wrote of her favorite authors: "The profundity of Mme de Stael, the brilliancy of Mrs. Hemans (though I think her over-rated), the pleasant broad comedy of Miss Burney and Miss Ferrier, the melancholy tenderness of Miss Bowles, the pathos of Inchbald and Opie, the masterly sketching of Miss Edgeworth (who like Hogarth paints manners as they grow out of morals, and not merely as they are modified and tinctured by fashion); the strong and touching, but sometimes coarse pictures of Miss Martineau...and last not least the delicate mirth, the gently-hinted satire, the feminine decorous humour of Jane Austen."

But when Sara Coleridge married her cousin, Henry, and gave birth to two children in two years, becoming extremely ill, she begged her husband to allow her two or three years' respite from child-bearing. "This assurance Henry felt himself unable to give. They were newly married - he had an ardent nature; abstinence was unthinkable."



















An Elegant Caged Female


Against this background, Jane Austen's decision to remain single looks more attractive. Or there was the option of taking up a place on the sofa as an invalid, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (I really am getting to like Mary Wollstonecraft more and more.) I don't know any pair of books that have taught me more about women's condition in the 18th and early 19th century than A Passionate Sisterhood and Death and the Maidens.

Reading them led me, naturally, to ponder how familiar Austen was with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and how their work affected her. The perfect book to answer this question is Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets by William Deresiewicz. Certain it was that Austen was as familiar with Lyrical Ballads as any reading person in England. Deresiewicz points to the Tintern Abbey reference in Mansfield Park, where Fanny Price's room is described:

"...its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia’s work, too ill done for the drawing–room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast."























Tintern Abbey by Turner


Deresiewicz's book provides illuminating springtime food for thought. He theorizes that the difference between Austen's first three novels and her last three reflects the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge. He reasons that in the later novels Austen opens her imagination to the whole world of economic realities that lie below the lives of the country gentry, more than she did before. Showing a more Wordsworthian sense of time and change, she does not bring her later novels to full closure (to the rejoicings of future sequellists).

But this is not taking us to the subject of cats, even after Southey's promisingly cattish quote. So I will proceed forthwith to my monthly Cat Report. The darlings are getting Larger, as they approach nine months in age; they are fatter, and their coats so glossy and luxuriant, they positively gleam. My proper study, in addition to Austen and the Romantic poets, continues to be the psychology and interaction of cats. It is invaluable to have constant exposure to three such fascinating moggies as ours. They alternate between wildness and somnolence, playfulness and bickering, secret love and public disdain. I wish I'd been able to photograph their funniest fight, but it would have come across as only a blur. These problems will soon be solved, and my cat pictures should much improve, because I've just bought a new camera - a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ28s (s for silver). It was a particularly diverting fight, too: Pindar and Catullus both stood on their hind legs on the high back of a chair; I don't know how they balanced so long, a full five minutes, while trading blows with their little paws, interspersed with bared teeth and nips. They stood there punching each other rather ineffectively, like little feline boxers, until finally (and inevitably) Catullus conceded by jumping down from the chair. Only then did Pindar majestically make her own descent (mind you, at seven pounds she is by far the smallest cat, a sleek sparrow among huge crows), and began deliberately licking her paws. Martial, who had been watching the proceedings intently, then went over to her, bowed low, and licked her paw, in as obvious a gesture of fealty and obeisance as has ever been given in a medieval court.



















Pindar, Queen of the Cats: Nothing gets between me and my...


The only other news of the cats is of their extreme suffering in the late heat wave. Fortunately it lasted only two days, but the temperature spiked to 93 Fahrenheit, and that's too warm if you're wearing a thick floor length sable coat, boots, Russian hat and mittens. Which is what our two poor, long-haired cats were wearing. Short-haired Pindar was as frisky as ever, but the two longhairs were lying flat out on the floor like mink throws, looking so miserable! Having been born only last August they had never endured hot weather with full heavy manes before. I put up a fan, which they disdained, and we couldn't have them in the air-conditioned bedroom (not putting a litter box in there). They lay out on the terrace, but in the afternoon it baked, and they tried to take shade beneath the scraggly bougainvillea, looking so pathetic. I tried forcing them to drink more water, but they were too stupid to make the connection, and I don't know how they will ever fare this summer!

