Augusta Browne Was a Cat Lover

Augusta Browne loved cats, as her prose writing demonstrates.

In her 1877 article from the Episcopal Recorder, shown in full below, Browne tells anecdotes about memorable cats from her family home. Some knew clever tricks. Others, like Rubin (named for the Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein), had musical tendencies. She extols the usefulness of cats to control rodents, in addition their innate “beauty, talent, amiability, and industry.” The lesson of the essay is a universal message to treat animals humanely. Browne concludes:

It is impossible to love God and be cruel to the creatures that he has committed to our care.

Victorian-era Prose

Browne (ca. 1820–82) lived during the Victorian era, and her writing reflects that time. Her writing style may seem elaborate and sentimental to modern readers, but this was typical in her lifetime. The wordy narrative of “All Good Persons Love Dumb Animals” is more like Browne’s British contemporaries Charles Dickens and George Eliot (born respectively in 1812 and 1819) than slightly later American authors Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain (born 1832 and 1835).

Browne was living in Washington DC when she wrote “All Good Persons Love Dumb Animals.” The 1877 article appeared in the Episcopal Recorder, a Philadelphia religious weekly. The Christian message of love for God and all his creatures was well suited to the Protestant readership of this denominational newspaper.

Christian literature, including sermons, made frequent reading for many Americans during the nineteenth century. Browne had good success in this literary genre. She published two Sunday School tracts ( Can I Play Cards? Can I Attend the Theatre? Hint: the answer to both is NO) and numerous articles on religious topics. Browne was a faithful Protestant who worked at different times as an organist in Presbyterian, Dutch Reform, and Episcopal churches.

In the transcription of “All Good Persons Love Dumb Animals,” I have broken up long paragraphs and inserted illustrations of cats (or grimalkins, as Browne likes to call them) from nineteenth-century American artists and engravers.

All Good Persons Love Dumb Animals

by Augusta Browne Garrett

The charming little story in The Episcopal Recorder of January 17^th, about “Flossy,” I read with much pleasure. The owner of Flossy inquires, “Who loves dumb animals?” I, for one, own to the soft impeachment, and confess to an especial love toward the grimalkin family. In our household, we have always had favorites, both in fur and feathers.

Often do I and a friend of kindred tastes pause in the streets to exchange confidences with persons of the feline tribe, and our advances are always received graciously. Does not a fluffy cat, of stately demeanor, confer a positive dignity on the family hearth?

Of many of our household cats marvelous tales could be told, manifesting both affection and intelligence. Some of them seem to actually reason. I have known one, when shut out from a place which it had selected for repose, to calculate its way through the intricacies of windows and passages until the chosen spot was gained. One cat we had, Pinkey by name, that would stretch up and unlatch a door as deftly as any of us. Of many a feat of skill have we been the admiring spectators.

I would that “Flossy’s” friend could have made the acquaintance of our Rubin (or Rubinstein), a beautiful amber and white grimalkin, whose talents and performances were remarkable, and who owned a rich tenor voice, which, in the midnight concerts, did thrilling execution. A nice ear for music, too, had Rubin, as proven by a disgust at wrong notes. Alas! Rubinstein is now but a gentle memory.

Cats are a cruelly maligned race; their little foibles are harped upon their petty faults magnified. No matter how much abused, poor puss must not retaliate; let her but raise a remonstrant, m-e-o-u-w! m-e-o-u-w! or paw in the defensive, and she is spurned as treacherous and ungrateful. Neither one nor the other is she. On the contrary, she is generous, she is affectionate, her eyes often beam with love.

Many and many a poor cat turned out to starve, or rescued from outside barbarians, has found in our house a haven wherein to die in peace. The last act of one of those waifs—she had the air of a decayed old gentlewoman—was to press with her cold paw a hand that caressed her.

The savagery oftentimes inflicted on these helpless creatures is absolutely heart-sickening. A person who could ruthlessly destroy or torture a dumb animal, would as ruthlessly destroy or torture a human being were he not in fear of the rope or the cell. Shun an animal hater, the enemy to God’s creatures. Indeed, it may be taken as a general rule, that a dislike to cats has its origin in stinginess, in meanness, the fear of a trifling expense.

