The Owl and the Pussycat: a Conspiracy Theory.
(Original publication 18 Nov 2007)
As with all stories, even the nonsensical ones, there is invariably an element of truth just visible beneath the veneer of lies, half truths and deliberate contradictions. The poem written by Edward Lear is such a case. It seems to be pure fantasy at first glance, however, one only has to peel back the obvious literal nonsense to discover a tale most sinister and fiendishly disguised as a mere children’s poem. Let us start this investigation with a closer look at the main characters of this tale, namely an owl and a cat.
‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,’
It is, of course, most unlikely that one would see such an alliance between a raptor and carnivorous feline, leading anyone to the conclusion that there is already an attempt to sell us a line from the very start; or is it the first tantalising clue to a completely different story? The closer I examined the poem the more I became convinced that this was so. My conclusions were astounding. Everyone believed that he spent many years loafing around Europe and making his way by selling the odd painting. I wonder if, in 1846, Queen Victoria would have consented for Lear to give her drawing lessons, had she known that in Lear’s secret life he became a very successful jewel thief.
In his poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (first published in 1867) Lear portrays himself, rather arrogantly I thought, as the owl. Owls are often portrayed as ‘wise’ and yet in the real world there is no shred of evidence that a bird of prey that stays up all night, has eyes as big as a junkie high on magic mushrooms and a genetic defect that means it lacks a rectal function in the appropriate physical place, possesses any modicum of wisdom greater than other birds. The collective noun for owls is ‘a Parliament’. Perhaps for many of us, does is it seem that the allusion towards the wisdom of owls is something our politicians would have us believe in order to write policies and manifestos about as sensible as Lear’s poetry? Did Lear see himself to be wise, nay clever, and thus portray himself as the brains behind a felonious operation? Then again, perhaps the inference to ‘Lear the owl’ may simply refer to his antisocial activities occurring at night, when most normal and law abiding citizens were tucked up safely in their beds. It is tempting to want Lear to be seen as boasting his cleverness, however, without substantive evidence we may never know the truth of it.
Clever Lear may well have been, if what I have uncovered is in anyway representative of the truth. So is it perhaps a slip on Lear’s part that by considering him to be a criminal with intent to mock us, as he does by declaring his illegal doings through a poem, he actually names his fellow accomplice as well as the nature of his crimes? Or is this just another mark of the man’s genius?
‘The Owl and the Pussycat’. Is this a cryptic declaration of Edward Lear the Owl and his fellow cat-burglar? Is it possible that the appellations were nothing but a metaphor for a master criminal and his somewhat spectral partner; for nothing in Lear’s history is there to be found a reference to a companion or partnership of this nature? In other words, was Lear working alone? Is the Pussycat real or is the cat just a shaggy dog story? I had to get to the truth of the matter or the real story would have eluded me. I had discovered evidence of Lear’s jovial attitude to wit. But to woo – I mean to who – did Lear proffer the appellation of pussy cat?
‘They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.’
A possible answer comes from the line in the poem that goes: ‘They took some honey and plenty of money…’ The most obvious observation is that neither Owls nor cats eat honey. So why would they take honey and nothing else on a journey? It is certainly true that neither cats nor birds eat honey; or is it?
The Tui of New Zealand is one of the 182 species of honeyeater birds in the world. It is the only bird, however, that early Europeans dubbed as the ‘Parsons bird’ because two white feathers at the Tui’s throat reminded them of a vicars collar. Perhaps it is no consequence then that the honey referred to in Lear’s poem was a small clue to his partner in crime. If Lear was a master criminal perhaps his accomplice, the pussycat was actually a cat burglar who during the day was a respectable man of the cloth. Even more tempting is to believe that his accomplice, in God’s calling or not, was literally a man by the name of ‘Parsons’!
Now, it seems most unlikely that Lear and Parsons really did take honey on a ‘job’. Much research has been undertaken to see if honey could be used for reasons other than medicinal ones but thus far has met with little success. We do know that Lear was asthmatic and also suffered with bronchitis but would it seem preposterous to take medicinal provisions like honey unless, of course, the plan was not to return home for some time, which may well have been the case. Some connection was discovered between the clergy and the use of beeswax for candles. It might be possible that what was rigged to look like an innocent jar of honey turned out to be a lantern? It would certainly be a useful piece of equipment where the darkness of night protected valuables as much as a hidden wall safe or a locked door. Both possibilities were food for thought but no light was shed on which was the more accurate.
