When Dr Seuss Went Wrong – Michelle Lovric

I don’t even want to imagine a childhood without The Cat in the Hat or Yertle the Turtle. I can still recite the first ten pages of The Sleep Book and all of Green Eggs and Ham. As far as I’m concerned, the only person who ever beat Dr Seuss for perfect rhyme is the singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer. (The two of them were obvious soul-mates.)

Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) knew only one failure in his brilliant career as an illustrator/writer, and it was The Seven Lady Godivas.

I would never have known about this book if it hadn’t been discovered by my father, who brought me and my siblings up on a rich diet of Seuss and Lehrer. He drew my attention to The Seven Lady Godivas while I was writing my own book about seven long-haired sisters, The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, a historical novel published by Bloomsbury in 2014.

the original cover

So I tracked down a copy of Seuss’s book, and found myself mightily surprised.

The Seven Lady Godivas, subtitled The True Facts Concerning History's Barest Family, was published in 1939, two years after his first book for children, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Genre? Sort-of-historical-fan-fic-graphic-novel-gift-book-novelty-item. Like the books we all know and love, it featured Seuss’s unmistakable black-line cartoons with colour infils, and it was published in a children’s bookish format: eighty pages, hardcover, 8.5 x 11 inches.

But the protagonists are seven well-developed young women to whom that loathsome phrase ‘scantily clad’ can actually be applied. All they wear is their hair. Although all nipples and vaginas are artfully concealed, breasts and buttocks are not: the scantiness of the cladding serves only to emphasise the nudity underneath. The phallic symbolism is extremely ... well, intrusive. Visually, this book is not for children, many of whom, would be embarrassed by the illustrations, I suspect. Nor are there any of Seuss’s irresistible anapestic or trochaic tetrameter. It’s relentlessly prosy.

 Meanwhile, strangely, the storyline has the children’s book incantatory repetitive questy thing going on. The sisters’ names are straight out of child fiction: Clementina, Mitzi, Lulu, Hedwig, Gussie, Arabella and Dorcas.

The Godivas, who live in the 11th century, are committed nudists, even when it snows, because ‘they were simply themselves and chose not to disguise it’. Their father, Lord Godiva, sets off for the Battle of Hastings on horseback but is thrown from the horse and dies. This sets an obstacle in the way of the sisters marrying their suitors, the seven Peeping brothers. Before she can settle down, each sister must undertake a quest for a scientific "horse truth" that will contribute something to the greater knowledge of mankind.

What do the Godivas discover?
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Don’t put the cart before the horse.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Never change horses in the middle of the stream.
Horseshoes are lucky.
That something can be a horse of another colour.
Don’t lock the barn door after the horse has been stolen.

As a plot, it doesn’t make the heart race, or set the finger quivering with anticipation at the top of the next page, does it?

So what went wrong?

Little as one likes to think it, Dr Seuss did have an adult life. His Godivas were created at time when he was still pursuing his initial career as a writer, illustrator and cartoonist for various American magazines such as Vanity Fair. He also drew advertising illustrations for major American brands and would soon become active as a political cartoonist during World War II.

Appearing as it did, just before the war, the mixed messages and general frivolity of The Seven Lady Godivas met with little enthusiasm. There was no reprint after the first 10,000 copies. The sales were something between 50 and 2500 copies. The book was remaindered, making only one other appearance of which I know … a reprint in 1987, with a different jacket, to celebrate a retrospective exhibit of his work. I could not detect any mention of it in Random House’s Seussville site.

the reprint jacket

 Dr Seuss himself knew that The Seven Lady Godivas was not his finest hour. He regarded it as his greatest failure as a writer and thought it should never have seen the light of day. He was frank in his embarrassment about it. He pilloried his over-indulgent publisher on the endpapers of the book: if you look in one of the upper branches of the tree in his illustration (below) you will see a small bucket of sap, which is labelled ‘Bennett Cerf’, the name of his publisher. (I know it's too tiny to see here).

Nor was Seuss satisfied with the artwork he produced for the Godivas. When interviewed, he said of this book that ‘it was all full of naked women, and I can't draw convincing naked women. I put their knees in the wrong places.’

I'd say that was fair.

And it seems that we can be grateful to Godiva debacle, because it appears to have hustled Seuss away from any thoughts of writing for adults, advertising or any such grown-up pursuits, and back where he belonged: writing for children. He was frequently quoted as saying, ‘Adults are obsolete children, and the hell with them.’

(That didn’t mean that Seuss couldn’t write some of the most sophisticated tracts I know in defence of the environment or against racism – he just managed to do it in rhyme, with pictures, in The Lorax and The Sneetches.)

While researching this post, I came across one of those facts you think you should have known: how The Cat in the Hat came to be. Back in 1954, when American was in a junior literacy crisis, the then director of Houghton Mifflin’s education division compiled a list of 348 words that he considered crucial for first-graders to know. He commissioned Dr Seuss to trim that to 250 words and then to write a book using only them.

This brilliant writer achieved The Cat in the Hat with only 236.

For an amusing insight into his early career, including his contribution to wartime propaganda, see this You-tube video – which claims that Green Eggs and Ham arose from a bet with Mr Cerf that Seuss could not produce a book using just 50 words.

