but we are proud of it when it exists. There is a pleasure in seeing
strange cats fly at his approach, either in single file over the wall
or in the scattered aimlessness of a bursting bomb. Theoretically, we
hate him to fight, but, if he does fight and comes home with a torn
ear, we have to summon up all the resources of our finer nature in
order not to rejoice on noticing that the cat next door looks as
though it had been through a railway accident. I am sorry for the cat
next door. I hate him so, and it must be horrible to be hated. But he
should not sit on my wall and look at me with yellow eyes. If his eyes
were any other colour--even the blue that is now said to be the mark
of the runaway husband--I feel certain I could just manage to endure
him. But they are the sort of yellow eyes that you expect to see
looking out at you from a hole in the panelling in a novel by Mr Sax
Rohmer. The only reason why I am not frightened of them is that the
cat is so obviously frightened of me. I never did him any injury
unless to hate is to injure. But he lowers his head when I appear as
though he expected to be guillotined. He does not run away: he merely
crouches like a guilty thing. Perhaps he remembers how often he has
stepped delicately over my seed-beds, but not so delicately as to
leave no mark of ruin among the infant lettuces and the
less-than-infant autumn-sprouting broccoli. These things I could
forgive him, but it is not easy to forgive him the look in his eyes
when he watches a bird at its song. They are ablaze with evil. He
becomes a sort of Jack the Ripper at the opera. People tell us that we
should not blame cats for this sort of thing--that it is their nature
and so forth. They even suggest that a cat is no more cruel in eating
robin than we are cruel ourselves in eating chicken. This seems to me
to be quibbling. In the first place, there is an immense difference
between a robin and a chicken. In the second place, we are willing to
share our chicken with the cat--at least, we are willing to share the
skin and such of the bones as are not required for soup. Besides, a
cat has not the same need of delicacies as a human being. It can eat,
and even digest, anything. It can eat the black skin of filleted
plaice. It can eat the bits of gristle that people leave on the side
of their plates. It can eat boiled cod. It can eat New Zealand mutton.
There is no reason why an animal with so undiscriminating a palate
should demand song-birds for its food, when even human beings, who are
fairly unscrupulous eaters, have agreed in some measure to abstain
from them. On reflection, however, I doubt if it is his appetite for
birds that makes the cat with the yellow eyes feel guilty. If you were
able to talk to him in his own language, and formulate your
accusations against him as a bird-eater, he would probably be merely
puzzled and look on you as a crank. If you pursued the argument and
compelled him to moralise his position, he would, I fancy, explain
that the birds were very wicked creatures and that their cruelties to
the worms and the insects were more than flesh and blood could stand.
He would work himself up into a generous idealisation of himself as
the guardian of law and order amid the bloody strife of the
cabbage-patch--the preserver of the balance of nature. If cats were as
clever as we, they would compile an atrocities blue-book about worms.
Alas, poor thrush, with how bedraggled a reputation you would come
through such an exposure! With how Hunnish a tread you would be
depicted treading the lawn, sparing neither age nor sex, seizing the
infant worm as it puts out its head to take its first bewildered peep
at the rolling sun! Cats could write sonnets on such a theme.... Then
there is that other beautiful potential poem, _The Cry of the
Snail_.... How tender-hearted cats are! Their sympathy seems to be all
but universal, always on the look out for an object, ready to extend
itself anywhere where it is needed, except, as is but human, to their
victims. Yellow eyes or not, I begin to be persuaded that the cat next
door is a noble fellow. It may well be that his look as I pass is a
look not of fear but of repulsion. He has seen me going out among the
worms with a sharp--no, not a very sharp--spade, and regards me as no
better than an ogre. If I could only explain to him! But I shall never
be able to do so. He could no more appreciate my point of view about
worms than I can appreciate his about robins. Luckily, we both eat
chicken. This may ultimately help us to understand one another.
On the other hand, part of the fascination of cats may be due to the
fact that it is so difficult to come to an understanding with them. A
man talks to a horse or a dog as to an equal. To a cat he has to be
deferential as though it had some Sphinx-like quality that baffled
him. He cannot order a cat about with the certainty of being obeyed.