A rather more tricky question related to why our would-be criminals needed to take a five-pound-note. This is a comparatively small amount in today’s money, but back in the mid 19th century it might have been worth around 150 times as much. The comparative figure here may not be entirely accurate due to the impossible number of factors one might employ to arrive at such a conclusion of fiscal parity between timelines, however, it would seem clear that five pounds was a large sum of money back in the 1850s. Now if Lear had the means to put his hands on so much money there would be two things one could infer immediately: The first is that it was a compulsory requirement to their plans, most likely someone had demanded a bribe. We may consider the possibility of this as Lear and Parsons did not take ‘the value of’ five pounds. Lear states clearly that it was a note, hence there was only one person from whom they needed to buy silence. The second inference is that whatever they were about to steal was worth a lot more than the bribe.
Indeed it could be conjectured further that taking ‘plenty of money’ along with the aforementioned fiver, but alluding only to the other money’s presence rather than its worth was because it was merely a contingency fund should they find themselves in need of paid assistance and/or other minor bribes or paid passage / accommodation. On the other hand it might be that they were unsure exactly how much money they had ‘taken’. Is this line in the poem a blatant confession to Lear and Parson’s criminal activities even before ‘the big one’?
Even if this were not the case, it is fairly evident that if one were to take the most expensive of coins at the time, the English guinea, one would be lucky to wrap more than ten guineas successfully into a five-pound-note. So at a guess, ‘lots of money’ at the most could have been ten guineas; which is eleven pounds in old money (£1650 in today’s money). It was a lot of money, for sure, but hardly enough for two people to live for ‘a year and a day’ and to survive comfortably without replenishing their funds.
The money they took with them could not have been for the ‘pea-green boat’ …or could it? As the boat features in the first line of the poem it seems to imply that the boat was already acquired and that the said money was for something else. On the other hand, the journey by boat is a statement completely separate to the second line of the poem. If read with a certain inflection it could be made to sound as if the taking of money was a part of how they were now able to afford a journey in a pea-green boat and the five pounds was either payment for the boat or payment for passage on it.
Assuming that the money and the boat were separate issues, the chances are that the recipient of such a large bribe as five pounds would be someone like a night watchman working on a ship, who would quite happily take a ‘tap’ on the head for turning a blind eye. This is certainly among the more reasonable of possibilities. It would be a more fanciful notion to think, for example, that Lear intended to bribe a Yeoman, steal the Crown Jewels and escape by way of an inconspicuous river boat. However, as Lear said that ‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea…’ right from the start it suggests that a ship would be a more likely target.
‘The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are."’
Part of their haul appeared to be a musical instrument. Consider the playful song that both Lear and Parsons sing whilst making their nautical getaway. No doubt, the guitar was a chance find and it seems unlikely that either of them really knew how to play it. The guitar, it is believed, originated in Spain around the 1600’s. This small piece of knowledge may seem irrelevant but the mere presence of a guitar suggests that the ship from which they stole was either Spanish, or it was a ship that had recently been involved in ‘liberating’ Spanish plunder from the Caribbean (a bit late in his time frame perhaps but who knows what treasure was yet to be discovered from that era).
‘Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?"’
Anyway, the guitar. Lear and Parsons are singing silly songs to each other about love; ‘O lovely Pussy! [Parsons?] O Pussy my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are…’ …and so on. This behaviour certainly seems typical of Lear, hence belief in a moment of levity with a friend that is behaviour reflected so often in his lyrical poems and a penchant for nonsense is not without merit. Consequently, and without wishing to add yet more animals to my analysis, this banter of mock love between Owl and Cat would seem to indicate Lear and Parsons just ‘horsing around’. An interesting find in the exchange, however, is the mention of the absence in their haul of a ring. Clearly the treasure they had ‘acquired’ consisted of gem stones but not necessarily of jewellery.
‘They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,’
Where they sailed to remains a bit of a mystery but strong evidence within the poem points unerringly towards the New World. There is, of course, no such thing as a ‘bong tree’. However, an anagram of ‘Bong tree grows’ is ‘Brown egg store’. My investigations into anything to do with a brown egg store led me to New England were there is a tremendous industry devoted to brown eggs; hence it is known as the ‘brown egg state’. OK its not ‘store’ but it was the closest I could find and the more I pursued this path, however, tenuous, the more interesting it became.
‘And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.’
