Although Whittington lived from about 1360 to 1425, the
story seems to have been pretty generally accepted for three hundred
years after his death. A portrait still exists of him, with one hand
holding a cat, and when his old house was remodelled in recent times, a
carved stone was found in it showing a boy with a cat in his arms.
Several similar tales have been found, it is argued, in which the heroes
in different countries have started to make a fortune by selling a cat.
But as rats and mice were extremely common then, and it has been shown
that a single pair of rats will in three years multiply into over six
hundred thousand, which will eat as much as sixty-four thousand men, why
shouldn't a cat be deemed a luxury even for a king's palace? The
argument that the cat of Whittington was a "cat," or boat used for
carrying coal, is disproved by the fact that no account of such vessels
in Whittington's time can be found, and also that the trade in coal did
not begin in Europe for some time afterward. And there really seems
nothing improbable in the story that at a time when a kitten big enough
to kill mice brought fourpence in England, such an animal, taken to a
rat-infested, catless country, might not be sold for a sum large enough
to start an enterprising youth in trade. Surely, the beginnings of some
of our own railroad kings and financiers may as well look doubtful to
future generations.
It is a pretty story--that of Whittington; how he rose from being a mere
scullion at fourteen, to being "thrice Lord Mayor of London.
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