The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  I asked young Ponto whether the benefit he derived from his position with Baron Alcibiades von Wipp was really so great and important as to outweigh the unpleasant, oppressive nature of the servitude it entailed. In so doing I gave him to understand, in no uncertain terms, that such servitude must ever remain abhorrent to a tomcat with an inextinguishable sense of liberty in his breast.

  ‘You speak,’ said Ponto, smiling proudly, ‘you speak as you yourself see it, my good Murr, or rather as your total lack of experience of life in high society makes it appear to you. You don’t know what it means to be the pet of such a gallant, well-bred man as Baron Alcibiades von Wipp! For I suppose I don’t need to tell you, my liberty-loving cat, that I have been his dearest pet ever since I acted in such a clever, helpful manner. A brief account of our way of life8 will give you a very lively idea of the agreeable and beneficial nature of my present situation.

  ‘We rise in the morning – by “we” I mean I and my master – we rise not too early, but not too late either; that is to say, on the stroke of eleven. I should mention, by the way, that I have a soft, roomy couch made up for me not far from the Baron’s bed, and we snore in such harmony that if we wake suddenly we can’t tell which of us was snoring. The Baron pulls the bell and his manservant immediately appears, bringing a beaker of steaming chocolate for the Baron and a china dish of the best sweet coffee with cream for me, which I empty with as good an appetite as the Baron shows in draining his beaker. After breakfast we play together for half an hour; not only is the physical exercise good for our health, it also cheers our spirits. If the weather is fine, the Baron is in the habit of looking out of the open window, watching passers-by through his telescope. However, if there don’t happen to be many passers-by, the Baron has another amusement which he can pursue for an hour at a time without becoming fatigued. There is a stone of a particular reddish colour set into the paving beneath the Baron’s window, and a small hole has crumbled away in the middle of it. The Baron’s game is to spit out of the window accurately enough to hit this little hole. Much assiduous practice has brought him to the point where he can bet he will hit it three times running, and he’s won many a bet.

  ‘After this entertainment comes the very important moment of getting dressed. The Baron himself attends to the skilful combing and curling of his hair, and above all to the artistic arrangement of his cravat, without his manservant’s aid. As these two difficult operations last quite a long time, Friedrich employs the interval in getting me dressed too: that is, he washes my coat with a sponge soaked in luke-warm water, combs the long hairs decoratively left at appropriate places by the poodle-clipper with a sufficiently narrow-toothed comb, and puts on the handsome silver collar which the Baron gave me as soon as he discovered my virtues.

  ‘The next part of the day is devoted to literature and the fine arts: we visit a restaurant or coffee-house, enjoy a beefsteak or carbonade, drink a little glass of Madeira, and glance at the latest journals and newspapers. Then our morning calls begin. We call upon this or that great actress, singer or ballerina, bringing her the latest news, and in particular reports of any début the previous evening and how the show went. Baron Alcibiades von Wipp contrives to manipulate his news with remarkable skill so as to keep the ladies always in good humour. An enemy, or at least a rival, has never succeeded in gaining even a part of the renown crowning the celebrated lady whom he happens to be visiting in her boudoir just now. The poor creature was hissed – ridiculed! And if there is really no way of hiding the brilliant acclaim some artiste has received, the Baron is sure to serve up some new, scandalous little tale about her, a tale as eagerly heard as it is passed on, so that a judicious amount of poison may kill the flowers in her wreath before their time.

  ‘Calls on ladies of higher rank – Countess A., Baroness B., Lady C. the Ambassador’s wife, and so forth – occupy our time until three-thirty, and now that the Baron has done the real business of his day, he can sit down with satisfaction to dinner at four. This repast too is usually taken at a restaurant. After dinner we go to drink coffee, or perhaps to play a game of billiards, and then, if the weather allows, we take a little promenade. I am always on foot, but the Baron sometimes rides on horseback. Then it’s time for the theatre; the Baron never omits to go. He has a very important part to play there, since he must not only keep the audience informed of everything to do with the stage and the artistes who are appearing, he also has to allot praise and blame in the appropriate quarters, and above all he must keep taste directed along the right lines. He feels a natural vocation to do so. As even the most refined of my kind are most unfairly never allowed into the theatre, the hours when the performance takes place are the only time when I am separated from my dear Baron, and amuse myself on my own account. You shall hear at some future time how I do so, my good Murr, and how I employ my connections with greyhounds, English spaniels, pugs and other distinguished folk!

