A Very Fine Cat Indeed

There are great books that for reasons that escape me, people have simply stopped reading.  I am talking about classics that anyone with a liberal education always read a half century ago.  Books that were frequently discussed, referenced in magazine articles and movies….and then just stopped being read by all but a few academics specializing in a narrow field.  

The Education of Henry Adams, Don Quixote, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Flowers in the Attic, Oliver Twist, and on and on and on.  If you find someone who has actually read one of these books, the reader invariably sighs, “because we had to in school”, followed with the obligatory “hated it”.  (I could have added The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the list, but I refuse to believe that anyone who has not read Twain’s opus is either literate or an adult.)

Something is killing literacy in adults.  Can we blame movies?  Online media?  Processed cheese?  Rap Music?  I have no idea, but the trend seems to be both universal and irreversible.  How many people do you know who have bookshelves bigger than their television?  Or even a comfortable chair with a good lamp for reading?

The apparently forgotten book that prompted this rant is The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell—the book that set the standard for future biographies.   One of the great joys of owning this book is the opportunity to open to a random page and read a stirring passage.  Without fail, every time I leaf through the book, I end up reading several chapters.  And without a doubt, my favorite part of the book is Chapter 14, in which Boswell describes Johnson playing with his cats, Lily and Hodge.  Hodge, as Boswell infamously recorded, was “a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”  (And if you want to read the book, you can find it for free here.)

Boswell admits to being far from an ailurophile (someone who completely understands the joys of befriending a harmless, necessary cat).  Still, he marveled that Dr. Johnson would venture out daily to buy fresh oysters for Hodge, afraid to give the task to his servants lest they begin to resent his favorite cat.  (And before you think this was an extravagant meal for a cat, oysters were so plentiful along the shores of Great Britain at that time that they were considered standard fare for the poor.)

The love affair between Dr. Johnson and his cats was so famous that it is fairly hard to find a reference to the famous writer and lexicographer that does not mention Hodge, his favorite feline.  Johnson himself referenced the cat frequently in his writings.  When Hodge passed away at home, lovingly cared for by Dr. Johnson, two different poets and friends of the famous writer, wrote elegies in the cat’s honor.

When Marion Chesney wrote the Agatha Raisin mystery books, she gifted her heroine with two cats, named Hodge and Boswell, without bothering to explain the origin of the names.  I guess the author believed anyone smart enough to read her books was probably well read enough not to need an explanation, which also explains why the television show with the same name did not originally include the felines in the cast.

Over the centuries, Hodge has become famous in his own right as writers have written poetry about him, have included him in stories, and in one case, featured him in a work of science fiction in which the cat is catnapped from 18th century London by a time traveler.  A google search for “bookstore and Hodge” shows that there are dozens of bookstores worldwide that have cats named in honor of Hodge.  Even the Church of England has been smitten:  the new mouser adopted by Southwark Cathedral in London has been christened Hodge. Supposedly, more visitors come to see the cat than the cathedral’s architecture.

As I have noted in the last couple of weeks, London has so many statues and monuments that it is not surprising that even Hodge has one.   In 1997, the Lord Mayor of London unveiled a bronze statue of Hodge in front of Gough House, the home that Dr. Johnson, Lily, and Hodge shared.  The cat is seen sitting atop a copy of Johnson’s dictionary, with a pile of empty oyster shells in front of him.  The statue’s inscription, of course, says “a very fine cat indeed”.

What the monument does not say, however, is that no one has a clue what the original Hodge looked like.  Boswell’s notes for his biography span 18 volumes, but he never wrote a single work describing the cat’s appearance.  And while Dr. Johnson had his own portrait painted several times, he was wise enough not to try to pose with Hodge in his lap.  (Boswell did record that Hodge preferred sitting on his shoulder.)

When the sculptor, Jon Bickley, created the work, he took a little artistic license.  Bickley used his own cat, Thomas Henry, as the model.  Still, no one can prove that the statue doesn’t look like Hodge.