Michelle Lovric

A mole on the belly - Michelle Lovric

Some years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a few days immersed in an old book at the British Library. This one was called THE Amorous Gallant's Tongue Tipp'd with GOLDEN EXPRESSIONS OR, THE Art of Courtship refined. It was published in 1741.

At the time, the only place to find a book like this was in the library, but now of course it exists as an Ebook too.

One of the things I liked about the Gallant was that it assumed a healthy interest in sex for both genders, reinforcing my private theory that the 18th century was a good time for women, a time when they were allowed to have a sense of humour and sensuality of their own. If you ask me (and don’t, unless you want hours of hectoring) it was Byron and the so-called Romantics who marginalised us as the bruised-flower victims or mothers of bad-boy heroes.

Because 18th century women could cope with laughing, the love advice in The Amorous Gallant was tailed with a bit of rough humour:- a Canting Academy Or the Pedlar's French Dictionary, a guide to unsavoury expressions.

Without googling, eighteenth century types bent on love had to find other ways to test the suitability, durability and sexual enthusiasms of their future partners. The Amorous Gallant suggested an examination of various physical attributes. Moles were a good place to start, although gaining access to all mole-sites must have entailed a certain amount of enterprise and an open mind, if not bodice and trouser.

According to our Gallant:

 A Mole on the lower Part of the tip of the Right Ear, threatens the party with drowning.

 A Mole on the Belly denotes Whoredom, Luxury and Gluttony.

 A Mole on the Lip signifies the Party to be much beloved and very amorous.

 A Mole on the left Buttock denotes a pleasing person and are very much delighted in the work of Generation.

 A Mole on the Eyebrow signifies speedy Marriage and a good Husband.

A Mole on the Ankle, in a Man, denotes Effeminacy; but in a Woman, a masculine Spirit, and that She shall wear the Breeches.

A Mole on the right Thigh foretells Riches and Advancement by Marriage; and on the private Parts it doth the like.
For further reading on this subject, the Wellcome Library holds a book by Richard Saunders, published in 1653: Physiognomie and chiromancie, metoposcopie, the symmetrical proportions and signal moles of the body, fully and accurately handled; with their natural-predictive-significations. The subject of dreams; divinative steganographical, and Lullian sciences. Whereunto is added the art of memorie. Below is an illustration from it. Perhaps our Gallant studied it before writing his own chapter.

The Gallant also suggested that the lover should pay attention to the Interpretation of Dreams:

To dream of long Hair, and being proud thereof, denotes Good to Women 

The hair of the Seven Sutherland Sisters, who marketed various quack preparations and
were the inspiration for my novel The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters.
As it happened, long hair did not make any of the sisters, real or fictional, very happy.

This was certainly not true of the bearded lady Julia Pastrana, pictured above,
Julia's ruthless husband raised cash by sending her embalmed body
on tour with various circuses after she died.

 To dream you have Hair like Hog Bristles denotes great Affliction and Trouble, not without Danger of Violence.

 To dream of having many Ears, Signifies the Obedience of Wife, Children and Servants.

 To dream that the Eyebrows are hairy, and of a good Grace, signifies good to all, but more especially to Women.

 For a fair Woman to dream of having many Eyes is unfortunate, and betoken she shall have more Admirers than real Friends.

To dream of having a large Nose is generally very good to all; for it betokens Vivacity of Spirit and Prudence in Management of Affairs, and Familiary with Persons of Quality.

If a Woman dreams she hath a Beard it denotes she shall quickly have a kind Husband that will make much of her.

For a man to dream that his breasts are hairy denotes strength and good fortune, but for a woman to dream so betokens widowhood and loss.

The golden age of quack medicine, as I have written before, coincided with that of cheap printing. The purveyors of such products often produced booklets with useful advice about health, housekeeping and husband-hunting.
Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup was one such product. Its nominal function: ‘for tonic and alterative effect. Laxative and cathartic’. It advertised itself as the ‘supreme remedy’ for ‘colic, wind, spasms and every possible ailment of the stomach, liver and bowels’. Moreover, it claimed to tone and invigorate every organ of the body, enabling the system to resist disease and lay the foundation of a happy old age.
 A chemical analysis revealed that the syrup was largely composed of treacle and water with dilute hydrochloric acid, tincture of capsicum and aloes.

Wildly successful, Mother Seigel was marketed all over the world. I have seen one brochure on its virtues – printed in 17 languages.

But, like all quack medicines, it promised a world of cures – on the working principle that sometime somewhere someone who bought this syrup might get better anyway. It was marketed from the 1880s. In my collection of quack ephemera is a booklet of general advice and problem solving published by Mother Seigal. (Most problems could be cured by the syrup, of course).

But Mother Seigel, who also ran to plasters and pills, additionally had advice for lovers.

She told her readers to look at the eyes and the fingernails. (Now that we are into the Victorian period, that was about all that a lover might glimpse of a mate before marriage.)

Here are some of her tips.

A weak constitution is indicated by thin eye-brows and long, curving lashes.

 When the eyes are wide open and set well apart the person who has them will have a rash disposition.

 Blue eyes are taken as a sign of weakness – of will.

Eyes that are upturned are said to denote devotion and sincerity.

 The very red (finger)nail indicates a person with a hasty temper.

The short, broad nail denotes and extravagant disposition, but usually the ability to earn plenty of money.

