Mrs Hunger-Weeping

I’ve blogged previously that, as a child, I lived for reading and spent pretty much every Saturday morning in the local lending library. At some point when I was in Junior School, I came home one day to find that my Mother had been into the town food shopping and to pay the Council Tax (no Direct Debits where my mother was concerned, she manually paid (or avoided paying) everything) and, whilst there, had noticed that the Library was having a sale of old books for Not Much Cash and had brought home a big bag of books for me.

Two of my most treasured books for many years that, unfortunately, I sold as a student when skint (and now deeply regret) were a pair of “Jepsons”, properly known as Biological Drawings With Notes, Volumes 1 and 2, by Maud Jepson M.Sc (Manchester). I can’t find out a lot about Maud on the internet, which is a shame, but I do know that the first volume was published in 1938 and that the two that I had were both first editions. They are a set of beautiful pen and ink drawings, annotated in probably the most beautiful hand I’ve ever seen (during 6th form, I sat down and learnt how to write like Jepson - unfortunately, it doesn’t work well when one has to write quickly and I soon forgot how to do it!). I remember particularly the painstakingly detailed images, page upon page, of rabbit dissection, layer by layer. I learnt an awful lot from these two books over the years and, even though most of the dissections had been removed from school teaching in the years between Jepson and I, I learnt most of it from her amazing drawings. These books really captured the romance of science and of discovery and detail - they were certainly something to do with my drive to become a scientist.

Another book in the pile that day was one that vanished from my possession at some point - probably when I left home and all the books I hadn’t taken with me went to the charity shop. It took me many years to trace it on the internet and eventually I managed to buy a second hand copy a few years ago. The book was The Maharajah Adventure by Irmelin Sandman-Lilius, a Swedish-speaking Finn. I didn’t know it was a “foreign” book at the time and it was originally published as Maharadjan av Scha-scha-scha slé (“The Maharajah from Scha-scha-scha slé”) in Swedish in 1964 (and in Finnish as Sasassaleen Viltias (“The Ruler of Sasassale”) and the version I had was Ian Rodger’s English translation from 1966. As with the more famous books of the more famous Swedish-speaking Finn, Tove Jansson, it was a fantasy set in the woods and mountains of Finland - all dark forbidding trees and friendly creatures. It was a children’s book, probably aimed at little girls given that the main character is a little girl who has a talking doll. Said girl was based on her own daughter, so I’m told by the various webpages about the author. She is obviously pretty famous in Finland but, of course, why would anyone know of her books in England? The basic plot of the book involves said girl and said doll meeting a Maharajah who has exiled himself from his homeland of Scha-Scha-Scha-Slé and taken up residence in the woods of the North of Finland. Somewhere along the line a chase ensues with the protagonists running away from what has to be one of the best named character in fiction: the blunderbuss-wielding Mrs Hunger-Weeping - a terrifying enormous woman who chases the protagonists through the blizzards and snow drifts of the Finnish north.

I’ve re-read it as an adult and unfortunately, it’s not nearly as good as it was 20-odd years ago. Somehow Enid Blyton, Tolkien et al. all manage to hold up, but this one doesn’t. It’s still a nice story and I remember it really touched me as a child - Mrs Hunger-Weeping haunted my dreams for a while.