He cannot be sure that, if he speaks to it, it will even raise its
eyes. If it is perfectly comfortable, it will not. A cat is obedient
only when it is hungry or when it takes the fancy. It may be a
parasite, but it is never a servant. The dog does your bidding, but
you do the cat's. At the same time, the contrast between the cat and
the dog has often been exaggerated by dog-lovers. They tell you
stories of dogs that remained with their dead masters, as though there
were no fidelity in cats. It was only the other day, however, that the
newspapers gave an account of a cat that remained with the body of its
murdered mistress in the most faithful tradition of the dogs. I know,
again, of cats that will go out for a walk with a human
fellow-creature, as dogs do. I have frequently seen a lady walking
across Hampstead Heath with a cat in train. When you go for a walk
with a dog, however, the dog protects you: when you go for a walk with
a cat, you feel that you are protecting the cat. It is strange that
the cat should have imposed the myth of its helplessness on us. It is
an animal with an almost boundless capacity for self-help. It can jump
up walls. It can climb trees. It can run, as the proverb says, like
"greased lightning." It is armed like an African chief. Yet it has
contrived to make itself a pampered pet, so that we are alarmed if it
attempts to follow us out of the gate into a world of dogs, and only
feel happy when it is purring--rolling on its back and purring as we
rub its Adam's apple--by the fireside. There is nothing that gives a
greater sense of comfort than the purring of a cat. It is the most
flattering music in nature. One feels, as one listens, like a humble
lover in a bad novel, who says: "You do, then, like me--a
little--after all?" The fact that a cat is not utterly miserable in
our presence always comes with the freshness and delight of a
surprise. The happiness of a crowing baby, newly introduced to us, may
be still more flattering, but a cat will get round people who cannot
tolerate babies.
It is all the more to be wondered at that a cat, which is such a
master of this conversational sort of music, should ever attempt any
other. There never was an animal less fit to be a singer. Someone--was
it Cowper?---has said that there are no really ugly voices in nature,
and that he could imagine that there was something to be said even for
the donkey's bray. I should have thought that the beautiful voices in
nature were few, and that most of them could be defended only on the
ground of some pleasant association. Humanity, at least, has been
unanimous in its condemnation of the cat as part of nature's chorus.
Poems have been written in praise of the corncrake as a singer, but
never of the cat. All the associations we have with cats have not
accustomed us to that discordant howl. It converts love itself into a
torment such as can be found only in the pages of a twentieth-century
novel. In it we hear the jungle decadent--the beast in dissolution,
but not yet civilised. When it rises at night outside the window, we
always explain to visitors: "No; that's not Peter. That's the cat next
door with the yellow eyes." The man who will not defend the honour of
his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything.
VI
MAY
May is chiefly remarkable for being the only month in which one does
not like cats. June, too, perhaps; but, after that, one does not mind
if the garden is full of cats. One likes to have a wild beast whose
movements, lazy as those of Satan, will terrify the childish birds out
of the gooseberry bushes and the raspberries and strawberries. He will
not, we know, have much chance of catching them as late as that. They
will be as cunning as he, and the robin will wind his alarum-clock,
the starling in the plum-tree will cry out like a hysterical drake,
and the blackbird will make as much noise as a farmyard. The cat can
but blink at the clamour of such a host of cunning sentinels and,
pretending that he had come out only to take the air, return
majestically to his dinner of leavings in the kitchen. In May and
June, however, one does not wish the birds to be frightened. One would
like one's garden to be an Alsatia for all their wings and all their
songs. There is no hope of this in a garden full of cats. Even a
Tetrazzini would cease to be able to produce her best trills if every
time she opened her mouth, a tiger padded in her direction down a path
of currant bushes. There are, it may be admitted, heroic exceptions.
The chaffinch sits in the plum and blusters out his music, cat or no
cat. To be sure, he only sings, a flush of all the colours, in order
to distract our attention. He is not an artist but a watchman. If you
look into the buddleia-tree beside him, you will see his hen moving
about in silence, creeping, dancing, fluttering, as she gorges herself
with insects. She is a fly-catcher at this season, leaping into the
air and pirouetting as she seizes her prey and returns to the bough.
She is restless and is not content with the spoil of a single tree.
She flings herself gracefully, like a ballet-dancer, into the plum,
and takes up a caterpillar in her beak. She does not eat it at once,
but stands still, eyeing you as though awaiting your applause. Her
husband, sitting on the topmost spray, goes on singing his version of
_The Roast Beef of Old England_. She does not even now eat the
caterpillar, but hurries along the paths of the branches with the
obvious purpose of finding a tasty insect to eat long with it. It may
be that there are insects that play the part of mustard or
Worcestershire sauce in the chaffinch world. What a meal she is making
in any case before she hurries back to her nest! It seems that among
the chaffinches the male is the more spiritual of the sexes. But then
he has so little to do compared with the female. He is still in that
state of savagery in which the male dresses finely and idles.