 Ridges on all the nails of the finger, together with numerous white spots, indicate sadness and an unhealthy state of the system.

 If the nails are long, tapering, and white, the person who has them is at times inclined to be quarrelsome and at times selfish.

Stubbornness, sulkiness and also great determination are said to go with very small nails lying close to the flesh and flattish on top.

Personally, I’m sticking to the Amorous Gallant’s dream manual. Recently my nights have been enriched with (medical doses of ) morphine, and I’ve dreamt of many hairy things …

Michelle Lovric's website.
The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters
 is published by Bloomsbury.

Five and a Half Inches - Michelle Lovric

Some measure their lives in teaspoons, but I measure mine in cat litter.

My cats perform their piccoli bisogni in an air-conditioned stainless steel chamber accessed via a Venetian arch copied from John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice. For the sake of their dignity, I shall refrain from illustrating this paragraph.

Every Wednesday and every Saturday I empty the cats’ litter tray. This is one task it’s better not to execute mindfully. So I use the time to consider what I have achieved literarily and personally between Wednesday and Saturday or between Saturday and Wednesday.

For a long time I marked off the grim stages of a personal matter now elegantly and happily resolved, then a broken foot treated, a children’s book written, series of workshops completed, a second broken foot treated (yes, I know), another draft written.

This Wednesday I something else to think about. There’s nothing quite like the relaunch of a backlist to make a writer feel quite chuffed at having achieved five and half inches of printed, published word.

This week, my backlist was relaunched by Bloomsbury with new covers.

Given my habit of measuring my life in cat litter, it seems appropriate to use my cats to measure the achievement. There are cats all through my books.

Carnevale, which is the story of the portrait painter Cecilia Cornaro, features a talking cat who provides commentary on the artist’s lovers, who include Casanova and Byron.

In The Floating Book, the story of Venice’s nascent publishing industry, the publisher’s wife Lussieta follows Italian tradition by acquiring a tabby cat when she becomes pregnant. Tabby cats have the ‘M’ of the Madonna on their stripy foreheads, and it is said that a cat birthed her kittens under the manger where Jesus was born, providing a lesson in perfect maternity for a Virgin inexperienced in childcare. The Floating Book’ s cat is not as virtuous as it might be, however. It is a incorrigible thief.

In The Remedy, a medical murder mystery set in Venice and seedy Bankside, I was constrained to a couple of mummified cats as my wonderful literary agent, Victoria Hobbs, was at that time wont to decry the number of cats in my books and asked me to desist. But she is now the owner of two cats. Just saying. Don’t need to gloat or anything.

The Book of Human Skin is still in print with its original cover. In it, there are several cats including a kitten who suffers a sad fate, illustrating how sociopathic individuals often display their dangerous lack of empathy at a very young age by cruelty to helpless animals.

In The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, a cat teaches Ida, the youngest and perhaps the maddest of the siblings, not to eat her hair, by offering the example of furballs. Enough to make a cat laugh?

As is traditional with a publication, or a relaunch, this blog now offers a complete set of the relaunched titles – all five and a half inches of printed text – as a prize for the answer to this question:

"What is your favourite feline character in literature and why?"

Put your answers in the Comments section below and copy them to readers@maryhoffman.co.uk so that winners can be contacted.

Closing date is 27 June. We are sorry but our competitions are open only to UK readers.



Michelle Lovric's website

Naming the cat - Michelle Lovric

 



Title page to Emily M. Madddon's sketchbook containing numerous pencil and ink drawings concerning the adventures of Mouton the Cat and other animals, 1859

‘The star of the cat,’ wrote H.P. Lovecraft, ‘is just now in the ascendant.’Among historical writers and writers of historical fiction, ‘twas ever thus. How many History Girls enjoy the society of a cat or three?

Every time a new cat comes into a writer’s house there follows an agony of naming, because the title of one’s cat refracts one’s creativity with an undeniable shine.

Anyone with a cat to name may find inspiration in the following illustrious choices. Every cat owner faces this problem. On the subject of literary prowess, Samuel Butler declared, ‘They say the test of this is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, “Can he name a kitten?”’

T.S. Eliot observed that cats should have three names: an everyday one, something rather more grand and then the name that the cat has for himself. Michael Joseph concurred, adding that ‘there are times when nothing less than full ceremonial titles will serve’. His own cats were called Minna Minna Mowbray and Charles O’Malley. And the kind mistress of Pussy Meow, the eponymous heroine of a feline autobiography ghostwritten by S. Louise Patteson in 1901, was also emphatic on that point: ‘A cat should have a name, because it adds to her dignity, and commands respect for her.’ Pussy Meow herself confirmed it: ‘Let me tell you, a cat with a respectable name feels a sense of dignity and self-respect that is impossible to one only known by the general name of “kitty”.’

Mark Twain perhaps took the process a little too far, giving his cats titles like ‘Blatherskite’ and ‘Apollinaris’. He facetiously claimed that some of these cats died early ‘on account of being so overweighted with their names’.

Here’s a highly edited list of historical cat devotees and the names they chose for their muses.

Matthew Arnold: his imperious cat was called Atossa and appeared in his poem ‘Matthias’.

Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly: Démonette, ‘eyes of gold on black velvet’, her son Spirito, and Grifette.

