  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existence spent is All this you’re spared; and so you might have paid Some courtesy to those, a very few, Who come withdrawn from that exterior shade To spend an hour with sanity and you,— And, when you saw Yet, after all, you know your part, doze on; You are no common cat, you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. |
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