The thrush cannot carry on with the same indifference to cats. He is
the most nervous of parents, and spends half his time calling on his
children to be careful. The young thrush hopping about on the lawn
knows nothing of cats and refuses to believe that they are dangerous.
He is not afraid even of human beings. His parent becomes
argumentative to the point of tears, but the young one stays where he
is and looks at you with a sideways jerk of his head as much as to
say: "Listen to the old 'un." You, too, begin to be alarmed at such
boldness. You know, like the pitiful parent, that the world is a very
dangerous place, and that your neighbour's cat goes about like a
roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It has been contended by some
men of science that all birds are born fearless after the manner of
the young thrush, and that fear is a lesson that has to be taught to
each new generation by the more experienced parents. Fear, they say,
is not an inherited instinct, but a racial tradition that has to be
communicated like the morality of civilised people. The young thrush
on the lawn is certainly a witness on behalf of this theory. He hops
towards you instead of away from you. He moves his gaping beak as
though he were trying to say something. If there were no cats in the
world, you would encourage his confidences, but you feel that, much as
you would like to make friends with him, you must, for his own sake,
give him his first lesson in fear. You try to give yourself the
appearance of a grim giant: it has no effect on him. You make a quick
movement to chase him away: he runs a few yards and then stops and
looks round at you as though you were playing a game. It is too much
to expect of you that you will actually throw stones at a bird for its
good, and so you give up his education as a bad job. Alas, in two
days, your worst fears are justified. His dead body is found, torn and
ruffled, among the bushes. Some cat has murdered him--murdered him,
evidently, not in hunger, but just for fun. Two indignant children,
one gold, one brown, discover the dead body and bring in the tale.
They prepare the funeral rites of one whose only sin was his
innocence. This is not the first burial in the garden. There is
already a cemetery marked with half-a-dozen crosses and heaped with
flowers under the pear-tree on the south wall. Here is where the mouse
was buried; here where the starling; and here the rabbit's skull. They
all lie there under the earth in boxes, as you and I will lie,
expecting the Last Trump. The robins are not kinder to the "friendless
bodies of unburied men" than are children to the bodies of mice and
birds. Here the ghost of no creature haunts reproaching us with the
absence of a tomb, as the dead sailor washed up on an alien shore
reproaches us so often in the pages of _The Greek Anthology_. There is
a procession to the grave and all due ceremony. There is even a
funeral service. Over the starling, perhaps, it lacked something in
appropriateness. The buriers meant well however. Their favourite in
verse at the time was _Lars Porsena of Clusium_, and they gave the
starling the best they knew--gave it to him from beginning to end.
What he made of it, there is no telling: he is, it is said an
impressionable bird, though something of a satirist. Someone,
overhearing them, recommended a briefer and more fitting service for
the future. The young thrush had the benefit of the advice. He was
laid to his last rest with the recitation of that noblest of
valedictories: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun," over his tomb. He
is now gone where there is no cat or parent to disturb. The priests
who buried him declare that he has been turned into a golden
nightingale, and that there must be no noise or romping in the garden
for three days, as not till then will he have arrived safely at the
Appleiades. That is the name they give to the Pleiades--the seven
golden islands whither pass the souls of dead mice and birds and dolls
and where Scarlatti lives and where you, too, may expect to go if you
please them. Even the black cat will probably go there--one's own
black cat. But not the neighbour's cat--the reddish-brown one--thief,
murderer and beast. It is the neighbour's cat that makes one believe
there is a hell.
Short is the memory of man, however. Shorter the memory of children.
There is no gloom that can withstand May pouring itself out in the
deep blue of anchusa and the paler blue of lupin, gushing out in the
yellow of laburnum, tossing like the tides in the wind. One is gloomy,
perhaps, when one looks at the lettuces and sees how slow is their
growth. Watching a plant grow is like watching a kettle boil. It seems
to take æons. The patience of gardeners always astonishes me. Were
gardening my profession, I should spend half my time inventing schemes
for making plants grow up in a night like Jonah's gourd. I should not
mind about parsnips. A parsnip might mature as slowly as an oak and
live as long for all I care. There is something, it may be, to be said
for parsnips, as there is something, it may be, to be said for Mr
Bonar Law. But I do not know it. They do not even tempt the slugs and
the leather-jackets away from the lettuces. There is nothing that
puzzles one more in a friend than if he confesses to a taste for
parsnips. Immediately, a gulf yawns deeper than could be caused by any
confession of religious or moral eccentricity. One's sympathies
instinctively close up like a sea-anemone touched by a child's finger.