Oswald Barron: James (‘that sort of cat to whom adventure calls’) and Pippa.

A funeral procession of elderly women with cats in their arms, following the coffin of a dead cat, in a churchyard. Coloured stipple engraving by J. Pettit after E.G. Byron, 1789.

Joachim du Bellay: Bélaud. When the cat died in 1558 the poet wrote a beautiful and comprehensive tribute in verse.

Jeremy Bentham: Sir John Langborn, who in his early days was something of a rake. But he reformed. Over time the cat’s increased dignity was reflected in his name, which became The Reverend Sir John Langborn, D.D. (Doctor of Divinity). The cat dined at table and was eventually buried in John Milton’s garden.

The Duchess of Béthune: Dom Gris, who exchanged much flirtatious correspondence with Grisette, belonging to Antoinette Deshoulières (see below).

Alexander Borodin’s dinner table was always overrun with cats, particularly Dlinyenki (‘Longy’), a tabby, and Rybolov (‘fisherman’).

Joseph Boulmier: Gaspard and Coquette, to each of whom the poet dedicated villanelles.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: Dora, who warmed her mistress while she wrote her first stories, and Dick, who was exhibited at the first New York cat show.

 

George Gordon, Lord Byron: Beppo, one of five cats who travelled with the poet.

Monsignore Capecelatro, Archbishop of Taranto: Pantalone, Desdemona, Otello, among others, who were accustomed to join him at the dinner table, where they had their own chairs.

Karel Čapek, author of some of the finest essays on cats’ soul-dominance over man: Pudlenka I, II and III. Pudlenka I appeared on the author’s doorstep the day his tomcat died and had 26 kittens in her lifetime. Pudlenka II had 21.


Cats in human dress playing a variety of games, including arm wrestling and tug of war. Colour woodcut by Kunimasa IV, 1870s.

Chang T’uan: Eastern Guard, White Phoenix, Purple Flower, Expelling Vexation, Brocade Belt, Picture of Clouds and Myriad Strings.

François René Chateaubriand: Micetto, once the cat of Pope Leo XII. Chateaubriand said of him, ‘I endeavour to soften his exile, and help him to forget the Sistine Chapel, and the vast dome of Saint Angelo, where far from earth, he was wont to take his daily promenade.’



A sleeping cat, from 18^th century Japanese album.

Emperor Chu Hou-Tsung of China: Frost-Eyebrows, a cat of ‘faintly blue’ colour but with snowy fur above her eyes.

Winston Churchill: Blackie, Bob, Jock, Margate, Mr Cat aka Tango and Nelson, a black cat who sat in a chair next to Churchill in both the Cabinet and dining room. Churchill once offended one of his cats by shouting at it. The cat disappeared. Churchill had a sign put in his window that read ‘Cat, come home, all is forgiven’. The returning cat was rewarded with a luxurious supper.

Colette: Franchette, Kapok, Kiki-la-Doucette, Kro, La Chatte, La Chatte Dernière, La Touteu, Mini-mini, Minionne, Muscat, One and Only, Petiteu, Pinichette and Zwerg.

François Edouard Joachim Coppée: Bourget (‘Zézé’), a huge cat who lived to be more than 20 years old,  Loulou, a Portuguese angora, and Mistigris, a cat remarkable for his epic appetite.

Georges Courteline (G. Moineaux): Le Purotin de la rue du Ruisseau, Charles Scherer, alias l’Infâme, also alias la Terreur de Clignancourt, la Mère dissipée, le Petit Turbulent, and Le Rouquin de Montmartre. The satirical playwright was a cat lover from babyhood.

Erasmus Darwin: Persian Snow, who enjoyed a correspondence with Po Felina, the cat of his friend and biographer Anna Seward.



A cat's face. Etching by W Hollar, 1646.

 

 

W.H. Davies : Venus, his ‘self-conscious’ black cat, who was, the poet wrote, one of the three golden loves of his life (the other two were his wife and his dog Beauty Boy).

Antoinette Deshoulières: Grisette, Mimy, Marmuse. Deshoulières wrote more than a dozen poems to her cats. She also ‘helped’ Grisette to conduct a poetic correspondence with Cochon, the Duke of Vivonne’s dog; Tata, the cat of the Marquis of Montgras, Dom Gris, the cat of the Duchess of Béthune, and Mittin, the cat of Rosalie Bocquet. Madame Deshoulières also wrote a play, La Mort de Cochon, about the immortal love of Grisette for her deceased canine lover. In the play Grisette refuses to be consoled by an army of feline suitors.

Charles Dickens: Williamina, called William until she bore kittens, which she insisted on moving into Dickens’ study. One was kept and known respectfully as ‘The Master’s Cat’. She would snuff out his reading candle with her paw in order to obtain his attention.

Alexandre Dumas: Mysouff I and II, Le Docteur. The first Mysouff, according to his adoring owner, was a clairvoyant and could tell the time. The second one broke into the writer’s aviary and consumed 500 francs’ worth of tropical birds.

Anatole France: Hamilcar, immortalized in his story Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. Also Pascal, a stray who retained his wandering habits.

