By ruthless kick hurled from the wharf, below
The stones on which the gentle Thames does flow,
Mortally injured, soon resigned his breath,
Thus left his friends, who here record his death.’
A tablet placed near the north-east end of the platform of the Edgware Road Railway Station, is inscribed:
In Memory of
Poor Fan,
Died May 8, 1876.
For ten years at the Drivers’ call.
Fed by many,
Regretted by all.
Poor Fan lies under an evergreen hard by. She was notable for travelling continually on a railway engine between the Edgware Road and Hammersmith; occasionally getting off at an intermediate station, crossing the line, and returning by the next train; never taking any train but a Hammersmith train when outward bound, or going farther east than her own particular station when journeying homewards.
An Englishman travelling in France in 1698, was disgusted at seeing, in a ducal garden, a superb memorial in the shape of a black marble cat couching on a gilded white marble cushion, on the top of a black marble pedestal bearing the one word ‘Menine.’ Such posthumous honour is rarely paid to puss; but two other instances of it may be cited. In making excavations near the Place de la Bastille, in the ground formerly occupied by the gardens of the Hôtel de Lesdiguières, the workmen brought to light the handsome tomb of a cat which had belonged to Françoise-Marguerite de Gondy, widow of Emmanuel de Crequi, Duke of Lesdiguières. It bore no laudatory epitaph, but the odd quatrain:
Cy-gist une chatte jolie.
Sa maitresse, qui n’aima rien,