Catullus on a hot day




















I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

















Daffodil pictures from the First Daffodils 2009 site and the Wordsworth Trust

Silas Marner in Malibu

On Sunday, our reading group drove merrily up the Pacific Coast Highway to member Jane's lovely Malibu home, to discuss a most serious, weighty matter: a comparison of Silas Marner to Mansfield Park, and incidentally, George Eliot to Jane Austen. Seated around the sunny light living room, directly over the crashing waves, eating home baked treats (lemon cake, pound cake, flourless chocolate cake, brownies, caramel brownies, and more) and drinking tea from delicate heirloom Japanese cups, we first brought up the matter that was most urgently on all our minds: Why, in our youth, was Silas Marner inflicted upon high school students? I remember being completely unable to read it at sixteen, though I had read Sartre, Dostoyevsky, and Margaret Mitchell. I thought it the most awful, prosy, boring, sentimental book in the world.



















Sheila and Susan



















Table

Reading it again at sixty, I found the first pages were indeed almost impenetrably written in stilts-and-bladder, convoluted prose, but once you got past that blockage, the story was readable enough and had many finenesses and beauties. The evocation of pastoral England "in the early years of this century," nineteenth that is, when Jane Austen still walked the earth, was beautiful, and reminded me of the rural quietude and superstitious legends of Mary Webb's Precious Bane, as when Eliot writes, "Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry."



















Japanese Plate




















Phyllis and me

Silas Marner has a kind of mythic feeling, with the golden treasure disappearing, and the golden-haired Shirley Temple of an Eppie appearing, as if by magic; its fairy tale aspect reminded me of Rumplestiltskin. Or Heidi, with the old man and the winsome blonde. The book didn't turn out to have a great deal in common with Mansfield Park, though our guest Gracia Fay of the Ventura reading group, who suggested the topic, had some comparisons; the theme of adoption is the main similarity. The sense of moral nemesis is much stronger in Silas Marner, which examines the idea that "Heaven shows the right," and that people get the fates they deserve, based on the choices they make. It's interesting that its characters, mostly simple country folk, do not even understand the words of the religion they hear in church; it is like superstition to them. It's a surprisingly moralistic book for an atheist to write, at the time when she was living in sin with George Lewes.




















The Group



















This discussion of course led to a comparison of Austen's life and Eliot's: the sadness of childlessness runs through Silas Marner, whereas Austen shows no trace of any longing for children in her novels. Austen was the Christian and her characters get their just deserts too, but more realistically than in Silas Marner. And although we are now old enough to appreciate some beauties in Marner, there is no question which book we love more, and can reread endlessly. Old Silas was very, very lucky to get even this second chance.
























George Eliot. She went "rockpooling" in North Devon, and her scientific interests influenced Silas Marner. So she might have enjoyed a visit to Malibu

Two tiny bits I liked very much in the book: Eliot describes a small but vital thing I've never seen described in fiction before. "That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger." She has caught the exact significance of that moment when you first come home and meet your mate's eyes.

And then, of course, Eliot has won me over by her inclusion of two tortoiseshell cats. Aha, what an excellent opportunity for me to show you some more cat pictures!



















Martial at Eight Months and God knows how many Pounds

"The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting them from a knowing brown terrier who, after dancing at their legs in a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as much to say, "I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you perceive," while the lady-mother of the kitten sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them."




















Catullus, black beauty with a white bosom




















Sweet Pindar

Eliot writes, "The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which had come over the interior of the stone cottage." It signals a very great change, Silas's home coming to life, and we have seen in my own household how anmals do bring a home to new life, where three cats frolic and make aging people feel much younger.




















Catullus and Martial




















Boxed Set: Martial and Pindar

The Cats' Debut into Literary Society

Catullus Ascendant

The latest adventures of the Cats began with the trials and tribulations of Martial, who had a scratched cornea - probably something from her abandoned youth, that flared up lately when she rubbed it. The vet put an Instrument of Torture upon her, known as an Elizabethan Bonnet. It was the saddest sight to be seen for many a day. The poor creature could not walk. She could not see. She could only stumble backwards and slither sideways, like a lame raccoon. And she slid into alarming depression - she became completely limp, lying there, mute, except for when she emitted her signature plaintive cries of "Squee! Squee! Squee!"




















Martial Agonistes

If you are one of those who think cats cannot feel compassion and sympathy, disabuse yourself. Martial's sisters gave up all squabbling and play-fighting. They were visibly disturbed by the sad plight that had come to her. Valiant little Pindar never left her side; she sat by her at all times, wherever poor Martial stumbled, and when she was in misery because she could not wash, Pindar washed and licked her all over, with many kisses. Catullus was not so valiant, but equally disturbed: she hid away terrified by the awful sight of her sister with the horrible object on her head. After some hours, she crept out, and tentatively advanced toward her, looking for all the world like a small child approaching its mother on her deathbed. She patted her once, and retreated again. My picture of the moment should put paid to the idea that cats don't care about each other.



















