University of Virginia Library

12. CATACOUSTICS.

That is the philosophy with which Cavello commences his
Chapter IX., Part II., entitled—“of Sound, or of Acoustics.”

I have been led by reflection upon an intercepted letter,
lately embodied in the “Spirit,” written by some foreign
trollop, touching “The cries of New York,” to look a little
further into the matter than that shrewd but doubtful specimen
of English ladyship had means or ability to snoop. I am glad
I have done so, for I have found at least one “American peculiarity”
that must be defended from foreign abuse. Cœrlærs
Hook, the Five Points, and all those interesting situations in
the suburbs, which have been planted with innocent-looking
village churches,—all spire and no body,—put up on ragged
sticks on barren fields marked out with a sign post, and glorified
with the titles of Avenues “A,” “B,” “C,” and “Promise
Place,” and “After date Square,” and “Cashier Row,”
and “Texas Stroll,” and such like;—gemmed with a grog-shop,
and occasionally honored with a post-office!—Post-Master
save the remark!—by some “enterprising” speculator
upon the capital of his glib and queer tongue;—and all the
plausible “enterprise” of us Yankees to take in friends and
fools with solemn assurances of the silver rivulets that are
always going to begin to run from Penobscot to Lake Ponchartrain;

and all the other tricks and cheateries of the “Enterprise”
part of my people, and all the vulgar vices which
foreign debasement has brought here;—these I give and
yield in tribute to any trollop who will aspire to criticism,
and create for herself a character, by abusing them. These
things I surrender. Let deformity illustrate vice. Let vulgarity
vomit out the proof of its associations.

But no trollop must abuse the Cats of my native city, either
by direct libel or by sarcastic inuendo. The tiger spirit possesses
me on this subject, and I scream for cats.

I am for cat-acoustics, only.—I have heard of cock-crowing.
I have read about the early lark at matin dawn, striking his
head against the top of the cage, and of the robin's silver
whistle, playing upon wires, and the wren's shrill joyfulness,
uplifted from some straggling smoke-dried poplar, and of many
other of the varieties of the creaking, piercing, fifery performances
of our most cherished city of Neo Eboracensis. I
have heard a band of music. I went to a Roar-atorio,—or
Oratorio as they call it,—once, at the Tabernacle. I have
heard a woman sing “Oft in the stilly night.” My next-door
neighbor is a Frenchman who has an educated parrot that
talks like a judge, who decides by instinct before he hears
the argument, and prates and anticipates, and cries his own
praises incessantly, “Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!” in constant
and earnest reiteration, interrupted only when he stops to
drink—for he is a marvelous member of the temperance society.
I have been to a Methodist Camp Meeting. I have
been “high,” and have sung myself. Whether I heard myself,
“de hoc non.” Probably more “Hoc” than “non.”
Over the way, and opposite to me, two little infants are learning
“Isle of beauty, fare the well,” from a spinster teacher;
who, when she gets through her instructive department, goes

into the amusing,—like farce after tragedy,—and screams
“una voce poco,” in such a way, that your enraptured judgment
cries out “fa!” before she has poked her “voce” fully
into you. In fact, I have the advantage of great musical experience,
even from the booming thunder of a cannon, down
to the maiden squeal of a mouse. I am a musician. I affect
not Hayden. I love not Handel. They have sublimity, but
no dramatic action in their stately glories. They march in
column of attack. Where they strike, they do terrible execution,
but they preserve too close a column.

To keep up the military phraseology, they don't display
and turn their enemy's flanks. They break down the walls of
your ears, and enter conquerors, but don't cut you up and smash
you. They achieve a solemn victory, and stop. Then again,
Bishop, and all that class of Missnancyists are whining babies.
They are competent to set Barbauld's poems, or Tom Moore
Little's Hymns, down into some select public-garden minstrelsy,
but they will never grow up into the maturity of musicians.
Other people I have heard, and whose music I know,
and upon whom I set a proper value; but of all the quadrupedal,
feathery, or two-footed creation, man or inhuman, woman
or fallen —, next after paying a proper reverence to
the living action of Von Weber's engravings, stamped by the
moonlight from the reflection of the trees and rough ravines of
the Hartz mountains, by his own Daguerreotype, I go for the

Mew-sic

of

Felis

I am for

Cat-acoustics.

Here is my gauntlet. Take it up who dare. Answer my
cat-echism.

Music is a running thrill that rushes over you with a sensation
of almost choaking deliciousness; like a sudden ocean-wave
on a smooth gravelly beach; isn't it? Its changes are
like the smiles and frowns of a good girl—twenty-five years
old;—or the quick alternations of the politics of the spirits of
the air, who, one moment, vote for Cloud, and next, Lightning,
and next, Rain, and then, Blue Sky; ar'n't they? Music
is change, race, flight, fight, mixed love and anger, the
tear of sentiment, the gush of passionate outbreak, and several
other things; is'nt it? Is there any music in “dum,
dum, dum, dum, dum, dum?” Apollo forbid! Such a performance
would be worse than a silent Quaker meeting, or a
Scotch bagpipe. But put “d” on the top of the house, where
he can have the air, and “u”—not you, my dear—in the front
bed-chamber in the second story, and “m” in the cellar, and
then let the representatives of sound run up and down. “M”
will bring with him “blasts from Hell,” and “D” drop into
the composition, “airs from Heaven,” while “U” will do the
earthly part of the business, and the appoggiature ladder will
multiply its rungs, and be peopled with strange but sweet
voices borne to you upon the velocipede above referred to,
aud so you'll go to glory. Now what musical instrument
made of tongue, teeth, thorax, or wire and ivory, can boast a
scale of notes, from the profound of mad rage to the exhausted
argute of pathos equal to the shrill delight of the feline gamut?
I drink as a garden drinks dew, the native melodies of a cat.
A well-voiced Tom-cat is your true musician of nature. He
is Diana's commissioned serenader. History books say that
“the wild or mountain-cat is borne in coats-of-arms as the
emblem of liberty, vigilence, and forecast.” Our city cat has
all these honors with the addition of a classical education, cultivated
taste, and knowledge of the world. Your peasantry

mountain-ridger does very well in the way of his vocation.
He screams out fourth fiddle with very good effect. But it
takes one of our cultivated urban Toms to fife, fiddle, bassoon,
and hurdy-gurdy all together.

The Romans gave their domestic tigers three names; to
wit, Felis, Catus, and Catulus. These were probably, different
tribes, using different styles of melody. “Felis” was
the prefurred name, however, and lapped the most plentiful
milk of favor. A good mouser was called “Muricida.” But
to give the catalogue of names might put me in the same cat
egory with a prosing peasant. That catastrophe I beg leave
to avoid, and so go on with my story. Permit me that
felisity.

Some people like the voice of a dog. Not I.

The dog bays the moon, and howls out sickness, thirst, and
madness, but puss pours out wild and melancholy love-notes
in tender, healthful adagio and maestoso. Does he succeed
in calling his ladye-love to the old trysting-place so many a
night hallowed by fierce and gentle dalliance;—what soul-piercing
epithalamics fill with poetic fury the ear of the sentimental
watchman, snoozing hard by! How many a feverish
tongue in the chosen happy neigborhood swears out in
rapture at the paradisical concert. The Garcia never sung
as a cat can sing.

Blessed air! Cavallo says it is “the vehicle of sound.”
So it is. And what hero can better stride that velocipede
than the voice of a cat?

The mariner's welcome of the word “Catspaw,” comes
upon the cloudy cry of distant land-cats, and his sail and soul
vibrate together with the greatful impulse of the breeze. He
runs to his “cat-heads,” and heaves up his anchor, and claws
off to the deep rumbling ocean. It is a singular fact that the

word “cat” is as necessary a term of description in music,
as any particle is to a particular class of words in prose orthography.
This is a well-deserved tribute to the musical
genius of that interesting animal. “Cat” in acoustics is what
“pro,” “con,” “ad” &c., are in grammar. The music of the
rushing torrent of waters at Niagara cannot be described but
as a cat-aract. The Paganinies of the world draw their bows
upon catgut. Poets sleep upon cattails to get inspiration. If
three musicians go home drunk of a moonlight night, they are
sure to entertain the town with a cat-ch.

The courier-avant critics of the opera, who decide for the
people beforehand, join the orchestra with catcalls. The
printer's devils and general loafers caterwaul. Shakspeare's
“Twelfth Night” was acted in that way on Mrs. Wood's last
night at the Park, when old Hays came in and cried out, like
a true police-officer, in the language of Maria—

“What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my lady—
the Mayor—have not called up her steward, Malvolio,—the
captain of the watch,—and bid him turn you out of doors,
never trust me.”

Catskill mountain is full of the lowing of cattle. The penitentiary
catacombs are tragic with the notes of despair.
Every ship is vocal with the cat-o'-nine-tails. “Kit” is a
small fiddle. Every body can sing that pathetic old English
ballad entitled “Dido and æneas,” the burden of which
is “Kitty kit dink-a-Dido.” I could go on, but the illustrations
I have given are sufficient for my purrpose.

Catacoustics is defined to be the echo or air-copied reflection
of the offspring of the sonorous body which utters some
new-born melody. How truly apposite is the name when
applied to our city cats! How plentiful are all the needful instruments
of reproduction! Let some battle-worn grimalkin

pour out a solitary ditty upon your fence at midnight, and the
adjacent walls of the block will catch up the glorious essence
of sound, and fling it back and about like the orgies of the
most classical wizards. You will dream of Der Freyschutz,
and think you hear a spirit. But if you want to be lapped in
Elysium, listen to a Cat Concert. To get one up, only tell
your cook to leave the dinner remnants on the grass plot, instead
of handing them, according to law, to the swill-man.
Let it be done on some moonlight night, so that there will be
a chance for help to the effect, from the soaring stretch of
some late-watching she-eagle—every block furnishes a proper
quota—who sits by her window, pounding her piano—
no; forte—and goes F in the sixty-sixth ledger line, sostenato,
for a quarter of an hour without breathing. That helps
the harmony powerfully. If you can get a man with a hand
organ to grind at your front door while the performance is
going on, and an amateur of “foreign airs” to saw his guitar
and voice to the “native graces” over the way, at the same
time, your appointments will be complete—you are happy—
very happy.

Such are the New York festivals. Is it needful to describe
them? Why do I ask? Who can describe the effect produced
by the chorus of sixty cats, aided by all the musical
talent of the ward!

Reader thou hast been at such a concert. Thou hast not?
Hence then, thou knowest naught. First, however, give me
a thousand dollars for teaching thee a new pleasure. Pay
me the moneys, invite your cats, and call me a good musical
caterer.

P. S. If you can throw in a small boy who sings Methodist
Hymn tunes dolorotissima voce, like the howl of a mad dog, it
will put into your conglomerate work, the idea of Death's

head on a tombstone. Put alongside of him a young gentleman,
who squeals with his sweetheart, harmonious “why-e-a,
why-e-a—whew, e, a, a, a, a, a, ah!

a, ah! ah!

a, a,

a,

ah! ah!

a, ah!

aha!

and the cats will be encouraged by the competition. Cry
“Fire!” and “Watch” yourself. Pay the money before specified
to the “Spirit,” for I have a notion that he's short of
funds to feed his cattle-laborers, and such. This is the end
of the catalogue. Now, dearest Kate, I am free, but—for—
thee.