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Information about Hodge (cat)

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Statue of the cat Hodge in the courtyard outside Dr. Johnson's House, 17 Gough Square, London.
Hodge was one of Samuel Johnson's cats, immortalized in a characteristically whimsical passage in James Boswell's Life of Johnson

Quotation

I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;' and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'

This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, 'But Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.'[1]

The latter paragraph is used as the epigraph to Vladimir Nabokov's acclaimed poem/novel Pale Fire.

The story captures the irony of Boswell's character in his "novel" (Life of Johnson has long been both criticized and praised for its inaccuracy and invention): even in the face of frivolity and domestic tomfoolery, Boswell struggles to impress his subject, whose sense of humour apparently exceeds that of his self-unaware biographer, with his gravitas. This theme is developed further in Pale Fire.

Note also that Johnson bought oysters for his cat. In modern England, oysters are an expensive food for the well-to-do, but in the 18th century oysters were plentiful around the coasts of England and so cheap that they were a staple food of the poor.

On his death, Hodge's life was celebrated by an elegy by Percival Stockdale. Today he is remembered by a bronze statue, unveiled by the Lord Mayor of London in 1997, outside the house he Johnson and Francis Barber, Johnson's black manservant, once shared.

Popular culture

  • The cat Hodge - along with Dr. Johnson's second favorite cat, Lily - are the subjects of a book by Yvonne Skargon (Johnson is also given authorial credit) entitled, Lily and Hodge and Dr. Johnson (1993, Hyperion Books, ISBN-13: 978-1851830282). The book consists of quotations from Johnson's Dictionary, accompanied by Skargon's woodcarving illustrations of the two cats, contextually associated with the dictionary entries.

See also

  • List of historical cats

References

1. ^ James Boswell, Life of Johnson, R.W. Chapman, editor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953, 1970), pp. 1216-1217.

External links

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson circa 1772,
painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Born: September 18 [O.S. September 7] 1709
Lichfield, England
Died: November 13 1784
London, England
Occupation: poet, biographer,
essayist, lexicographer
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James Boswell

Born: September 29 1740(1740--)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: May 19 1795 (aged 56)
London, England
Occupation: Lawyer, Diarist, Author

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck
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Life of Johnson (1791) is a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre of biography; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English.
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An epigraph is any one of the following:
  • an inscription, as studied in the archeological sub-discipline of Epigraphy (archaeology)
  • Epigraph (literature)
  • Epigraph (mathematics)

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Born: April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died: July 2 1977 (aged 78)
Montreux, Switzerland
Occupation: novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Literary movement: Modernism, Postmodernism
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Pale Fire

First US edition of Pale Fire
Author Vladimir Nabokov
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Literary
Publisher G. P.
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oyster is used for a number of different groups of bivalve mollusks, most of which live in marine or brackish water. The shell consists of two usually highly calcified valves which surround a soft body.
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The 18th Century lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar.

Historians sometimes specifically define the 18th Century otherwise for the purposes of their work.
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Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally - which is a form of lyric poetry.
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Percival Stockdale (1736-1811) was an English poet, writer and reformer, active especially in opposing slavery.

External links

  • Verses on the Abolition of the Slave Trade , annotated e-text
  • Biography

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statue is a sculpture depicting a specific entity, usually a person, event, animal or object. Its primary concern is representational.

A small statue is called statuette. A statue of just a head and shoulders is a bust.
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Lord Mayor of London is the Mayor of the City of London and head of the Corporation of London. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London governs the much larger area of
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Francis Barber (ca. 1735 – 1801) was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield in
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Oxford University Press (OUP) is a publishing house and a department of the University of Oxford in England. It is the largest university press in the world, being larger than all the American university presses combined with Cambridge University Press.
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Project Gutenberg

Location Salt Lake City, UT
Established 1971
Collection size Over 22,000
Director Michael Hart
Website [1]

Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works.
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