Théophile Gautier: Childebrand, Madame Théophile, Don Pierrot de Navarre, Séraphita, Eponine, Zuleika, Zulema, Zobeide, Gavroche, Enjolras, Zizi, Cléopatre. Gautier’s adoring essays about his cats are endlessly anthologized. Less known is the fact that he liked to pose in Turkish robes, lolling on cushions and surrounded by his cats.

A group of cats giving a concert. Reproduction, ca 1817,

of an etching after P Breughel.

Edmund Gosse: the domineering Caruso and Buchanan. According to Osbert Sitwell, ‘Buchanan was … a proud cat, and would never consent to come up to tea unless called or carried by his master in person. Moreover, to secure his continued attendance, he had to be bribed with a saucer of milk, first poured out by Mrs Gosse, and then served to him by her in a kneeling position …’

Thomas Hardy: Cobby, his second cat. It is rumoured that this cat devoured Hardy’s heart, when it was about to be buried, as the writer had requested, in a grave with his wife. It was to his first cat that he dedicated his heart-rending poem ‘Last Words to a Dumb Friend’.

Lafcadio Hearn: Tama, a tortoiseshell.

Ernest Hemingway owned at least 30 cats, including Boise, Crazy Christian, Dillinger, Ecstasy, Fats, Friendless Brother, Furhouse, Pilar, Skunk and Thruster. The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida, boasts a population of more than 60 cats. The Hemingway cats have an unusual gene which gives them an extra toe. It is said that they are all descended from a six-toed cat presented to Hemingway by a ship’s captain.

Augustus Hare: Selma. A cruel aunt ordered the writer’s beloved childhood pet to be hung.

Ernst Hoffmann: Murr, to whom the German writer and composer attributed authorship of the book Murr the Cat and his Views on Life. Murr modestly prefaces the volume as follows: ‘With the quiet confidence that naturally belongs to true genius, I entrust my Biography to the world; that it may learn how a Great Cat is bred and educated.’

Mary Hoffman: Fluffy (don't judge her; she was only five. He later became P. Flower Esq.); Rasselas (he was an Abyssinian of course); Ferrex and Porrex (Gorbaduc); Kulfi, Kichri; Lorenzo, Lonza (Dante) and Lila (from Messaien's Turangalila symphony). Kulfi's kittens were: Kofta, Korma, Kishmish, Kaju and Kichri.

Thomas Hood: Scratchaway, Sootikins and Pepperpot, offspring of Tabitha Longclaws Tiddleywink.

Victor Hugo: Gavroche, also called Chanoine.

Joris Karl Huysmans: Barre-de-Rouille, Mouche.

Gertrude Jekyll: Pinkieboy, Tittlebat, Toozle, Octavius and many others. The famous garden designer always had up to eight cats at a time.

Gwen John: Edgar Quinet, a tortoiseshell often painted by the artist. When he disappeared she went to quite extraordinary lengths to try to find him.

Samuel Johnson: Lily and Hodge. In his finicky old age Hodge regularly dined on oysters. Johnson would go out to purchase these delicacies himself in case the servants, encumbered with this chore, took against his beloved cat. His biographer James Boswell was afraid of cats and suffered greatly from Hodge’s presence when he interviewed Johnson. Hodge is immortalized in a statue outside Johnson’s house in Gough Square, London. Next to the sculpted cat are a few empty oyster shells.

Paul de Kock: Frontin – the kind of cat, the novelist declared, ‘he would not give up for his weight in gold’. De Kock was well known as a great cat lover. Whenever his neighbours found a stray cat they just tossed the animal over the garden wall to join the huge family already living there. He is described by Carl Van Vechten as ‘a true félinophile enragé’.

Andrew Lang: Mr Toby, a black cat, Gyp, a notorious thief, and Master of Gray, a Persian.

Edward Lear: Foss. Lear’s tabby cat was immortalized in poems, limericks and drawings. It was said that when Lear built a new villa in San Remo, Italy, he commissioned the architect to replicate his last home so as to cause Foss the minimum of distress in his new surroundings. Foss was honoured with a full burial in Lear’s Italian garden when he died in 1887. Edward Strachey, who visited Lear at the villa, recorded: ‘At breakfast the morning after I arrived, this much-thought-of, though semi-tailed, cat jumped in at the window and ate a piece of toast from my hand. This, I found, was considered an event … his recognition of me was a sort of “guinea stamp”, which seemed to please Mr Lear greatly, and assured him of my fitness to receive the constant acts of kindness he was showing me.’

Pierre Loti: Moumoutte Blanche, a black and white angora, and Moumoutte Chinoise, a stowaway kitten from China both appeared in Vies de Deux Chattes. Loti also wrote Un Bête Galeuse about a mortally ill cat to whom he administered euthanasia. Other Loti pets were called Le Chat, Ratonne and Berlaud. Loti printed visiting cards for his esteemed felines: ‘Madame Moumoutte, white, the foremost cat of Monsieur Pierre Loti, 141 Rue Chanzy, Rochefort-sur-Mer’.

Stéphane Mallarmé: Lilith, a black cat; Neige, a white angora and her son Frimas.

Catulle Mendès: Mime, Fafner, Fasolt. According to the French poet, after Mime was neutered, he became depressed and committed suicide by jumping off the roof. Mendès took his own life some time later. 

