2.29 The Poet and the Drowned Cat
What advice could the poet who penned "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" have possibly given to a disgraced 70s pop star?
Thomas Grey’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard bored me to tears when I had to study it in school. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. That opening line tolled the knell of my interest in the poem. I couldn’t be bothered with it. To my adolescent mind it rambled on far too much just to make the point that there are some decent honest folk who never got famous, buried in country churchyards. Grey himself was buried in the same churchyard when his time came. Good luck to him, I thought, I hope he was satisfied.
Reading it back again as an old man with slightly more time and patience, I have a bit more sympathy. I still think that he rattles on a bit, but I can appreciate what he was saying, and there are some nice turns of phrase in there.
But honestly, whose idea was it to give a classful of teenagers that poem to read?1 If it wasn’t for the fact that I had some really good English teachers, it might have put me off poetry for life. It certainly put my off Thomas Grey for almost half a century.
If we had been given Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes, my relationship with Mr Grey may have been much improved. Like many adolescents, I quite liked morbid stuff, I still do. It’s just that despite the title, Elegy in a Country Churchyard wasn’t morbid enough, and it was really hard to get any humour out of it.
I would have pounced gleefully on the morbid comic potential of his drowned cat poem. The choice of the word tub in the title is a masterstroke. Tub is such a funny word. A tub of goldfishes is a funny phrase. If he had put drowned whilst trying to catch a goldfish, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as funny. I would still have liked it better than Elegy though. Come to think of it, Elegy Written in a Tub of Goldfishes would be an excellent title.
Let me assure readers of a sensitive nature that I am not a heartless and cruel man. I find the death of animals upsetting. I cried on both of the occasions when I have had to take a pet dog to the vets to be put down. Even catching sight of a dead animal somewhat upsets me2. But as an abstraction, the concept of a death can be quite funny. Even a human death. The human and animal death combined in Graham Greene’s short Story A Shocking Accident is both tragic and hilarious. (There’s a ten minute audio version on Soundcloud)3 Unfortunately, in my school English syllabus, Graham Greene was represented by The Heart of the Matter and having to read that didn’t give me much more respect for him than Elegy gave me for Thomas Grey.
Grey wrote his Elegy in 1751. It is forever tied up in my mind with Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1714), another title which promises more than it delivers to the drama hungry adolescent, and John Keats’ The Eve of St Agnes (1820), probably because I struggled with all three of them at school.
He wrote the drowned cat poem in 1747. It was based on the true story of a cat called Selima, which belonged to Horace Walpole, son of Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Horace kept goldfish in what was described as a china vase, but in reality was more like a large plant pot, a hefty bowl, just under two foot tall, which he referred to as a tub. its sides were opaque and painted in a Chinese style with willows and bridges in blue. It was nothing like the Goldfish bowl in the painting by Martin Ferdinand Quadal which I used to illustrate this article. It would have been very difficult to produce an illustration of a cat looking at the fishes in a tall opaque bowl.
Once Selma had fallen in, she would have been unable able to scramble back up the deep and smooth sides of the tub, which would have been too stable and heavy to fall over as she struggled within.
Of course, Grey was having a bit of a laugh when he wrote about it4. The poem is in a style known as mock heroic, in which an almost frivolous subject is given the same treatment as a far more weighty topic. A famous example of which is my old friend Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock.
The final line of the poem …nor all that glisters, gold. is still in use today as all that glitters is not gold. Grey was quoting Shakespeare from the Merchant of Venice. (act 2 scene 7)
All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
It was also referenced by Gary Glitter as the title of his 1982 comeback album All that Glitters. Not too long after its release, pop fans were realising that in Gary’s case, the second part of the phrase was particularly apt. He was not the golden star that he had appeared to be. He would have been wise to heed the advice in Grey’s preceding lines:
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless heart is lawful prize
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
’Twas on a lofty vase’s side, Where China’s gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw; and purred applause. Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The genii of the stream; Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue Through richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless nymph with wonder saw; A whisker first and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize. What female heart can gold despise? What cat’s averse to fish? Presumptuous maid! with looks intent Again she stretch’d, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. (Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled) The slippery verge her feet beguiled, She tumbled headlong in. Eight times emerging from the flood She mewed to every watery god, Some speedy aid to send. No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred; Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard; A Favourite has no friend! From hence, ye beauties, undeceived, Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved, And be with caution bold. Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold.
It was W.M. (William Maclurg) Smyth 1913-2003, teacher, school inspector and editor of various collections including A Book of Poetry (Arnold, 1959) which, judging by the rubber stamped information inside, must have been brought over from Pearson Hight School to Sir Henry Cooper High School in Hull when the one closed down and the other opened. “Certainly, no poem has been included for its importance in the development of English Poetry without regard for the strength of its appeal to the younger reader today” he enthuses in the introduction. Blimey, I would have hated to be one of his kids.
I’m sure that I am not alone in having an almost visceral reaction if I inadvertantly come across a dead animal. maybe not an insect, or a small fish, but probably a reptile or bird and definitely any mammal. (not so much roadkill though, particularly dried out roadkill) I imagine that there is some evolutionary reason for getting freaked out by such encounters, maybe it is a warning of nearby predators or other dangers. I once discovered the corpse of a fully grown cow on a remote East Yorkshire beach. It had stumbled off the edge of a badly eroded cliff. I referenced it in my poem Seven Snapshots from the Album of a Sea Policeman.
The comic potential of human and animal death combined always reminds me of the tragic end of comedian Rod Hull - until I remember that he obviously wouldn’t have had his emu up on the roof with him.
The comic potential of dead cats was exploited to the max by humorist Simon Bond who made a fortune out of his 1981 book of cartoons entitled 101 Uses of a Dead Cat, and a string of sequels.