Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum and George Eliot: The Last Victorian.
Hughes applied the "Page 99 Test" to her latest book, Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Catland drops us into the world of Frances Simpson, a leading cat breeder who packaged her expertise and sold it in a series of advice columns under titles like ‘Practical Pussyology’ and ‘Cats for Pleasure and Profit’. Here we encounter Miss Simpson telling her readers how to show their kittens off to their best advantage. An orange ribbon on a ‘blue’ (that is smoky grey) cat looks striking, although you should avoid tying it in such a way that it spoils the animal’s ruff. If you’re worried about your cat getting cold when it is travelling either to the stud or to the cat show, then by all means put it in an appropriate wrapper. Dolls’ clothes are not a good substitute, though, since the arm holes are in the wrong places. Simpson describes her amusement at recently receiving ‘a little lady’ at her stud who was ‘clothed in a very smart jacket, through which her front paws were placed…This puss had also a pair of washleather boots on her back legs, so that her appearance was a little startling’.Learn more about Catland at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.
When it comes to selling your kittens for a profit, Simpson suggests that eight weeks is the ideal age. This is when they are at their cutest – leave it any longer and they will become leggy, truculent teenagers and much harder to shift. Ever financially practical, Simpson, who is writing in 1903, warns that prices for pedigree kittens are dropping – the best you can expect these days is 3 guineas. Finally, she suggests that a good way of shifting your feline stock is to have professional pictures which you can then use to advertise your wares. As always, Simpson is happy to share the details of a good contact – Mr Landor of Ealing ‘whose clever pictures of kittens are so well known’.
I was initially sceptical, but the Page 99 Test works rather well for Catland. Page 99 showcases one of its major themes, which is the way in which cat breeding had become commodified by the beginning of the 20th Century. Frances Simpson was a clergyman’s daughter, not the sort of person who would usually get tangled up in ‘trade’. And yet, here she is taking a soundly practical and economically-motivated attitude to the whole business – and it was a business – of breeding cats for profit. With her readiness to suggest paid-for goods and services, she invent what might be called cat capitalism. I like the way that we see her here drawing on her aesthetic sense – she was known for her own elegant dress sense - to give advice on how to show your cats off to their best advantage. And there’s a strong dollop of anthropomorphism in evidence here too, which neatly loops back to the work of Louis Wain, who was known as the man responsible for putting cats in pants.
Catland tells the story of how Britain and America transformed their attitudes to cats at the beginning of the 20th Century. Where felines had once been tolerated as ambient mouse-traps, now they were welcomed onto the domestic hearth as much-loved family members. Genteel breeders like Frances Simpson, meanwhile, started to develop distinct breeds from the previous genetic soup: the smooth Siamese with burnt browned tips or the silky Angora that felt like a rabbit to the touch. Zig-zagging through the text is the life story of Louise Wain, the commercial artist whose anthropomorphising illustrations opened an imaginative space in Edwardian culture. Now, when your much-loved tabby slipped out of the bathroom window at dusk, it was quite possible to imagine that she was heading for a session at the hairdresser, a visit to the theatre, or simply the chance to climb up to the rooftops to sing her heart out.
--Marshal Zeringue
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