Gottfried Mind, Swiss artist, known as the ‘Raphael of cats’: Minette, whom he saved from a cull of cats during a rabies epidemic in his native Bern in 1809. He not only painted cats but sculpted them out of chestnuts.

William Nicholson: Frou-frou, Black, Castlerosse and The Girl. The versatile artist also made portraits of Winston Churchill’s marmalade tom.

Florence Nightingale: Bismarck, a large Persian; Disraeli and Gladstone. Nightingale owned more than 60 cats during her lifetime.

Edgar Allan Poe: Catarina, a tortoiseshell. She often sat on his shoulders while he wrote.

Agnes Repplier: Agrippina. The author dedicated The Fireside Sphinx (1901) to her. Other cats included Lux, Banquo, Banshee, Carl and Nero.

Cardinal Armand Jean Duplessis Richelieu: Racan, Perruque, Rubis sur l’Ongle, Gazette, Félimare, who was striped like a tiger, Lucifer, a jet black cat, Ludovic le Cruel, a savage rat-catcher, Ludoviska, a Polish cat, Mimie-Paillon, an angora, Mounard le Fougueux, described as ‘quarrelsome, capricious and worldly’, Pyrame and Thisbe, named after the mythological lovers because they slept together with their paws entwined, Serpolet, who was fond of sunning himself in the window, and Soumise, Richelieu’s favourite. Richelieu was a great cat lover and enjoyed playing with them. He even had one of the rooms in his house made into a cattery for them. He entrusted their care to specially employed servants, Abel and Teyssandier, who came to feed them twice a day with pâtés made from the best chicken meat. In his will, he left a pension for his 14 surviving cats, so that the servants could continue to look after them.

Theodore Roosevelt: Slippers, Tom Quartz. The American president doted on Slippers and once obliged a group of VIPS visiting the White House to make a detour around the sleeping animal.

Christina Rossetti: Grimalkin, the subject of her moving poem ‘On the Death of a Cat’, written when she was only 16 years old.

George Sand: Minou. Sand ate her breakfast from the same bowl as Minou.

Domenico Scarlatti: Pulcinella – she inspired ‘The Cat’s Fugue’ as she liked to walk up and down on the composer’s keyboard.

Albert Schweitzer: Sizi. The German doctor taught himself to write with his right hand, because Sizi preferred to fall asleep on his left arm, thereby preventing the doctor from writing prescriptions for his patients.

Walter Scott: Hinse – he terrorized the author’s dogs, but was eventually killed by one of them.

Robert Southey: His Serene Highness, the Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstilzchen, Marquis Macbum, Earl Tomlemange, Baron Raticide, Waowlher and Skaratch (a single cat!), Hurlyburlypuss, Lord Nelson (later Baron, Viscount and Earl), Sir Thomas Dido, Madame Catalini, Bona Marietta, Bona Fidelia, Madame Bianchi, Pulcheria, Ovid, Virgil, Othello, the Zombi, Prester John (who had to be rechristened Pope Joan), William Rufus and Danayr le Roux. Southey chronicled their lives in a charming memoir. His son observed: ‘It was not a little amusing to see a kitten answer to the name of some Italian singer or Indian chief, or hero of a German fairy tale, and often names and titles were heaped one upon another, till the possessor, unconscious of the honour conveyed, used to “set up his eyes and look” in wonderment.’

Carmen Sylva (Queen Elizabeth of Rumania): Misikatz, Diddelchen, Müffchen, Püffchen, Vulpi, Lilliput, Frätzibutzi (official name Freiherr Fratz von dem Katzenbuckel).

Mary Eleanor Bowes, later Countess of Strathmore: Jacintha, Angelica, Pasiphae, Bambino. Her cats were always referred to as her ‘blessed angels’.

Hippolyte Taine: Puss, Ebène and Mitonne, to whom he wrote 12 sonnets.

Booth Tarkington: Gypsy (‘half broncho and half Malay pirate’).

William Makepeace Thackeray: Louisa.

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens): Sour Mash, Apollinaris, Zoroaster, Sin, Buffalo Bill, Beezelbub, Tammany and Blatherskite (‘names given them, not in an unfriendly spirit, but merely to practise the children in large and difficult styles of pronunciation’). Twain could not live without a cat for company. When he went to spend a summer in New Hampshire he decided that rather than adopt a stray that would be left to its own devices after he returned home, he would ‘rent’ a cat. In fact he rented two, Sackcloth and Ashes.

Carl Van Vechten, author of The Tiger in the House (1922): Feathers, Ariel.

Horace Walpole: Selima – a tortoiseshell tabby whose sad end inspired Thomas Gray’s poem ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’ (1748); Zara, Patapan, Harold and Fatima.

Charles Dudley Warner: Calvin, originally Harriet Beecher Stowe’s cat. She gave him to the Warner family when she moved to Florida. The cat, named for his ‘gravity, morality, and uprightness’, was the subject of an exquisitely written essay by Warner: ‘Calvin, A Study of Character’.

H.G. Wells: Mr Peter Wells

Michelle Lovric's website
Michelle Lovric's latest novel, The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, is published by Bloomsbury. It features one cat.

Some of the cats in her other books: Sofonisba, Bestard-Belou, Albicocco, Brolo and Talina, a part-time cat.

Michelle Lovric's most recent cats are Gamoush, Possum, Rose La Touche of Harristown, Mu and Caramella, otherwise known as Unholy Sausage.

