Hodge

The statue facing 17 Gough Square commemorates the house's most famous quadruped resident, Hodge, Samuel Johson's cat. Hodge lived with Johnson during an important time for cats more generally, it was during the eighteenth century that domestic animals first began to be kept as 'companions' - as 'pets' - in a context comparable to one we would recognise today, and what we know of Johnson's relationship with Hodge shines a light on both the language-history of 'cat' and pet-keeping trends among Johnson's intellectual companions.

 

Amongst the tails and whiskers of contemporary references to Hodge, the most quoted is one by Johnson's close friend and biographer, James Boswell: 

 

I shall never 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 the cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, 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 that he was a fine cat, saying 'why yes, Sir, but I have had cats 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!'.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

 

As anyone who has read 'Hodge's History of Cats' will know, the Age of Enlightenment had brought about a radical shift in feline fortunes. In earlier centuries, cats had folkloric associations with the devil and witchcraft, and were thought to have otherworldly qualities, being active at night and appearing and disappearing at will. Suspicion of cats was not simply popular tradition: it had received papal sanction in 1232, when Pope Gregory IX urged the court of the Inquisition to keep an eye on (specifically black) cats, which he said were the favoured companion of the devil. The pronouncement was seen as a licence to cull....