Chloroforming the Cat

I've been reading Winterwise by Zephine Humphrey, a Vermont writer whose work is now out of print. Paul got this book for me from a tag sale and I'm so grateful to be reading it right now. Published in 1927, it is startling how many of her observations of daily life in Vermont over eighty years ago are still so pertinent today.

Humphrey's writes:
Winter is the supreme season of reconciliation. Stripped and austere, the earth ceases from her long activity and gives herself to the repose which waits at the end of every cycle of growth. The naked trees are reconciled with the gray sky, the brown hills with the russet fields, and when the snow falls, as today, even the white houses are merged and lost.

She also writes about talking walks through the village (Dorset, I think), cutting down the Christmas tree, visiting with neighbors, getting borrowed books delivered--wrapped in brown paper--from the New York Public Library, about the various dogs and cats that come in to her and her husband's life. It is interesting how she devotes entire chapters and long descriptive passages to these pets, but also mentions, quite frequently, how if a summer resident cannot find a home for their cat, or a barn cat seems a nuisance, the creatures are promptly dispatched via chloroform. This is a different attitude toward pets than we have today--perhaps a more practical, economical, rural-life approach. In one short chapter, a male barn cat she adopts from a neighbor, takes in and feeds, doesn't show the affection she hopes it will toward her other, female cat and he and the bottle of chloroform duly disappear.

I was amused to read how she and her husband, a painter, read reviews of the latest, most popular books of their time with skepticism and wariness as they often find the praise hasn't, in their opinion, been fairly earned. (Something Paul and I also feel today: whether it be a "bestseller" or an art exhibit that has gotten a lot of attention.) They read each evening, separately and sometimes, aloud, together. It is funny to read that Thunder on the Left (such a ridiculous title) was a favorite in 1925 and the book which they both find the most profound and resonant is Tertium Organum or The Third Canon of Thought, The Key to the Enigmas of the World.

Wikipedia (what would Zephine think of that?) says: "Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher, invoked euclidean and noneuclidean geometry in his discussions of psychology and higher dimensions of existence." Apparently for many years he was a follower of and "has a reputation for his expositions of the early work of" Gurdjieff. Holy crap! And I'm staying up to watch reality programming like "Hoarders"!

Many of my friends and neighbors here in Vermont do not have television. Their lives are closer to Zephine's, I imagine, and sometimes I long for this. On the other hand, certain movies on Turner Classic Movies, for example, have really infused me with a sense of artistic hope and admiration for the wonderful screenwriters, directors, actors, and cinematographers of these films. I never tire of seeing Hitchcock's "Rear Window."

Last winter (and spring and part of the summer), I read Anna Karenina and it really was a deeply rewarding experience. It was often engaging and inspiring, but also hard work (constantly reading the notes in the back and slogging through Dostoevsky's own developing ideas about religion, politics and agricultural practices of Russia in the mid to late nineteenth century). I was in tremendous admiration of his ability to write so convincingly from a woman's point of view and I also was thoroughly transported to another place and time.

The world today, with television, Facebook, Twitter, Ipods and cellphones, Blackberries, and so on, (and yes, blogs), takes us farther and farther away from the work of reading a  really good, (and perhaps really long) book. Zephine and Christopher's entertainment at night is reading a book and having a good discussion about it then, at breakfast the next morning, and over the course of some days. Who of us can say we do this today?