History Girls with cats are invited to share their naming skills below.

Thoughts on monstrosity - Michelle Lovric

I’ve written before about the Natural History Museum in Venice, quite recently reopened after decades of restoration. I’ve recorded how, among all the state-of-the-art graphics, tools and devices, the visitor can find the dusty remnants of a vast collection of hunters’ trophies from the days when ‘men were men’ and not ashamed to murder helpless animals in the name of sport.

Walking swiftly past the espaliered gorilla and the dozens of mounted heads, I always make my way into a little circular room where the museum keeps its curiosities. The room is styled like that of the famous Neapolitan collector Ferrante Imperato (1550-1625). The image below shows his cabinet of curiosities in the Palazzo Gravina in Naples. In this picture, it is thought that Imperato’s son, Francesco, is showing off the collection to a pair of visitors. Meanwhile, his father looks on with what seems to me to be a rather affected nonchalance, legs casually crossed.

Imperato, who trained as an apothecary, collected and classified flora and fauna. He was also interested in fossil, ores and gems. He recording his findings and inventoried his collection of about 35,000 specimens in his 800-page Dell’ historia naturale published in Naples in 1599. This title page, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, is from the copy at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. This book was a rarity in its time, being written in Italian, rather than in the more traditional Latin.

In the first picture above, Francesco Imperato uses a long stick to point to one of the exhibits. One writer has suggested that the crocodile is above so as not to distract visitors from the less spectacular ores and minerals. But the baton seems to me to point at a bird. Is it the remains of a chicken? Perhaps.

Certainly in the Ferrante Imperato ‘tribute’ room in Venice’s Natural History Museum, a chicken occupies pride of place. And it was there that I found 'The Monstrous Chicken'.

When talking to the curator Margherita Fusco, I discovered that this chicken had a history all of her own. As we History Girls are taking a beastly turn this month (see the blogs of Mary Hoffman and Louisa Young), I thought I would write the biography of this chicken.

 

In most ways, she was a chicken like any other. Like any other chicken of the mainland Veneto, that is. Her development in the egg would have followed the destiny engraved in a book, closely contemporary to Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’ historia naturale: Hieronymous Fabricius’s De formatione ovi et pulli, 1621, as shown above.

 

 Except this chicken did some extra growing.

 Two extra legs, to be precise.

Despite popular superstitions against ‘freaks’, her farmer let her live, as did the other chickens in her coop. She grew to maturity. Apart from the legs, she probably looked rather like this illustration of hen from Charles Darwin’s 1872 work, The Expression of the emotions in Man and Animals.

The four-legged chicken of the Veneto eventually found herself for sale at Treviso market, probably sold by someone looking rather like this poultry-dealing  'contadino' in an engraving, also closely contemporary to Ferrante Imperato, being from the book, Habiti antichi, et moderni di tutto il mondo / Di Cesare Vecellio. Di nuouo accresciuti di molte figure. Vestitus antiquorum, recentiorúmque totius orbis, 1598.

One can only hope that she was not carried upside down like this contadino's chicken.

At the Treviso market she was seen by Emilio Ninni, the curator of the Natural History Museum in Venice. He bought her straightaway, and took her home. She became both a pet and living case-study for him.

Here is the skeleton of a normal hen, rather charmingly rendered in Jean Germani’s 1625 tract, Breve e substantiale trattato intorno alle figure anathomiche.

And here is Ninni's cross section of the skeleton of the chicken from Treviso. She had two pairs of limbs like this.

 

Apart from the extra set of limbs, the scientist observed, this chicken was not much different in stature from others of her species. ‘Perhaps a little taller,’ he observed. She ate rather well and walked without any visible impediment. However, he never saw her run and he never heard her sing. She submitted patiently to his examinations.

 

Sadly one day, Ninni found her drowned in her water bowl. Possibly, it was on account of her extra legs that she fell into this peril, unlike ‘her other companions in slavery’.

 

Ninni examined the skeleton of his former pet, and published a short academic paper on ‘Lo scheletro di un uccello mostruoso’.  The skeleton of the freak or monstrous bird.

 

 

Ninni’s four-legged chicken found her way into a display cabinet in his museum, in which you can also see a ‘baby mermaid’ made of a monkey head and shoulders stuffed into a fish, a basilisk confected of a parrot and some sharkskin, and my favourite exhibit of all, the cat of Doge Francesco Morosini, who esteemed his pet so much that on her death he had her mummified with a large rat between her paws.

 

And all of these creatures played their parts in my children novel, The Fate in the Box, as did the espaliered gorilla, the giant’s skeleton and the billiard table with four rhinoceros legs, which was, of course, begging to come to life and walk carefully down the stairs.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what constitutes and constituted a ‘freak’, especially in the 19^th century, the setting for my novel, The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters. A minor character in my novel, which deals with the Victorian obsession with hair, is the famous Mexican Gorilla Woman, Julia Pastrana, about whom I have blogged previously in this parish.

Julia (pictured right) had hair where hair should not be. This chicken had extra legs where legs should not be. Freaks tend to have extra or fewer limbs, larger or smaller features or appendages than ‘normal’. But what is normal? What kind of physiological status anxiety has given us such narrow parameters of normality?  In Victoria times, it has been theorized, Darwin's explanation of our simian origins created such a need to 'monsterize' those who are a slightly different. But what is our excuse today?

