I try to avoid hesitation, repetition, and deviation. I fail lamentably with deviation and there is an element of repetition today.
In December 2015 I found a statue of Queen Victoria in Kensington Gardens that talks: Something Old, Something New. This week, outside Samuel Johnson’s house tucked away off Fleet Street, I saw a bronze of his favourite cat, Hodge, sitting on a copy of his master’s dictionary and with his favourite food, oysters, before him. James Boswell has this to say about Johnson and Hodge:
Nor would it be just, under this head, to omit the fondness which he showed for animals which he had taken under his protection. I never shall 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 a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I 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 he was a fine cat, saying, “Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked 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.”
This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. “Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.” And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, “But Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.”
Now Hodge can speak for himself, brought to life by Nicholas Parsons, presenter of Just a Minute on Radio 4. You can hear him here.
I also went into St Bride’s, also off Fleet Street, for the first time. Three things I found out:
1. The church is called after St Brigid who founded a convent in Kildare in 470 AD.
2. There is a bust of Virginia Dare, the first child born in the Americas to English parents. They were married at St Bride’s in 1585.
3. A baker near Ludgate Circus wanted to create a spectacular cake for his wedding. He drew inspiration from Wren’s octagonal spire and baked the first tiered wedding cake.
Simon Jenkins tells us that the spire of St. Bride’s has been described as a wedding cake, a telescope and a “madrigal in stone”. It is, in his view, one of Wren’s best known creations ” a shrine floating across a sea of roofs. I used to lift my gaze from many a tedious Fleet Street meeting and see St. Bride’s pinning London to the realm of sanity.”