Sisterly Feelings

Martial's ordeal was somewhat enlivened by my cousin Anne's husband Jim, an artist, who sent a get-well drawing. I thought at first the drawing was done by their daughter Joanna, 11, but it was explained to me that the image of Martial was wobblified on purpose to make it look like the work of a cat.




From a Secret Admirer



On the third morning, Martial could endure no more. She was sitting on my desk, when suddenly she started to shake all over, and pull and scratch at her Iron Maiden with astonishing violence. "What are you doing, you silly thing?" I asked, just as the torture device was fiercely ripped off, and Martial outburst with joy! She spent the next hour washing her entire self and scratching particularly where the collar had confined her. I knew I ought to replace the device - be cruel to be kind - Peter and Paul and I talked it over - but it was impossible. None of us could bring ourselves to do it. The poor little animal had been so miserably depressed; she had no idea the thing wasn't forever, and she was so purely blissful in her freedom. So we took her back to the vet, and she was pronounced doing well and in no more need of torture.

Now that she was recovering, the serious spoiling began. We bought the cats shearling beds:




















"What, no satin sheets?"


And toys, and toys, and more toys: the house is so strewn with feathers and shocking pink pompom sticks that it looks like the Copacabana. American cat decor is not tasteful. Possibly they do things better in Japan, or Paris.




















Midnight at the Copacabana




















The three little queens lie on the floor, like Eastern Crescents


Then came the most wonderful purchase of all: A Lazy Cat Kitty Window Ledge Seat (um, are you keeping a running tab on the expenses here? By all means include the vet). You know how they love sitting together looking out of Peter's study window at the birds and the squirrels. How much better to have a shearling window seat and look out in luxury? But we did not reckon on the degree to which Martial had become spoiled and entitled. Immediately after I installed the seat, she took command of it, and lay there at her sprawled-out ease, like Cleopatra on her barge. The look on the face was a silly, cross-eyed cat version of "Look at me, I deserve this throne."

In emphasis of this, when hapless Pindar tried to hop onto the ledge with her, she firmly pushed her off, even bit her (not hard) on her little striped leg! She repeated this performance with Catullus. We were appalled. Instead of giving the three cats more comfort in their window, we had deprived two of them of even climbing up to look out of the window at all!




















The Shelf of Contention: Martial Ascendant






















Cleocatra's Barge

Matters had to change, so Peter firmly laid down the law to Martial, removed her from the shelf and placed the other two upon it. Martial learned her lesson, and a somewhat sadder and wiser cat learned to share with her sweet sisters.



















In Sober Sadness: Martial Learns to Share























Then it was time to celebrate, so we had a party. Actually, it was a meeting of my reading group, to discuss Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose, a slightly dated but still interesting examination of several varyingly dysfunctional Victorian marriages among literary figures, such as Carlyle and Jane, Ruskin and Effie, Dickens and his wife, George Eliot and Lewes. I decided that this would be an appropriate occasion for a coming-out party, the Debut of the Cats into Good Literary Society. It would not be necessary for them to talk, for as Mary Crawford said in Mansfield Park,

"A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word."

Of course, Martial's bonnet was gone, but I could answer for it she would say nothing more objectionable than "Squee." So, I commissioned editor friend Jennifer, who has a penchant for baking and has been turning out wonders (the espresso shortbread cookies with butterscotch glaze were my favorite) to make chocolate cat-shaped cookies, and cupcakes with cats on top. She produced some delightful treats, though afterward allowing that cupcake designs were fiendishly difficult and she wouldn't attempt that again. Here's what she baked:

























Susan with cat, and Jennifer























Chocolate Shortbread Cats


The party was a great success, and the three debutantes behaved themselves perfectly. It turns out that they are very sociable animals. I thought they'd retreat into the back of the house, or be annoyingly underfoot, but they did neither. They preened on their rug, showing off their lovely selves; they hopped onto laps and made love; and they allowed Paul to put them through their jumping paces, as at a circus. They did not interfere with the food either when I was preparing it or when we were eating, and in short, they showed very fine manners indeed.

The menu:

Little mini-bagels, lox and cream cheese for the Goyim
Hot sausage rolls for the Jewish guests
Devilled eggs
Strawberries
Jennifer's chocolate shortbread cat cookies
Jennifer's cat-themed cupcakes
Queen Anne Tea, and Martinelli's

Much was said, and much was ate.























Forsythia for spring, to remind us of Central Park



















My Martial and Me
























Daffodils, White Iris, and Pindar


We decided that at our next meeting, on March 29th, we will compare and contrast Mansfield Park and Silas Marner, as the Ventura Jane Austen reading group has done that and it seems like an interesting idea; and for our April 26th meeting we will read Passionate Sisterhood: Women of the Wordsworth Circle by Kathleen Jones.