  ‘After the theatre we eat at a restaurant again, and the Baron abandons himself entirely to his jovial mood in cheerful company. That is to say, they are all talking and laughing and finding everything quite divine, ’pon their honour, and no one knows what he is saying or what he is laughing at, or what is to be praised, ’pon his honour, as so divine. However, therein lies the sublimity of the conversation, of the entire social life of those who follow the dictates of elegance, like my master. Sometimes the Baron goes on to a late-night party, where he is said to shine. I don’t know anything about that either, because the Baron has never yet taken me with him, and he may have his reasons for that.

  ‘I’ve already told you how comfortably I sleep on a soft bed beside the Baron. So now tell me, my good cat, in view of the avocations I have described here at some length, how can my cross old uncle complain that I lead a wild, dissolute life? It’s a fact, as I have told you already, that some time ago I did deserve all manner of reproaches. I went about in bad company and took special pleasure in forcing my way in everywhere uninvited, particularly at wedding feasts, and in kicking up an unprofitable row. However, none of this was done out of an outright instinct for dissolute brawling, but purely for lack of higher refinement, which I could hardly acquire in the circumstances then prevailing in the Professor’s household. It’s all different now. But whom do I see? There goes Baron Alcibiades von Wipp! He’s looking round for me – he’s whistling! Au revoir, old friend!’

  Quick as a flash, Ponto raced away to meet his master. The Baron’s appearance was entirely in accord with the picture I had been able to form of him from Ponto’s description. He was very tall, and not slender so much as thin, thin as a rake. His attire, bearing, gait and gestures could all be taken as a prototype of the latest fashion, which, carried to fantastic extremes, lent his whole being a touch of the curious and eccentric. He was carrying a small, very thin cane with a steel crook at the end, and made Ponto jump over it several times. Degrading as this seemed to me, I had to admit that Ponto now combined the greatest skill and strength with a grace I had never noticed in him before. Moreover, the way the Baron walked with a strange, strutting goose-step, chest thrust out and belly pulled in, while Ponto bounded now in front of him and now beside him, curvetting very gracefully and allowing himself only very brief and sometimes proud greetings to passing friends – all this was evidence of a certain Something which, without being perfectly clear to me, impressed me mightily. I guessed what my friend Ponto meant about higher refinement, and decided to find out as much as possible about it. However, it proved very difficult to do so – or rather, my efforts were quite in vain.

  I later came to understand that all the problems and theories one may form in the mind will be frustrated in the face of certain things, knowledge of which can be attained only by actual practice, and the refinement acquired by both Baron Alcibiades von Wipp and Ponto the poodle in high society is one of those things.

  In passing, Baron Alcibiades von Wipp looked at me very keenly through his lorgnette. It seemed to me that I read curiosity an
d anger in his gaze. Had he perhaps noticed Ponto’s conversation with me, and did he disapprove of it? I felt a little anxious, and made haste upstairs.

  I ought now, if I am to perform all the duties of a good autobiographer, to give you another description of my state of mind, and I could not do so better than in a few sublime verses to which I have been turning my paw, as they say, for some time now. However, I –

  W.P. – wasted the best part of my life on these paltry, foolish devices. And now, old fool, you wail and blame the Fate you arrogantly defied! What were persons of rank to you, what was the whole world to you, the world you scorned because you thought it foolish, being most foolish of all yourself? You should have stuck to your craft, to your craft, building organs and not playing the witchmaster and soothsayer… Then they wouldn’t have stolen her away from me, my wife would be with me, I would be sitting in my workshop, a good craftsman with sturdy journeymen tapping and hammering around me, and we’d be making instruments better worth seeing and hearing than any others far and wide. And Chiara! Perhaps there’d be lively boys hanging around my neck, perhaps I might be dandling a pretty little daughter on my knee. Devil take it, what’s to prevent me from running off this moment, seeking my lost wife through the whole wide world?’