Now, the most penurious person ought not to grudge puss her board, for she amply pays it, in valuable service. Says a late writer: “In Great Britain there are four million cats, and it is estimated that each cat kills an average of twenty mice or rats every year. It is estimated further, that every rat or mouse, if it lived, would injure property to the extent of one pound sterling. If all this is true, pussy saves to that country, every year, $400,000,000, and she might pay off the national debt, if she chose.” There is a triumph for puss!

There is in vogue among the ignorant a superstition that cats suck the breath of sleeping persons. What sheer folly! The instincts of puss are far too delicate for so foul a procedure; the vitiated air would poison her. True, sometimes, for the love of warmth or of company, for puss is a most sociable creature, she nestles in the neck of one that she loves, but no evil intent hath she.

Noble souls, however, have done honor to the many virtues of grimalkin: her praises have been sun in poesy, and related in story Sir Isaac Newton cut a large hole in his study door, for the accommodation of his favorite cat, and a smaller hole for her kitten.

It is related of the famous artist, Godfrey Mind, whose fondness for the feline race, and skill in depicting their graces of attitude and expression, won for him the sobriquet of the Cat Raphael, that frequently, while painting, he would for hours remain in the same position, rather than disturb the slumbers of the pet cat upon his shoulder. Once he declined an invitation to dine with a distinguished party because his most cherished Tabby was sick.

At the mansion at Mount Vernon, the attention of visitors is called to holes at the bottom of chamber doors, which were cut, by order of Mrs. Washington, for the pleasure of her pet felines.

Seldom have cats been treated as animals possessed of much sensibility or refinement of feeling, or a relish for high art in music. Nevertheless, herein has puss been grievously underrated, as might be proven by indubitable testimony.

In our own family was domiciled, for many years, a white grimalkin, of noble presence—“Albus Felis” was her name—who was to us a source of continued wonder and admiration, no less for her sagacity than for her unimpeachable elegance of deportment. This animal was able instantly to distinguish bad music from good, though I will not venture to assert, positively, that she could detect false successions in harmony, or that she winced at unresolved discords; and many an experiment have we made upon her, for the sake of witnessing her amusing caprices.

Often, when she was quietly basking before the fire, would one of us steal to the piano and commence playing in the usual way. This pleased madame puss very well, she merely elevate one ear a little, and with a critical purr of approval, subside into slumber. But gradually the music would pass into violent strumming, accompanied by shrill, harsh singing, until, unable longer to endure the horrid din, Felis would spring from the rug, rush to the instrument, and jumping upon the performer with piteous yells and cries, beg silence; nor would she quit until she gained her point. The sound of a guitar yet more disturbed her sensitive nerves. She once, by force, pulled a lady’s hand off the strings.

A Household with Cats and Cat Lovers

The 1877 article was not the first time that Augusta Browne wrote as a cat fancier. Twenty years earlier she published an article, “On the Rights of Quadrupedal Musicians,” in which she noted, “We have a cat at present, whose musical taste, to her shame be it spoken, is anything but classical—the depraved creature preferring the tintibulation of the dinner-bell to the choicest morceau of Gluck or Weber.”¹ But her remarks incorporated more than just cats. The story mentioned descriptions of musical sensitivity in dogs, horses, oxen, birds, monkeys, camels, and donkeys. Browne went so far as to suggest, with the tone of a long-suffering piano teacher:

If one-half of the time, pains, gold, expended on many an idle, stupid Miss—in the hope that she will one fine day be enabled to play five or six tunes, were bestowed upon an intelligent dog, cat, pig, or other household pet, how different might be the oftimes result?

Augusta Browne Garrett, “On the Rights of Quadrupedal Musicians”

Cats were always part of the Browne family home. The composer remembered how her youngest brother, a budding artist, incorporated the pet into his drawings. “Sometimes the cat was seized on, and compelled to sit for her portrait, and fearful were the distortions in face and contour to which unlucky puss was victim.”² The nineteenth-century American artists— both named and anonymous—whose delightful works illustrate this essay had better luck, or perhaps greater skill, with their feline models.

1. Augusta Browne Garrett, “On the Rights of Quadrupedal Musicians,” Musical World 13 no. 7 (Feb. 13, 1858): 99. [↩]
2. Augusta Browne, Hamilton, the Young Artist (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852), 36. [↩]