Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

"And the brisk mouse may feast herself with crumbs,

Till that the green-eyed kitling comes," are worth the whole of Wordsworth's solemn poem The Kitten and Falling Leaves. What did Wordsworth know of the innate vanity, the affectation and coquetry, of kittenhood? He saw the little beast gamboling on the wall, and he fancied her as innocent as she looked, -as though any living creature could be as innocent as a kitten looks! With touching simplicity he believed her all unconscious of the admiration she was exciting.

"What would little Tabby care
For the plaudits of the crowd?
Over happy to be proud,
Over wealthy in the treasure

Of her own exceeding pleasure!

Ah, the arrant knavery of that kitten! The tiny impostor, showing off her best tricks, and feigning to be occupied exclusively with her own infantile diversion! We can see her now, prancing and paddling after the leaves, and all the while peeping out of "the tail o' her ee" at the serene poet and philosopher, and waving her naughty tail in glee over his confidence and condescension.

Heine's pretty lines,

"And close beside me the cat sits purring, Warming her paws at the cheery gleam; The flames keep flitting, and flicking, and whirring;

My mind is wrapped in a realm of dream," find their English echo in the letter Shelley writes to Peacock, describing, half wistfully, the shrines of the Penates, "whose hymns are the purring of kittens, the hissing of kettles, the long talks over the past and dead, the laugh of children, the warm wind of summer filling the quiet house, and the pelting storm of winter struggling in vain for entrance." How incomplete would these pictures be, how incomplete is any fireside sketch, without its purring kitten or

drowsy cat!

"The queen I am o' that cozy place; As with ilka paw I dicht my face, I sing an' purr with mickle grace." This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home. Even the chilly desolation of a hotel may be rendered endurable by these affable and discriminating creatures; for one of them, as we know, once welcomed Sir Walter Scott, and softened for him the unfamiliar and unloved surroundings. "There are no dogs in the hotel where I lodge," he writes to Abbotsford from London, "but a tolerably conversable cat who eats a mess of cream with me in the morning." Of course it did, the wise and lynx-eyed beast! I make no doubt that, day after day and week after week, that cat had wandered superbly amid the common throng of lodgers, showing favor to none, and growing cynical and disillusioned by constant contact with a crowd. Then, one morning, it spied the noble, rugged face which neither man nor beast could look upon without loving, and forthwith tendered its allegiance on the spot. Only “tolerably conversable" it was, this reserved and town-bred animal; less urbane because less happy than the much-respected retainer at Abbotsford, Master Hinse of Hinsefeld, whom Sir Walter called his friend. "Ah, mon grand ami, vous avez tué mon autre grand ami!" he sighed, when the huge hound Nimrod ended poor Hinse's placid career. And if Scott sometimes seems to disparage cats, as when he unkindly compares Oliver le Dain to one, in Quentin Durward, he atones for such indignity by the use of the little pronoun "who" when writing of the London puss. My own habit is "who" on similar occasions, and I am glad to have so excellent an authority.

to say

It were an endless though a pleasant task to recount all that has been said, and well said, in praise of the cat by those who have rightly valued her com

panionship. Théophile Gautier's charming pages are too familiar for comment. Who has not read with delight of the Black and White Dynasties that for so long ruled with gentle sway over his hearth and heart; of Madame Théophile, who thought the parrot was a green chicken; of Don Pierrot de Navarre, who deeply resented his master's staying out late at night; of the graceful and fastidious Seraphita; the gluttonous Enjolras; the acute Bohemian, Gavroche; the courteous and well-mannered Éponine, who received M. Gautier's guests in the drawing-room and dined at his table, taking each course as it was served, and restraining any rude distaste for food not to her fancy. "Her place was laid without a knife and fork, indeed, but with a glass, and she went regularly through dinner, from soup to dessert, awaiting her turn to be helped, and behaving with a quiet propriety which most children might imitate with advantage. At the first stroke of the bell she would appear, and when I came into the dining-room she would be at her post, upright on her chair, her forepaws on the edge of the tablecloth; and she would present her smooth forehead to be kissed, like a well-bred little girl who was affectionately polite to relatives and old people."

I have read this pretty description several times to Agrippina, who is extremely wayward and capricious about her food, rejecting plaintively one day the viands which she had eaten with apparent enjoyment the day before. In fact, the difficulty of catering to her is so well understood by tradesmen that recently, when the housemaid carried her on an errand to the grocery, Agrippina is very fond of these jaunts and of the admiration she excites, - the grocer, a fatherly man, with cats of his own, said briskly, "Is this the little lady who eats the biscuits?" and presented her on the spot with several choice varieties from which to choose. She is fastidious,