Wherever they went, it is clear that their business was not a wedding but a union of sorts; a meeting one might conclude. Their arrangement with the ‘Piggy-wig’ is a dead giveaway. I mean look at the leap of faith Lear would have us take. One minute they are sailing across a great distance and with no explanation whatsoever they are suddenly in a forest with a pig. It makes no sense at all. The pig, one assumes, is domesticated and also has the capacity to speak Owl and Cat. Furthermore, the ring in its nose appears to be an attachment that the pig has the power to give away for the princely sum of one shilling; probably about a week’s wages in those days.
‘"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?"
Said the Piggy, "I will"’
Naturally it would be foolish to believe that pigs have good commercial skills. By and large they are generally unfussy animals liable to eat anything and everything you throw at them. Furthermore, as clean as they might be, they tend to live in squalor. For a smart animal the pig appears to lack even half decent standards. No, Mr Piggy-wig was not a real pig. A greedy person perhaps, who wanted to sell a token for more money than his important, but rather small, part was worth but not a real species of the porcine persuasion. Mr Piggy-wig could be none other than a contact for a meeting with the only other main character in Lear’s poem, the Turkey.
‘So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.’
…Turkish to be more precise. Lear and Parsons arranged to see the Turk on the following day, and the ring was proof of who they were. Clearly they must have known about this arrangement before setting foot on foreign soil, as is alluded to in their celebratory songs.
The available evidence that Lear and Parsons found themselves in New England is quite astounding. It was amazingly easy to find the Turk, and with that small piece of information the rest of our incredible tale simply fell into place. A certain Jacob Whitman lived in a house around 1750. with the carving of a Turk on the porch. Even in the year 2007 the ‘Turks Head Building’ now sits on that very site; at the intersection of Westminster and Weybosset Streets. Even now there are rumours about the history of Turks Head and of secret societies featuring among its more fanciful tales. Could it be that a relative of Mr Whitman, still resident in the same house, was the fence who profited greatly from his transaction with Lear and Parsons?
‘They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.’
It is true that the link between the country of Turkey and the fruit ‘Quince’ is an intriguing one but it can be proved that anyone fishing for evidence along this line will find it to be a red herring. The poem states that Lear and Parsons (and most likely ‘The Turk’) dined on mince and quince. Although quince, an apple of sorts and native in part to the northern region of Turkey, does suggest that our investigations should perhaps deviate from the New England discoveries and seek alternative hypothesise a little in the Mediterranean, the fruit does grow in other countries. Was I right to stay in New England or was it still possible that Lear and Parsons only sailed to Turkey? The conclusion I arrived at was that Turkey was an unlikely destination simply because the country was in decline at the time, whereas the United States was a growing concern and offered more by way of opportunity. No. Turkey was not their intended destination. So was quince available in New England?
Indeed it was. In fact quince was introduced to New England as early as 1629, although nowadays the growing of quince as a fruit has long been upstaged by the apple. In truth it seems from internet searches in the 21st century that Rhode Island is known as ‘apple country’.
And if the Turks Head and the quince were not enough, yet another intriguing clue connects our jewellery thieves to Rhode Island. It is claimed that the founder of the American jewellery industry was started, I am led to believe, by Nehemiah and Seril Dodge in around 1824. And where did they start this industry? That’s right, in the very same Rhode Island district of ‘Providence’ where the Turks Head Building also resides. Gemstones would certainly have been welcome at a time when gold was being discovered in great quantities.
So there it is, right in front of us all this time. Edward Lear was a master jewel thief. He and an accomplice, a cat-burglar named Parsons, bribed a ship’s night watchman to look the other way whilst they made off with a fortune in jewels. They sought passage to the New World, arriving in New England where they made arrangements to see, most likely, a relative of Jacob Whitman to act as a go between to flog a fortune in uncut gemstones for a rather large quantity of gold.
No doubt there will be many people who will disbelieve the evidence placed here before them. And yet one might step back a moment and wonder why it seems easier to accept Lear’s poem for all the nonsense that it is at face value. Maybe it was simply the case that Lear experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and with wide eyed amazement found a strange momentary attachment to next door’s pussycat while he considered flying off the roof of his house. Then again it would seem a more than plausible story, that if two men successfully negotiated ill gotten gains for an absolute fortune in gold, one can appreciate the description at the end of his poem where…
‘And hand in hand on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.
They danced by the light of the moon.’
End
