“It
is a sort of paradox, but it is true: we are never more in danger than when we
think ourselves most secure; nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be
most in danger. Both sides of this apparent contradiction were lately verified
in my experience.”
Depending
on the friend we might judge this a mild indulgence in Chestertonian paradox or
an ironic sabotage of same. Is our friend being clever or mocking the sort of cleverness
that blurs into sententiousness? Hard to say. Let our friend continue:
“Passing
from the greenhouse to the barn I saw three kittens (for we have so many in our
retinue) looking with a fixt attention at something which lay on the threshold
of a door nailed up. I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss
engaged me to attend more closely, when behold -- a viper! the largest I
remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and
ejaculating the aforementioned hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact
with his lips.”
Now
he has our attention. Our correspondent has a story to tell, and a rather good
one, and he knows how to milk the suspense. Will the snake bite a kitten? Try
to swallow it? Will the kittens maul the snake? What does this have to do with our
previously mentioned complacency when it comes to security? Keep reading:
“I
ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle with which I intended to assail
him, and returning in a few seconds, missed him. He was gone, and I feared had
escaped me. Still however the kittens sat watching immoveably upon the same
spot. I concluded therefore that sliding between the door and the threshold he
had found his way out of the garden into the yard.”
Our
friend knows how to tell a story in words cinematically, one frame after
another. This is how we’ve learned to pace our storytelling, seamlessly juxtaposing
scenes and points of view. Next scene:
“I
went round immediately, and there found him in close conversation with the Old
Cat, whose curiosity being excited by so novel an appearance, inclined her to
pat his head repeatedly with her forefoot, with her claws however sheathed, and
not in anger, but in the way of philosophical enquiry and examination. To
prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I
interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed upon him an act of
decapitation, which though not immediately mortal, proved so in the end.”
Our
friend is a subtle comedian whose humor is linguistic – “in the way of
philosophical enquiry and examination.” He reminds us of A.J. Liebling, who referred
to heavyweight boxing as “the laying-on of hands” and described Archie Moore as
“a late-maturing artist, like Laurence Sterne and Stendhal.” And how does our
friend know his chop of the hoe blade was “not immediately mortal?” He concludes:
“Had
he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he, when in the yard, met
with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possible
but that some of the family must have been bitten; he might have been trodden upon
without being perceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could have
distinguished what foe had wounded him. Three years ago we discovered one in
the same place, which the barber slew with a trowel.”
So
our friend’s caution against delusive security was not ironic. We have reason to be careful. As a serious and deeply emotional Christian, we know our friend
may harbor primal fears regarding serpents. We’re grateful for the otherwise unidentified
barber, but wonder what he was doing
with a trowel. Our friend is William Cowper, the poet and hymnist, writing to
his friend the Rev. William Unwin on Aug. 3, 1782. Cowper didn’t leave the
story there, though he probably should have. He also turned it into a mock-heroic
poem, “The Colubriad” (meaning, roughly, “snake-saga”), a bit of doggerel about
cats.
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