too, about the way in which her meals are served; disliking any other dishes than her own, which are of blue and white china; requiring that her meat should be cut up fine and all the fat removed, and that her morning oatmeal should be well sugared and creamed. Milk she holds in scorn. My friends tell me sometimes that it is not the common custom of cats to receive so much attention at table, and that it is my fault Agrippina is so exacting; but such grumblers fail to take into consideration the marked individuality that is the charm of every kindly treated puss. She differs from her sisters as widely as one woman differs from another, and reveals varying characteristics of good and evil, varying powers of intelligence and adaptation. She scales splendid heights of virtue, and, unlike Sir Thomas Browne, is "singular in offenses." Even those primitive instincts which we believe all animals hold in common are lost in acquired ethics and depravity. No heroism could surpass that of the London cat that crawled back five times under the stage of the burning theatre to rescue her litter of kittens, and, having carried four of them to safety, perished devotedly with the fifth. On the other hand, I know of a cat that drowned her three kittens in a water-butt, for no reason, apparently, save to be rid of them, and that she might lie in peace on the hearth-rug, a murder well planned, deliberate, and cruel.

"So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat."

Only in her grace and beauty, her love of comfort, her dignity of bearing, her courteous reserve, and her independence of character does puss remain immutable and unchanged. These are the traits which win for her the warmest corner by the fire, and the unshaken regard of those who value her friendship and aspire to her affection. These are the traits so subtly suggested by Mrs. Tom

son in a sonnet which every true lover of cats feels in his heart must have been addressed to his own particular pet :· "Half gentle kindliness, and half disdain, Thou comest to my call, serenely suave, With humming speech and gracious gestures grave,

In salutation courtly and urbane;

Yet must I humble me thy grace to gain, For wiles may win thee, but no arts enslave;

And nowhere gladly thou abidest, save Where naught disturbs the concord of thy reign.

"Sphinx of my quiet hearth! who deignst to dwell

Friend of my toil, companion of mine ease,
Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses;
That men forget dost thou remember well,
Beholden still in blinking reveries,
With sombre sea-green gaze inscrutable."
Agnes Repplier.

JOHN AUSTIN.

I AM often asked, "What was your grandfather like?' "What was it that prevented Mr. John Austin from achieving the success that seemingly ought to have been his?" In answer, I feel impelled to write a short sketch of this remarkable man, whose splendid abilities, owing to constitutional drawbacks, never received that public recognition and meed of fame which were his due.

John Austin was the eldest son of Mr. Jonathan Austin, a substantial miller and corn merchant, who had mills at Creeting and Ipswich, in Suffolk, England, and at Longford, in Essex. All his children were distinguished by force of character and brilliant intellectual qualities. I have heard that his grandmother, Anne Adkins, had gypsy blood in her veins. Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, only daughter of my great-uncle, Mr. Alfred Austin, tells me that years ago she went with her father to Foxearth, where the Austins of five generations ago lie buried. There they found an old woman who remembered Anne Adkins, and gave them a striking description of her vivacity and her ringing laugh, her large dark eyes and her high temper. Her husband was not an easy man to live with, and, I suppose, made every one about him miserable, for one of the sons enlisted in the ranks and went to America. On her tombstone these few pregnant words

are inscribed: "She died of a broken heart."

Her son Jonathan married Anne Redhouse, only daughter of a small gentleman farmer, or yeoman. Well educated, gently nurtured, and possessed of excep tional abilities, she must have inspired her husband with her love for learning. His education had been neglected, but he was always fond of reading, and acquired a great deal of knowledge of both history and political economy. He had a very exact mind, and particularly disliked any kind of exaggeration. To an acute sense of fun was joined considerable enthusiasm, and a touching story or a noble action moved him deeply. Even as quite an old man he was strikingly handsome, with silver-white hair. His wife was deeply religious, though in no narrow way. She was charitable and

helpful, but a strong tinge of melancholy, probably increased by delicate health and fits of nervous depression, overshadowed her whole life. This she transmitted to several of her children, tempered with the Austin family characteristic of wit and fun. Her sense of duty was exceptionally high, and above all things she hated a lie. She died at about sixty.

John Austin was born on the 3d of March, 1790. He inherited his mother's delicate health and nervous organization. She must have imbued him with her

deep religious feeling, for when three years old he would kneel before a chair with the Bible laid upon it and read aloud to her. Later, as a boy of seven, he was found by his eldest sister on his knees, in the garden, praying earnestly for a bow and arrows he had long coveted. The gift of eloquence he evident ly possessed when a child, and turned it to better account than in after life; for he used to sit by his father at dinner, and so engage him in talk that the worthy miller never noticed that John drank up his glass of beer.

