Details

Title

The Tiger in the House

Author

Van Vechten, Carl

Publication Date

1920

Publisher

Knopf

Place of Publication

New York, NY

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute.

Note

Montgomery’s love of cats is well-documented. She took dozens and dozens of photos of her dearest feline friends, tufts of their hair are pasted into her scrapbooks alongside other mementos and keepsakes, and there is, of course, Montgomery’s iconic cat drawing next to her signature. It is no wonder then that she found Carl Van Vechten’s ‘The Tiger in the House’ an absorbing read. On 21 April 1921 she told her journal: “..after I got the boys to bed I curled up on my own bed with a bag of chocolates and read ‘The Tiger in the House’ until I forgot all about the woes of the flesh. It’s a very fascinating book, all about cats by a man who loves them. Some of it made my blood run cold.” The book is a history of domesticated cats in culture, in literature, art, music, myth, and the occult (no doubt the latter chapter contains the stories that made Maud’s “blood run cold”). ‘The Tiger in the House’ also contains a number of drawings, illustrations, and photographs, showing famous and infamous cats by equally famous or infamous artists, or cats in their most graceful and their most humorous states. Montgomery’s journal entry goes on to discuss some of her history with cats. “Grandfather and Grandmother [Macneill] hated cats. I always loved them. Just where I got my fondness for them would be hard to say since my ‘forbears’ [sic] on both sides, back to the third generation at least, detested them. But love them I did.” She says she was “rather surprised and pleased to learn” from the book “how many eminent and admirable individuals of both sexes were lovers of puss” including Dickens, Scott, Charlotte Bronte, Poe, Twain, and a host of others. Learning that he loved cats even raised her opinion of historian Thomas Carlyle (L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1918-1921). The author, Carl Van Vechten was a writer and photographer, best known as a (sometimes controversial) patron of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to writing a variety of novels, essays, and articles, he was a famed photographer of important figures in theatre, art, and literature, and his works have been displayed and reprinted constantly. He also was close colleagues with publisher Alfred A. Knopf, and he served as literary executor for Gertrude Stein. Read and peruse the full text of the book full text of the book here.

Genre

nonfiction book

Type of Item

contemporaneous