An
article by Henri Llewelyn Davies, reprinted from the magazine Cats
Today.
T.S. Eliot, one of the finest twentieth century poets (few literary
experts would dispute his brilliance) also had a major soft spot
for cats. He wrote sympathetically about them in a slim volume
of verse in a jokey, jolly style – a far cry from
his usual sophisticated, often esoteric variety of fully ‘adult’ writing,
such as in the sad, dirgey ‘The Waste Land’ or ‘The
Four Quartets’ (the latter poem being arguably one of the
greatest not just of the last century, but of all time.)
The mega-intellectual and academic Eliot also greatly
admired the work of a poet right at the other end of the high to
lowbrow scale – the
Victorian Edward Lear, who wrote such comic ‘nonsense’ verse
as ‘The Owl and the Pussycat Went to Sea’ (in a beautiful
pea-green boat, as most people will remember).
Eliot’s own
poetry book about one of his favourite animals was first published
in 1939 and, like Lear’s work, favours
tub-thumping, nursery-rhymish, jingly and catchy rhythms. The
book often used to be doled out to children by would-be-intellectual (and
catophile) parents who wanted to feed their brats some culture
and ween them off their obsession with (in England) Enid Blyton
and the other junk reading indulged in by any self-respecting child.
But
adults can also get a kick out of Eliot’s ‘Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’. ‘Old
Possum’ was a nickname fondly bestowed on Eliot by his friend
Ezra Pound, (another poet with a leaning, in most of his work,
towards the eruditely obscure).
The first poem in ‘Old Possum’ postulates
that a cat has three different names - ranging from ‘Victor
or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey – All of them sensible,
everyday names’ (asserts Eliot) to the more upmarket names
such as ‘Plato’ or ‘Coricopat’(?) to the
secret, never-uttered name known exclusively to the cat. T.S.
Eliot says that:
When you see a cat lost in deep, seemingly grave
thought,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same;
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name.’
Real-life cats
Eliot owned or consorted with included two rejoicing in the names
of Wiscus and George Pushdragon. Another couple
were called Bubbles and Xerxes. The tabby Bubbles is said to have
been a great source of comfort to Eliot when his first wife, Vivienne,
was mentally ill and living apart from him.
T.S. dedicated
various light-hearted poems to both Virginia Woolf and the afore-mentioned
Bubbles, cheered, no doubt, by the thought that the latter dedicatee
would never come to a sad, self-inflicted end by committing suicide.
(Virginia Woolf famously ended her life by drowning herself). Cats
apparently created an affectionate and elegantly balanced environment
which was sometimes lacking in the rest of Eliot’s domestic
life. The poet was also a big fan of Groucho Marx – the
two of them met on just one occasion, when Eliot had become old
and ill, and revelled in their shared enthusiasm for puns, cigars
and cats.
T.S.’s closely observed descriptions of the idiosyncracies
of felines are all delivered in a rollocking style that builds
up and becomes more effective and absorbing the more you read:
The
Rum Tum Tigger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse,
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he’d rather have a house…’
And so on and on: the next lines involve the rhyming word ‘mouse’,
of course, but Eliot, as a real wordmaster – who in a serious
poem once grumbled about ‘the intolerable wrestle with words
and meanings’ – does know how to choose and place his
words carefully – to just sidestep intolerably cutesie cliches.
Eliot’s
cats are placed in quirky and touching situations: ‘Gus,
the theatre cat’ who hangs round the stage door; Growltiger,
ensconced on a barge, the ‘Terror of the Thames’; and
Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, who chooses to make his home on
a train (‘You may say that by and large it is Skimble who’s
in charge of the sleeping car express’). It is hard
to do justice to the flavour and calibre of the poems without quoting
large chunks, as their effectiveness tends to be cumulative.
Eliot’s
descriptions of his cats’ physical characteristics
tend to be flatly and effectively down to earth, not coy, as
in the poem about ‘Macavity the mystery cat’:
He’s
called the Hidden Paw, (for he’s the master criminal who
can defy the Law)’:
Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed’.
Several verses
of this poem end with versions of the recurring
refrain, 'But when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s
not there!' One can easily visualise this frowsty,
awkward animal from Eliot’s description.
Some may prefer
a truly visual version of the poems (they are set to music sung
by actors dressed up as felines in the hit musical ‘Cats’).
But I think ‘Old Possum’ on paper, quaintness and all,
can still entertain and seduce many cat-inclined people.
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