  With these words Master Abraham, who had been conversing thus with himself, threw the little automaton he had begun to make down on the floor along with all his tools, got to his feet and paced rapidly to and fro. The thought of Chiara, which hardly ever left him now, called forth all the painful melancholy within him, and as his higher life had once begun with Chiara, now the defiant anger engendered by his pain ebbed: it was anger with himself for looking beyond his craft and venturing into the practice of true art. He opened Severino’s book and gazed long at the lovely Chiara. Then, like a man moonstruck, deprived of his outer senses and acting purely automatically, as impelled by his inmost thoughts, Master Abraham went over to a chest standing in a corner of the room, removed the books and other items standing on top, opened it, took out the glass ball and all the apparatus for the mysterious experiment of the Invisible Girl, fastened the ball to a thin silken thread hanging down from the ceiling, and arranged everything in the room as it had to be arranged for the hidden oracle. Only after doing all this did he awaken from his dreamy trance, and was not a little surprised to see what he had done. ‘Alas,’ he wailed aloud, sinking into his armchair quite exhausted and despairing, ‘alas, Chiara, my poor lost Chiara, never again will I hear your sweet voice telling what lies hidden in the depths of a human heart. There is no comfort left on earth – no hope but the grave!’

  Then the glass ball swayed back and forth, and a musical sound was heard, like the wind softly touching harp-strings. But soon the sound became words:

  ‘Hope and comfort still may flow

  In your life: ah, let them steal

  O’er your senses, for although

  Bound by oath, I may reveal

  That the deepest wounds can heal.

  Master, be not plunged in woe.

  Bitter pain will yet bring weal.

  She who suffered tells you so.’

  ‘Merciful heaven,’ whispered the old man, with trembling lips, ‘it is she herself speaking to me from heaven above; she is no longer among the living!’

  Then that musical sound was heard again, and the words seemed even softer, even further away:

  ‘Pallid death cannot devour

  Those whose loving hearts are true.

  He now sees the sunset hour

  Who despaired in morn’s fresh dew.

  Soon the time may come when you

  Are free, however Fate may lour.

  Soon, ah soon, you’ll dare to do

  The will of the Eternal Power.’

  Swelling more strongly, re-echoing again, the sweet notes brought sleep to fold the old man in its black wings. Yet in the dark, shining like a lovely star, the dream of past happiness rose, Chiara lay on the Master’s breast once more, both were young and happy again, and no dark spirit could cloud the heaven of their love.

  [At this point the editor is obliged to inform his gentle reader that the cat has torn a few more sheets of paper out entirely, leaving yet another gap in a history full enough of gaps already. Judging by the page numbering, however, only eight columns of print are missing, and they do not seem to have contained anything of special importance, since on the whole what comes next follows on quite well from the previous passages. The text, then, continues:]

  – could not expect. Prince Irenaeus was a sworn enemy of all unusual incidents anyway, and more particularly if he himself was required to investigate the matter more closely. He therefore took a double pinch of snuff, as he was wont to do in cases of difficulty, stared at the court huntsman with that famous, deflating Frederician gaze of his, and said, ‘Lebrecht, I fancy you’re a moonstruck dreamer, eh? Seeing ghosts, and making a wholly unnecessary fuss!’

  ‘Most Serene Highness,’ replied the court huntsman very calmly, ‘have me turned out like any ordinary rogue if everything I have told you isn’t literally true! I repeat it boldly and frankly. Rupert is a downright scoundrel.’

  ‘What?’ cried the Prince, in a rage. ‘What, Rupert – my faithful old castellan who has served the princely house for fifty years, without ever letting a lock get rusty, or failing to do his duty locking and unlocking gates – you call Rupert a scoundrel? Lebrecht, you’re possessed, you are raving! Good God in Heaven above –’

  The Prince stopped, as always when he caught himself swearing in a manner not consonant with princely dignity. The court huntsman seized this moment to interrupt, very swiftly: ‘Your Serene Highness may become very heated and curse roundly, yet a man can’t keep quiet about a thing like this, he can only tell the truth and nothing but the truth!’

  ‘Who’s getting heated?’ said the Prince more calmly. ‘Who’s cursing? Only donkeys curse! I want you to tell me the whole story again, in a concise summary, so that I can call a secret meeting of all my councillors and tell them about it, for the purpose of proper consultation and deciding on the measures to be taken. If Rupert really is a scoundrel, then – well, we’ll see what we shall see.’

