Edith Somerville (1858–1949) is remembered for her books for grown-ups, usually written with her cousin Violet Martin. Together, the pair wrote books under the name Somerville and Ross, about life in the ‘big house’ in Ireland. It was a subject Edith knew a lot about, as she had grown up in a very grand house in County Cork.
Sadly, Violet died after a riding accident in 1915. Edith continued to write books under their joint names. In fact, she claimed that Violet’s ghost kept in touch with her and inspired her writing. If that sounds creepy (and it does to me), it was very fashionable at the time for the living to try to contact the dead. Some people believed that a ghost could guide your hand as you wrote, so the writing came from the spirit world, through the pen, into our world.
Somerville published a few books for children, and below you can see the front cover of one of these. It’s a book about my favourite animal, the elephant. (Have I told you before that I like elephants?) This one, from the Pollard collection in Trinity College Dublin, is about a poor little elephant who wants a longer ‘nose’.
Whenever I read this story, I wonder if Edith Somerville liked children at all. She compares the elephant to a little boy who is disobedient to his parents, and I don’t think she treats little Jung Boo, the elephant, very kindly. His Mam and Dad are very angry with him for complaining about his trunk, and in the end his Dad beats him so hard that he runs away.
Jung Boo asks all the animals he meets if they can help him grow his trunk, but no-one can. Finally he meets a very unpleasant tiger, who tricks the little fellow into going back to his cave. The tiger promises he can make the trunk get bigger. You’ll never guess how he suggests doing that. He tells Jung Boo to put his trunk into the tiger’s mouth, and then (NOW you can guess, aargh!) he bites the trunk right off. If that story is not horrible enough, the monkeys in the trees around think this is very funny, they laugh and chatter while thet tiger tricks the little elephant, and they even throw nuts at the poor trunkless one as he runs crying away. This story upsets me every time. Edith Somerville didn’t seem to like elephants much either – here’s how she describes Jung Boo’s Mam and Dad:
‘With long grey trunks and little eyes,
And thick round legs of monster size.
And though their looks were most absurd,
They uttered no complaining word.’
Maybe you think elephants look ‘most absurd’ too, but I’ve always loved their wrinkly skin and wise faces.
This sad story is digitised at the Internet Archive from a copy at the University of California Libraries, which is signed for some little boy or girl with the initials ‘A.S.K.’ by ‘the author’. Click on the page (above) to read the book and see the illustrations.
ACTIVITY: If you find this story as upsetting as I do, why don’t you rewrite it so it ends happily for little Jung Boo? You don’t have to do it in rhyme (unless you really want to.) Maybe you could draw a few pictures to go with your story.
Tarry at home - and travel in books! 