He

He entered the army before he was sixteen, serving under Lord William Bentinck at Malta and in Sicily. There is in my possession a mutilated diary which the young officer kept during the year 1812, and from these pages we may glean hints which to some extent explain the problem of his comparative failure in after life. The diary shows him, at the age of twenty-two, to have been endowed with an introspective and critical temper, haughty in his intellectual attitude and almost morbidly conscious of his inert temperament. speaks of "indolence, always the prominent vice of my character," "this lethargy of the faculties," "the listlessness of indolence and ennui." He complains that, while sharing in the sports and follies of his comrades, he finds but little pleasure in that "relaxation which none but the industrious can relish." It does not appear that these expressions are merely the outcome of a passing mood of melancholy. The tone of the diary is gray, austere, and inelastic. The passages in which the writer shows the greatest warmth and spring of energy are those dedicated to the analysis of philosophical works which he was studying, — Dugald Stewart's Essays, Enfield's History of Philosophy, and Drummond's Academical Questions. Of the preface to the last-mentioned book the young soldier remarks, "Though tainted with a little schoolboy pedantry,

it is the most energetic and eloquent apology for the study of metaphysics that I recollect to have seen." Enfield's History he notes as "an abstract freely drawn from Brucker's work on the same subject. The book is not characterized by much philosophical depth, but the author displays a mild and liberal spirit truly edifying in a theologian. He now and then discovers the cloven foot in his attempts to enforce Dr. Priestley's modification of Christianity, but in a manner very different from that of his arrogant principal. I was much pleased with the clear statement given of the skeptical doctrines advanced by Pyrrho and his followers." Critical in his judgment of others, he was still more severe upon himself. After composing certain reports, he observes: "The style of these papers, though labored with great care, was stiff and monotonous. Indeed, whatever I write is wanting in copiousness and simplicity. The only excellences of my style are clearness and precision."

These early memoirs show that John Austin's vital energy was insufficient for the rough work of the world. Later on in life, the physical troubles which must even in youth have been dormant in his constitution manifested their presence in chronic depression and hypersensitiveness. Making enormous demands upon himself and others, refusing to acknowledge any work except of the most perfect quality, he exhausted his nervous strength in preparations, and stumbled repeatedly upon the very threshold of great undertakings. The travail of the brain reacted on the digestive organs, produced sickness and fever, and culminated in excruciating headaches which laid the powerful thinker and eloquent orator prostrate, before the thoughts with which his mind was teeming found their channel of relief in expression.

On the death of his second brother, in 1812, John Austin obeyed the earnest request of his parents and resigned his

commission. Friends had already strongly urged him to quit the military profession for one more suited to his studious tastes, and, after due reflection, he determined to study for the bar. Till the end of his life my grandfather retained a strong love and respect for the military character. As his wife says: "The high and punctilious sense of hohor, the chivalrous tenderness for the weak, the generous ardor mixed with reverence for authority and discipline, the frankness and loyalty, which were, he thought, the distinguishing characteristics of a true soldier, were also his own; perhaps even more preeminently than the intellectual gifts for which he was so remarkable.” 1

Lord Brougham, Sir S. Romilly, and Sir W. Erle have all told me that the eminent lawyers under whom Mr. Austin studied, as well as his fellow-students, were astonished by the force and clearness of his mind, his retentive memory, and the scholarly aptness of his language. All were confident that he would attain the highest place in the profession. In 1818 he was called to the bar, being probably spurred on to considerable effort by his passionate attachment to Miss Sarah Taylor, who became his wife in the following year.

After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Austin occupied for some years part of a house in Queen's Square, Westminster. The windows looked into Mr. Bentham's garden, and just round the corner lived Mr. James Mill. This close neighborhood and a strong congeniality of tastes and opinions led to a great intimacy between Bentham, the Mills, and the Austins. Mr. J. S. Mill became as one of their own family, reading Roman law with Mr. Austin, and learning German from his wife. Of my grandfather Mr. J. S. Mill writes: "On me his influence was most salutary. It was moral in the best sense. . . There was in his con

...

versation and demeanor a tone of high

1 Preface to The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, p. v.

mindedness which did not show itself as much, if the quality existed, in any of the other persons with whom at that time I associated. My intercourse with him was the more beneficial owing to his being of a different mental type from all other intellectual men whom I frequented, and he from the first set himself decidedly against the prejudices and narrowness which are almost sure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thought or a particular social circle." 2

This coterie was the foundation of the Westminster school of utilitarian philosophy which afterwards produced important results.

After Mr. Austin was called to the bar, he went on the Norfolk circuit, but I never heard that he held a brief. The attorneys were afraid of him, and he was apt to be too late for a consultation. It is singular that the extraordinary eloquence which he displayed in private deserted him in public, and he felt great difficulty in addressing the court. I suspect that the legal studies to which he dedicated his powers, when he left the army, were injurious to a man of his peculiar temperament. They rendered him even more fastidious about the exact poise and verbal nicety of phrases, still more scrupulous in searching after that “clearness and precision" which he recognized to be the leading qualities of his style. Of this he seems to have been conscious, for he wrote as follows to his future wife about the influence of his training in a lawyer's chambers: "I almost apprehend that the habit of drawing will in a short time give me so exclusive and intolerant a taste (as far, I mean, as relates to my own productions) for perspicuity and precision that I shall hardly venture on sending a letter of much purpose even to you, unless it be labored with the accuracy and circumspection which are requisite in a deed of 2 Autobiography, J. S. Mill, P. 75.

« AnteriorContinuar »