January 8, 1824

Wilkie Collins,  (January 8, 1824 to September 23, 1889) was a popular English novelist, a friend and colleague of Dickens, with a large body of writing. One reason he wrote a lot was that he had to support two families.  His books were called at the time 'sensation novels', a term which precedes today's  label of 'detective' or 'suspense'  stories.

We have not forgotten all of Collins' fiction: The Woman in White, (1860) and The Moonstone, (1868) are well regarded by critics.  However, some books  are best remembered briefly for almanackical purposes, and by this we refer to Antonina, (1850) his first published novel, an historical novel set in early Christian Rome (though sounding eerily like a certain modern politician).

In Antonina, a dissolute Roman senator determines to win the heroine, and only invading barbarians save her from the evil fellow. It is the villain who is the cat lover, in this story! No wonder this novel is forgotten. Here is how the villain is described by two women:

[T]he accomplished Vetranio;....sometimes swears—swears by the ancient gods, too, which is forbidden!"
...He is beautiful! Not a woman in Italy but is languishing for him!"
"I have heard that he is clever."
"Who has not? He is the author of some of the most celebrated sauces of the age. Cooks of all nations worship him as an oracle. Then he writes poetry, and composes music, and paints pictures! And as for philosophy — he talks it better than my uncle the bishop!"....
[I]s Vetranio rich?"
"Half Sicily is his. He has immense estates in Africa, olive-grounds in Syria, and corn-fields in Gaul. ...[And] "You should see his cats! He has a perfect legion of them at his villa. Twelve slaves are employed to attend on them. He is mad about cats, and declares that the old Egyptians were right to worship them. He told me, yesterday, that when his largest cat is dead, he will canonize her, in spite of the Christians! And then he is so kind to his slaves! ......

[Later, after much description of  the villain, Collins says:] Not the slightest description of him is needed; for he belonged to a class with which moderns are as well acquainted as ancients—a class which has survived all changes of nations and manners—a class which came in with the first rich man in the world, and will only go out with the last. In a word, he was a parasite.....He enjoyed, however, one great superiority over his modern successors. In his day flattery was a.profession — in ours it has sunk to a pursuit.....

[Another picture of the villain in the story, describes him asleep.] Immediately above the sleeping senator hung his portrait, in which he was modestly represented as rising by the assistance of Minerva to the top of Parnassus, the nine Muses standing round him rejoicing. At his feet reposed a magnificent white cat, whose head rested in all the luxurious laziness of satiety on the edge of a golden saucer, half filled with dormice stewed in milk....
...
[Later] "The ancient Egyptians ...were a wise nation!" murmured the senator,.. "I am myself descended from the ancient Egyptians; and, therefore, I hold in high veneration that cat in your lap, and all cats besides. Herodotus—an historian whose works I feel a certain gratification in publicly mentioning as good—informs us that when a cat died in the dwelling of an ancient Egyptian, the owner shaved his eyebrows as a mark of grief, embalmed the defunct animal in a consecrated house, and carried it to be interred in a considerable city of Lower Egypt, called, 'Bubastis'—an Egyptian word, which I have discovered to mean The Sepulchre of all the Cats....

T. S. Eliot praised The Moonstone as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels...in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe." I doubt he even read Antonina.