Yet people eat them. All that you and I know about them is that kind
words do not butter them; but, if you go to Covent Garden at the right
time of the year, you will undoubtedly find them being sold for food.
Why should they make one gloomy, however, seeing that one has
successfully excluded them from one's garden? Perhaps one is gloomy
because of the reflection that there must be many other gardens in
which they are growing. Gloom of this kind, however, is mere
philanthropy. Turn your eyes, instead, to the strawberry-flowers and
think of June. Consider the broad beans and the young peas safe amid
their tall stakes. Consider even the spring onions. Is it any wonder
that the chaffinch sings and the wren is operatic on the thither side
of the garden wall? High in the air the swifts scream, as they rush
here and there after their prey, like polo teams galloping, pulling
up, scrimmaging, turning, and off on the gallop again. The swift is an
evil-looking bird, but playful. He has none of the grace of the
swallow, for he cannot fold his wings, and he is black as a
devil-worshipper. Still, he knows more of sport than most of the
birds. I suspect that those rushing companions are not merely bent on
food but have chosen out one individual insect for their pursuit like
a ball in a game. Otherwise, why such excitement? There are billions
of insects to be had for the mere asking. The fly-catcher knows this.
He can spend an hour at a meal without ever flying more than ten yards
from his bough. Still, one rejoices in the energy of the swift. One
wishes the greenfinch had a little of it. The yellow splashes on his
wings are undoubtedly delightful, but why will he perch so long in the
acacia wailing like a sick cricket? And why did Wordsworth write a
poem in praise of him? Probably he mistook some other bird for him.
Poets are like that. Or perhaps he liked a noise like the voice of a
sick cricket. One can never tell with Wordsworth. He had a
cuckoo-clock.
VII
NEW YEAR PROPHECIES
Some people are surprised at the daring with which compilers of
prophetic almanacs forecast the details of the future. The most
astonishing thing of all is that nearly everybody still regards the
future as a mystery. As a matter of fact, we know a great deal about
the future. We know that next year will contain 365 days. We know--and
this is rather a tribute to our cleverness--that the year 1924 will
contain 366 days, and even the exact point at which the extra day will
slip in. Ask a savage to point you out the extra day in Leap Year, and
he will be more hopelessly at a loss than a man looking for a needle
in a haystack, but even the most ignorant Christian will pick it out
at the right end of February as neatly and inevitably as a love-bird
on a barrel-organ picking out a fortune. The art of prophecy has grown
with civilisation. Prophets were regarded as almost divine persons in
the old days, but now every man is his own Isaiah. I am the most
modest of the prophets, but even I venture to foretell that there will
be an annular eclipse of the sun in the coming year on the 8th of
April, that it will begin at twenty-two minutes to 8 A.M. at
Liverpool, and that it will be visible at Greenwich. What clairvoyant
could go further? Test my mantic gifts at any other point and I doubt
not I can satisfy you. Do you want to know at what time there will be
high water at Aberdeen on the afternoon of the 21th January? The
answer is: "Thirteen minutes past one." Do you want to know when
partridge shooting will begin? I do not even need to reflect before
giving the answer: "The 1st of September." And so I could go on,
almost _ad infinitum_, filling in the details of the year in advance.
On the 1st of March, for instance, being St David's Day, there will be
a banquet at which Mr Lloyd George will make a reference to hills,
mists, God, and a country called Wales. On the 28th of March, being
Easter Monday, there will be a Bank Holiday. On the 24th of May, being
Empire Day, the majority of shops in Regent Street will hang out Union
Jacks, and school children will salute the flag at Abinger Hammer,
Communists in various parts of London gnashing their teeth the while.
On the 15th of June the anniversary of Magna Charta will fall and will
pass without any disturbance. On the 12th of July Orangemen will dress
im in sashes and listen to orators whose speeches will prove the
hollowness of the old adage that you cannot serve both God and Mammon.
On the same day, Lord Birkenhead will celebrate his forty-ninth
birthday, showing that Gallopers are born not made. Need I continue,
however? The year is obviously going to be a crowded one. It will, as
I have said, contain 365 days and will come to an end at 12 P.M. on St
Silvester's Day at the time of the new moon.
I have said enough, I think, to prove that one knows a great deal more
about the future than is generally realised. There may be sceptics who
doubt the virtue of my prophecies. If there be such, all I ask is that
they should mark them well and verify each of them as its fulfilment
falls due. The expense will be small. The most serious item will be
the journey to Aberdeen to see the tide coming in on the 24th of
January; but, by taking up a collection in Aberdeen, it should be
possible to reduce one's net outlay by the better part of a shilling.