And what of the animals in Venice's museum, killed and contorted into bizarre furniture and light fittings on the whim of a trophy hunter?

Who is really the freak in this scenario?

Among all those stuffed and mounted creatures at Venice’s Natural History Museum, there are many other stories to be written. The Curiosity Room is full of creatures that were regarded as freaks. All died before their time. Writing about them is one way, I console myself, of bringing these unfortunate creatures back to life.

Until we find a better one, it will have to do.

 

www.michellelovric.com

Natural History Museum of Venice

In 2012, the museum published a new illustrated guide in English and Italian.

 

What's biting Venice? - Michelle Lovric

Sometimes, as a vegetarian, it's distressing to wander around Venice.

There’s a great deal of carnivorous behaviour going on. I write not only of the tourists devouring fegato alla Veneziana alfresco at Venetian restaurants, nor of the rats gnawing cutlets behind those same establishments, or of the seagulls wrenching squid from the canals, nor yet of the egrets fishing for tiny slivers of silver, which fight for life all the way down the birds’ long, creamy gullets.

In fact, the most fearsome eating you see in Venice goes on in Byzantine stone circles: reliefs, between 20 and 80cm, which can be seen on the walls of many secular buildings. This is one of the most vivid.

These poor hares can be seen the Campo del Luganeger, which, incidentally, means the Square of the Sausage-Maker. Hare sausage? I don’t know.  I hope not.

Such stone circles are called' patere' (singular: 'patera'). Their shape and size indicates their material origin: they were often cut from slices of old marble columns, with the stone originating from Venice’s conquests in Greece. Most patere were made between the 11^th and 14^th centuries.

They are sometimes described as charms to ward off evil, which may explain the fact that they are usually attached to the outside walls of domestic dwelling. In most of the patere, the enemy is being despatched by mouth.

Given their antiquity and their style, scholars have suggested that the patere might originate in those parts of Italy governed by Byzantium or in Byzantium proper, manufactured for export. They have been cited as the spoils of conquest. However, such motifs and shapes are not frequently found in secular Byzantine architecture. So the patere seem to have been a special feature of Venice’s promiscuous accommodation of her varied cultural maternity.

However, the visual tropes of the patere borrow from Byzantium: the poses and body forms of the beasts and flowers, and even the ways in which fur and feather are depicted.

Variations of the same images can be seen in many patere. The most popular vignette shows an eagle eating a rabbit or a hare, symbolizing the victory of virtue over vice. Apparently these rodents represent concupiscence and lust. (Their expressions, however, tend to connote wide-eyed shock at the prospect of being eaten alive.)

There are also lions eating dogs or wolves or horses.

A recent university project made a census of 482 patere, with 150 different themes. They are found in every sestiere of the city. In fact, one third of the world’s population of patere can be found in Venice.

When rectangular with an arched top, these stones are known as 'formelle'. The formelle show many of the same themes as the patere. They are far less numerous than the patere.

The earliest examples that can be dated are to be found on the extreme left arch of the façade of the Basilica – the arch of Sant’Alipio, where there are two formelle from the late 12^th century.

Many patere and formelle are not in their original locations. This is because Venice’s vernacular architecture frequently succumbed to various waves of fashion: Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.  Buildings were torn down, or re-facaded regularly. The patere were saved and added to the new walls, as were other pieces of public art. Or new walls were built around them, as this interrupted rabbit shows, on side of the church of San Giacomo dell'Orio.

 Other buildings were razed to the ground punitively, such as the palazzo of Baiamonte Tiepolo at Sant’Agostin after his conspiracy to murder Doge Pietro Gradenigo in 1310. The patere from Baiamonte’s home ended up on the walls of the Tagliapietra chapel in San Vio. Here are some details ...

This is no doubt connected to the fact that the conspiracy was defeated on the day of San Vio, where a ceremony to celebrate its failure was held for centuries afterwards. Meanwhile a different kind of stone memorial - a column of infamy - was erected for Baiamonte himself on the site of his former home. (I've spent quite a few years of my life devoted to that column.)

the column of infamy of Baiamonte Tiepolo
at Sant'Agostin - now secreted in a storeroom of the Doges Palace

There are less bloodthirsty patere. Some show two birds or other animals eating from the tree or drinking from the well of life. Sometimes two birds are shown with their necks intertwined, to express harmonious coexistence.

If you happen to be in Venice, and would like to look at some patere, there are good conglomerations of them at Ca' Donà de la Madoneta, the Ca' Cappello in Castello, and the Ca' Vitturi in the Campo Santa Maria Formosa, at San Aponal, and near the Ponte de le Oche. Opposite the famous wine bar at San Trovaso there’s a yellow wall well studded with them too.

patere at San Trovaso

Carnivorous behaviour is not restricted to the patere. On this column of the Doges Palace you see each animal with its prey in its mouth. My favourite is probably the bear with the honeycomb.

 

This feline creature –‘Musipul’ is a character in my work-in-progress for children.

In this, she is a testy Arabian leopard from the Castle of Jabrin in Arabia. But that's another story ...

Michelle Lovric's website
Her latest book is The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, published by Bloomsbury.