In other news, I've been asked to appear as a guest on the MLA's (Modern Language Association) radio show, "What's the Word?", talking about the Eaton sisters. I'll have to read my own book again, it's been so long!

Meanwhile, the Miscreant Martial has silently and stealthily taken up possession of her Ledge again, biting all comers...

Reunion of the Beatniks...45 Years Later

Patrick and me at the Novel Cafe...after 45 years

1962, New York City. I am a sophomore at the High School of Music and Art, a beatnik in training. My best friend, Dianne, is a little older, and a street smart girl from an even more dysfunctional home than mine. We "bop" around Greenwich Village together, and the infinitely more knowing Dianne instructs innocent me about guys.






Patrick and Dianne at the Start of Forever





Me in Washington Square Park, 1962

For a year and a half she was in love, literally joined at the hip, with Patrick, a Jamaican boy who wanted to become an architect. Their passionate romance lasted a year and a half (a long time, at that age), and broke up badly. I was the tag-along, the third wheel, but Patrick, a natural gentleman, was always very kind to me. Wanting to show my wit, and get some attention, I wrote a nasty poem about this kind boy (every word is still seared into my memory and worlds would not compel me to repeat them), and I could see from his face how hurt he was. "I always thought you liked me," he said. I wanted to say, "Of course I do! I was only being funny!" but at that age I still did not know how to say what I thought and felt. I was silent, and he turned away.



The High School of Music and Art, one day in 1962





Beatnik girl. Cafe Caricature, MacDougal Street


After Pat and Dianne broke up, we went wild in the Village, but I soon stopped following her, for her path led to drugs and scary things in the night. Senseless as I was at that age and with that upbringing, I didn't want to ride the train that was taking her away. Not that my path was, perhaps, the wisest or easiest one. The year I was seventeen, the following happened: I got pregnant, got married, graduated from high school, gave birth to my son Paul, and started college. Dianne came to visit me once, soon after Paul was born. I showed him off, gave him a bath while she watched. She looked quizzical, silently observing, but finally commented, in shocked surprise, "You like him!" "Well, yes," I said, still inarticulate, "he's a nice little baby."


























Teenage mom

Two months later, she was pregnant herself, married (for a few weeks), and the last I heard of her, her mother called to say she'd had a baby she called Dianne like herself, and it was healthy, no trace of drugs. I said I'd visit her, but she lived in Canarsie, and I never did. Sometimes I thought about her and wondered if she'd made something of her life (we were both art students at Music & Art, and she was talented), but I never tried to contact her, and after awhile didn't know where she could be found. I always had a feeling that the news would not be good.

Patrick also lingered in my mind, and I felt that I would like to write him an apology some day. When Google first appeared, I looked for him, without result; but last year, I finally did find him. He'd gone back to Jamaica, where he was indeed an architect. So I wrote him a letter of apology, and received a very beautiful letter back. He was so glad to hear from me. And he didn't remember the poem at all!

He had never searched for Dianne either, despite the intensity of their romance, but now I used my Google skills and found her daughter, who was, of course, almost Paul's age. I called her up: she was a pleasant businesswoman, married, with two children. But we were too late in making contact with Dianne, who died two years ago, following knee replacement surgery. What kind of life had she led? Not so terrible as we might have imagined. Worked odd jobs, had a couple of serious relationships, and was a devoted grandmother. Her own mother was still alive. Nothing too scary. Pat and I were both sad, and wished we'd looked earlier. Perhaps we'd been too busy becoming respectable. But that was what we needed to do.

Yet today, we had our own reunion! Pat, en route from Jamaica to Australia for a conference, stopped for five hours in Los Angeles. I picked him up at the airport, took him to my home (in pouring rain), and he met Peter, Paul and the cats, and saw our books. It was like the world he had left behind, in New York, he commented. And the visit was like sailing at night, which he used to do, and pulling into another port, another world, for a few hours. We went out to a Vietnamese restaurant and stopped at the Novel Cafe for coffee, before I took him back to the airport. It was a lovely, warm meeting. We recognized each other instantly even though we hadn't seen each other since age 16 and 17, forty-odd years ago. He's still handsome, with the wry twinkle in his eye and the gentle smile. Somebody who is very comfortable in the world and in his own skin. Talented, thoughtful, sane. The only thing that took me by surprise was that he speaks now in a Jamaican accent, when he spoke pure New York back in the day! One of the warm and wonderful experiences in life's treasure chest.

To conclude in times present, how could I have forgotten a picture of a cat?



















Martial in a Box