On the whole, there never were prophecies easier to verify. I
confidently challenge comparison between them and any prophecy made by
any Cabinet Minister during the last five years. I even challenge
comparison with the much more respectable prophecies contained in
_Raphael's Prophetic Messenger_. Raphael at times strains our
credulity. When he tells us, for instance, that on the 27th of April
it is going to be "cold and frosty" and that on the 29th of April we
shall see "high winds, storms and thunder," we feel that he is giving
a free rein to his imagination and treating prophecy not as a science
but as an art. That the 30th of April will be "showery" I agree, but
how does he know that there will be "high wind and lightning" on the
21st of December? I am also somewhat puzzled as to the means by which
he arrives at the conclusions set forth in his "every-day" guide for
each day in the year. I can myself prophesy what you will do on each
day, but I cannot, as he does, prophesy what you ought to do. This
introduces an ethical element which is beyond my scope or horoscope.
We need not quarrel with him when he dismisses the 1st of January as
"an unimportant day," but when he bids us on the 2nd of January
"court, marry, and deal with females," we may reasonably ask: "Why?"
His advice for the 3rd is more acceptable. "Be careful," he says,
"until 1 P.M. then seek work and push thy business." That is about the
time of day one prefers to begin to "seek work"; would there were more
days in the calendar like the 3rd of January. Some saint must have it
in his keeping. On the 7th, however, it will be safer to abstain from
work altogether. Raphael says: "A very unfortunate P.M. and evening
for most purposes. Court and deal with females." Sunday, the 9th, is
better. "Ask favours," he says, "in the P.M., and court." Though
January is less than half gone, I confess I am getting a little
breathless with so much courting. Raphael probably recognises this,
and a note of caution creeps into his advice on the 13th, on which he
bids us "court and marry in the morning, then be careful." By the
18th, however, he is his old self again. "Court," he says cheerfully,
"marry and ask favours and push ahead." Then come one rather careful
day and two unfortunate ones, till on the 22nd, in a burst of
exuberance, he offers us the day of our lives. "Deal with others," he
exhorts us, "and push thy business, seek work, travel, court, marry,
buy and speculate." I doubt if all this can be crowded into
twenty-four hours outside _The Arabian Nights_. Besides, as a result
of following Raphael's advice, we are already bigamists several times
over, and have become sick of the sight of a Registry Office. By the
end of the month even Raphael shows signs of being a little weary of
his scarcely veiled incitements to Bluebeardism. For the 29th he
advises: "Avoid females and be very careful," and for the 30th, which
is a Sunday: "Avoid females and superiors." I should just about think
so.
We need not follow Raphael through the rest of the year. It is enough
to say that he keeps us busy courting, marrying, seeking work, being
careful, travelling, speculating, pushing ahead, and avoiding females
right down till the end of December. He occasionally varies his
formula, as when on the 6th of April he bids us: "Do not quarrel. Be
quiet," and when, on the 23rd of June, he advises: "Ask favours of
females, and travel." On the whole however, his recommendations leave
us with a sense of the desperate monotony of human existence. It is no
wonder the novelists find it so difficult to invent an original plot.
Nothing seems to happen--even in the future--except the same old
thing. It is all as monotonous as North, South, East and West. We turn
with relief to the page on which Raphael tells us what are the best
days on which to hire maidservants and to set turkeys. Our interest
redoubles when we come on his advice to those about to kill pigs. "Do
this," he says, "between eight and ten in the morning, and between the
first quarter and full of the Moon; the pigs will weigh more, and the
flavour of the pork be improved." Then there are "Legal and Commercial
Notes," one of which--"A bailiff must not break into a house, but he
may enter by the chimney "--suggests a subject for a drawing by Mr
George Morrow. The medical notes are equally worthy of consideration.
On one page we are given a list of herbal remedies, and we are told
how one disease can be cured by pouring boiling water on hay (upland
hay being better than meadow hay) and applying it to the stomach. But
Raphael is no crank, as we see in his suggestion for the treatment of
influenza:
"If you think you have got an attack of influenza slip off
to bed at once and take the whisky or brandy bottle with
you, and don't be afraid of it, for alcohol is the best
medicine you can take as it kills the germs in the blood. Do
not wait until you are half dead--remember that a stitch in
time saves nine, even with health."
Even on the subject of the care of children's teeth he makes it clear
that, whoever may have come under the blight of Pussyfoot, it is not
he: