Imaginary London: In Search of a Whittington
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“Good heavens!” exclaimed Patricia Bridge as we exited Gloucester Road Underground Station. A fur-trimmed leather glove, tailored to her exacting specifications from the hides of three different species of animal, pinned down a matching fur hat, that had already been blown crooked. Her right arm locked itself tightly around my bent elbow.
I guided her underneath the awning of a nearby florists. During our excursion, I had unwittingly taken on the additional role of porter. The handles of her enormous maroon handbag strained under the weight of its hidden contents, which based on the feel as they repeatedly thumped against the side of my leg, was an uneven column of hardback books.
The shop owner was dragging open-topped wooden crates, filled with pre-packaged floral arrangements, in through the door to the premises, which he had wedged open with a bit of wood. The wind had already succeeded in tugging a few of the flowers from their moorings. They lay scattered across the apron of wet paving like the remnants of a bridal bouquet that had inauspiciously broken up in mid-flight.
Mrs Bridge tightened her grip around my elbow as she stooped to retrieve some daffodils that were strewn along the gritty shores of an elongated puddle, pulling me partway down with her in the process
“I'll pay you for the flowers,” she announced to the florist, as we awkwardly righted ourselves. He had just that moment tilted another crate onto its back legs and was hauling it into the shop.
“Just take them,” he said.
The daffodils were deposited into the handbag where the other contents (library books I was later told – Mrs Bridge doesn't like to leave the house without them) battered and bruised them to a fibrous green and yellow pulp.
~
I had agreed to escort Mrs Bridge on what had escalated into a city-wide tour of London's cat shelters. The aim of the expedition was to procure a feline who would live up to the impossible standard set by his predecessor – a feral specimen named Percival, who would make a point of attacking any visitor to the Highgate Mansion that he had come to regard as his property.
Her request for my assistance had arrived on my doormat one morning in the form of an expensive-looking invitation, stamped in gold lettering on lightly embossed white card. Contrary to appearances, it was actually a set of instructions that opened with the line: 'I will be requiring your services on the 27th September, from 9:45am onwards.' It was signed at the bottom: Mrs Patricia Bridge (widowed).
The marital status of Mrs Bridge makes frequent appearance in her written correspondence, and in her myriad conversations with shop clerks and business owners. Curiously, she has never once mentioned the mysterious Mr Bridge to me. I remain unaware of even basic details such as his name, what he did for a living, or whether his wife's considerable wealth was of his, or her, making, or was parcelled together by the bonds of matrimony. There are no photographs or keepsakes of him on display anywhere in her home, or at least not in any of the rooms that I have been allowed to enter.
~
By one o'clock we had already blown through eleven of the eighteen shelters on Mrs Bridge's list.
During that time, my admiration had grown in leaps and bounds for the tireless patience of the volunteers who managed to remain civil in the face of her prolonged interrogations.
“Mrs Bridge has been extremely generous to us in the past,” whispered one of these women.
Her benefactor was making her way along a row of stacked cages, peering inside and dispensing jarring home truths to the downtrodden occupants.
“Now I think you know that you need to smarten yourself up a bit,” she counselled
The manager of a cat home in Haringey admitted “she basically keeps the lights and the heating on in this place. We wouldn't be able to afford to continue without her.”
Mrs Bridge refers to these refuges as “her arks.”
“They play a very important role in preserving certain London phenotypes,” she said.
When the topic of conversation turns to cats, as it often does with Mrs Bridge, she can be quite scientific.
“I will only donate to shelters that cater exclusively to cats. I will not sanction cats being housed alongside dogs or other animals such as pythons.” she continued, as we entered another of the feline sanctuaries whose survival was dependent, in part, upon the bottomless purse of their patron.
“We have many very black cats,” said the girl on reception, with the naïve enthusiasm of someone who has evidently not been in the job for very long.
“It must be a Whittington,” announced Mrs Bridge, stridently. “On that matter, I am afraid that I must stand absolutely resolute. Nothing else will suffice. I am prepared to pay for the laboratory tests.”
I watched the face of the girl begin to fall, then suddenly rally
“Okay then, let's have a look at what we've got in,” she responded brightly.
~
The Whittingtons are a lineage of strays; a tribe whose matriarch squeezed herself out through a gap in the spread pages of an illustrated storybook. Across a span of centuries their common DNA has unwound like a ball of yarn through the maze of London streets.
They are the seldom-observed dark matter of the Capital, stirred into life by the soft tremor of midnight church bells – that tarnished murmur of antiquated brass that passes unacknowledged through the minds of London as it dreams. If a sleeper responds at all, it is only to roll themself over in their slumber turning their back upon the day gone past.
The city authorities do not touch them, as they good mousers, who keep the rat population down. They hold themselves aloof from the attentions of man, more from derision than out of fear, for their common ancestor was once rejected by her human master and they have not forgotten this, nor will they ever forgive it.
To understand the Whittingtons (of whom you may have caught fleeting glimpses, if you are resident in London) you must bear with me while I recount the tale of the famed individual who is responsible for their bloodline – A man Dick Whittington. It is a version of the tale that you may not have heard, for while those in common circulation are fabrications, this one is true:
Dick Whittington was an orphan who grew up in the west country. He heard that the streets of London were paved with gold and decided he would go there and seek his fortune. When he arrived in the city he found it a much different place than he had imagined. The streets were filthy and groaned under the weight of poverty and want. The small rivers that threaded between the buildings were open sewers, chocked with human and animal waste. A pestilent miasma of stained the air.
