Pardon, Dear Sir, if with intrusive pen
I would remind you that we met last week;
Not that you showed me any favour then
Nor that I have forgot the infernal cheek
You tendered to your fellow-citizen,
Veiling your yellow eyes, where black and sleek
You graced the hearth-rug in the glittering gloom
Of Sir John Soane’s be-mirrored breakfast-room.
Which snub to soften, an official leant
Hinting, behind his tactful fingers, that
It was but seldom that you _quite_ unbent
Being almost a Statutory cat;
If not retained by Act of Parliament
(As is your noble shrine) at least you sat,
Kept up by twenty shillings and tradition,
As part and parcel of the exhibition.
For when (he added in an undertone)
Each Reynolds, Fuseli, and Bartolozzi,
Hogarth and Lawrence were bequeathed by Soane
With Roman marbles and Athenian pots, he
Begrudged to leave them lifeless and alone,
So, having ranged them in appropriate spots, he
Said—“There shall be a Cat,” and, in effect, you’re
His last word in Domestic Architecture.
Thus far Authority. Now, might I ask it,—
How came you, Thomas, by this lofty station
From kitten-hood and the maternal basket?
Was there, perchance, some stiff examination
Such as tests candidates whose pleasant task it
Is to advance the cause of education,
In places advertised, you often see ’em,
On outside pages of the _Athenæum_?
Or how were you appointed? Was it Fate or
The cat before, some mid-Victorian mouser,
Left you the seat Death bade him abdicate or
Did hirelings kidnap you like Kaspar Hauser?
Did rich relations canvass the Curator
And the Trustees on your behalf? Allow, Sir,
Some little light to play upon the mystery
Of Thomas Black his entrance into History.
O happy he for whom does not exist
Our later London—that superb disaster,
Who in his Georgian hermitage has missed
Our schemes of girders overlaid with plaster,
Who has not met a Post-Impressionist
Nor heard a maniac acclaimed a master,
But sits with those who draw their weekly salary
Soothed by dim models of the Dulwich Gallery.
For, be their outlook dull, at least ’tis clean.
Not so the cat’s whose whole existence spent is
In some half-lighted haunt of the obscene—
The studio of that modern idle ’prentice
Who thinks he has the trick of Hogarth’s spleen
(Of course he’s twice the draughtsman) if his bent is
To paint that vice with intimate elation
Which Hogarth limned, apart, with detestation.
All this you’re spared; and so you might have paid
Some courtesy to those, a very few,
Who come withdrawn from that exterior shade
To spend an hour with sanity and you,—
And, when you saw that I had gladly stayed,
Not closed your eye-lids and our interview
But told me what the contents of each case meant
And let me come with you to see the basement.
Yet, after all, you know your part, doze on;
You are no common cat, you rather seem,
If not the incarnation of Sir John,
To be at least the creature of his dream;
Visitors enter, sign their names, are gone—
You stay, the centre of his classic scheme.
Blink not an ear for me—t’were not expedient—
But let me rest, Dear Sir, your most obedient.