  ‘As I told you,’ began the huntsman, ‘when I was lighting the way for Fräulein Julia yesterday, the same person who’s been prowling around the place for some time stole past us. Wait a minute, thought I to myself, I’ll get Old Nick there yet, and when I’d taken the good young lady home I put out my torch and waited in the dark. It wasn’t long before the same fellow came out of the bushes and knocked quietly at the door of the house. I followed him cautiously. The door was opened, a girl came out, and the stranger went in with this girl. It was Nanni – you know her, Serene Highness, don’t you – Madame Benzon’s pretty Nanni?’

  ‘Coquin!’ exclaimed the Prince. ‘One doesn’t discuss pretty Nannis with crowned heads! But continue, mon fils!’

  ‘Well,’ the huntsman went on, ‘well, I’d never have thought pretty Nanni would do such a stupid thing. So it’s only a silly love affair, says I to myself, yet I couldn’t but think that there might be something else behind it. I went on waiting near the house. After quite a while Madame Benzon came back, and no sooner was she in the house than a window was opened upstairs, and the stranger jumped out as nimbly as you please right into the pretty pinks and gillyflowers planted in pots there, the flowers dear Fräulein Julia tends so carefully herself. The gardener made a terrible fuss; he came along with the broken potsherds and wanted to go and complain to your Serene Highness in person. But I wouldn’t let him in, because the rascal’s drunk even first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Lebrecht,’ the Prince interrupted his huntsman, ‘Lebrecht, this seems to be an imitation, for the very same thing happens in that opera by Herr Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro,9 the one I saw in Prague. So stick to the truth, huntsman!’

  ‘I’m not saying a word,’ continued Lebrecht, ‘not a word but what I can swear to on my body! The fe
llow had fallen as he jumped out, and I thought I’d catch him now, but he picked himself up quick as lightning and ran straight off to – where? Where do you think he went, Most Serene Highness?’

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ replied the Prince solemnly, ‘don’t you bother me with stupid questions about what I think, huntsman, just carry on quietly until your story is done, and then I’ll think!’

  ‘Well,’ continued the huntsman, ‘well, the man went straight to the empty pavilion. Empty, mark you! As soon as he’d knocked on the door a light showed inside, and who should come out but our honest, upright Herr Rupert? The stranger followed him in, and he locked the door again. So you see, Serene Highness, Rupert has dealings with strange, dangerous guests who must surely intend some evil, slinking around like that. Who knows what it’s all about? It’s possible that even your most Serene Highness is threatened by wicked men here in the peace and quiet of Sieghartshof!’

  Since Prince Irenaeus considered himself a most important princely personage, he could not but dream now and then of all manner of conspiracies and wicked plots at court. Consequently the huntsman’s last remark struck home, and he remained deeply sunk in thought for some moments. Then, opening his eyes wide, he said, ‘Huntsman, you’re right! The matter of this stranger prowling about the place, and the light showing in the pavilion by night, is more suspicious than it seems at first glance. My life is in the hand of God! But I am surrounded by faithful servants, and should one of them sacrifice himself for me I would certainly provide generously for his family! Make that known among my servants, my good Lebrecht! You know that a princely heart is free of all fear, of any human terror in the face of death, but one has duties towards one’s people, one must preserve oneself for them, particularly when the heir to the throne hasn’t come of age yet. So I will not leave the castle until the conspiracy in the pavilion has been foiled. The forester must come with the huntsmen and all the other rangers, and all my servants are to arm themselves. The pavilion must be surrounded immediately, and the castle securely locked. See to it, my good Lebrecht. I myself will buckle my hunting knife on, and you can load my double-barrelled pistols, but don’t forget to leave the catch on for fear of accidents. And I want to hear news if, for instance, the rooms in the pavilion are about to be stormed and the conspirators forced to surrender, so that I can withdraw to my private apartments. And have the prisoners carefully searched before they’re brought before the throne, lest one of them may be so desperate as to – but why are you standing there, why are you looking at me like that, why are you smiling, what does all this mean, Lebrecht?’