By a stroke of relative good fortune, he was taken into the home of a merchant named Hugh Fitzwarren, who put him to work in the kitchen. The cook was a bad tempered woman who mistreated the young boy. At night he was made to sleep on a bed of soiled rags, in the corner of a draughty garret that was infested with rats and mice.
To keep the vermin at bay while he slept, Dick enticed a pair of stray cats into the house to live with him. One was as black as the night, and only emerged from the corner shadows after it was dark. He named her Matilda. The other cat had sleek silver fur and hunted during the daylight hours. He christened him Thomas. They were both wild creatures, who became docile in the company of their master. In the time when they were present in the house, there was no peace for any of the rats or mice, for one cat or the other was always awake and on the prowl.
The merchant, Fitzwarren, owned a trading ship called The Unicorn. He was a good, Christian man. Whenever the ship set sail he invited his servants to pool any money they had, and to invest it in a tradable commodity, in the hope that, in doing so, they would further the extent of the blessings that had already been bestowed upon them by the good Lord.
Dick had been resident in the house for a almost a year when it was announced that The Unicorn was soon to set sail. The servants scraped together whatever they could and purchased a bolt of horse silk to be traded on their behalf. Dick, to his dismay, had no coin to his name and so he could not participate in the venture.
“Well, what do you have?” said Fitzwarren.
“All I have are these two cats,” replied Dick
“Then send them and let us find their true worth,” answered the merchant.
And so Thomas and Matilda were let loose in the hold of the ship. Thomas was transported overseas, to the Barbary Coast of Africa, and thereafter sold to a king for a great sum of money, for his palace was plagued by an army of rats who were quickly seen off by the silver cat.
The black cat, Matilda, ran away before the ship set sail. She hid herself in the darkness of London where she gave birth to a litter of kittens. They were jet black creatures with pale blue eyes, whose fur turned silvery grey under the light of a full moon. They shunned the daylight. At night they moved through the streets like quicksilver
Dick was lonely without Thomas and Matilda to keep him company. In their absence the vermin soon returned to the garret to torment him. There came a day when he decided that he would leave London for good and find his fortune elsewhere. On the morning of the Feast of All-Hallows he rose early and slipped out of the house. When he reached Highgate Hill, he paused to look down on the city. As he did he heard the Bow Bells. The longer he listened, the more it seemed that they were calling him back to London.
So Dick returned to the house Hugh Fitzwarren, before his absence had been noticed. Soon after, The Unicorn returned from its voyage. Suddenly the young orphan found himself a very wealthy young man indeed, for the sum that had been paid for Thomas exceeded, by ten times, the combined value of the other cargo on the ship.
In time, Dick Whittington became a respected alderman of London. On no less than three occasions, he served as Lord Mayor. But, despite all of his wealth and success, a sorrow hung over him, for he missed the two cats who had set his life upon this path. He was sometimes seen walking the streets at night, in search of Matilda. When her body was found, broken by a cartwheel, and thereafter brought to him, he lifted the dark fur around her heart to reveal a patch of white fur underneath, that had been known to no-one besides himself. He arranged for Matilda to be buried on the exact spot on Highgate Hill where he had made his decisions to return to London, and marked the grave with a fine stone in her memory.
In spite of Dick Whittington's efforts to honour Matilda, her descendants, unlike most other cats, harbour a deep suspicion of humankind. They are a wild and nocturnal breed, who will pit tooth and claw against any attempt to hold them in captivity, and will resist any effort made that forces them to conform to conventional daylight hours. They have been known to tip over whole saucers of cream with a disdainful paw, and will shun even the choicest scraps of meat, preferring to hunt for their own food.
An exception to all of the above is made in the case of Mrs Bridge, who gets along famously with all Whittingtons, and cannot grasp why everybody else has so much trouble. It was she who paid for the grave of Matilda to be opened, and trace DNA to be painstakingly extracted from the soil, so as to establish a lineage.
After a hour at the shelter, peering into cages, she had selected eight cats who all looked the part.
“If you wouldn't mind putting these to one side,” she instructed. “And then I have the DNA kits with me. All I will need is a hair from each one.”
“The shelter manager and a rather effeminate man, who I took to be her deputy, exchanged a knowing glance.
“Why don't you take this one, Emma,” said the manager to her unsuspecting volunteer.
“My goodness, he is a spirited fellow, isn't he!” exclaimed Mrs Bridge, as the cat freed one paw and raked a deep wound across the forearm of the young girl who had been doing her best to hold him in place. There was a pregnant pause before the blood started to well up in the scratch marks.
“Go and put some antiseptic on that, Emma,” said the manager.
With its tormentor seen off, the cat had visibly relaxed under the steadying hand of Mrs Bridge.
“You're a good boy really, aren't you?” she said, matter of factly, as she plucked a hair from his back.
“I'll wait for the lab work to confirm it, but I am certain he is a Whittington,” she said. “It usually takes a few weeks. Whatever you do, don't re-home him with anyone.”
There didn't seem to be very much chance of that happening.
“You certainly have a way with him,” said the manager.
“Well, I am related to Dick Whittington by blood, and the cats do pick up on that,” said Mrs Bridge. “In a way I think I am redeeming him in their eyes. For his abandonment of their matriarch.”
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