The Monkey That Would Not Kill

by Henry Drummond, Louis Wain (Illustrator)

Professor Henry Drummond (1851-1897) was a Scottish evangelical writer and lecturer. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he displayed a strong inclination for physical and mathematical science. While preparing for the ministry, he became for a time deeply interested in the evangelizing mission of Moody and Sankey, in which he actively co-operated for two years. In 1877 he became lecturer on natural science in the Free Church College, which enabled him to combine all the pursuits for which he felt a vocation. In 1888 he published Tropical Africa, a valuable digest of information. In 1890 he travelled in Australia, and in 1893 delivered the Lowell Lectures at Boston. His works include: Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883), The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses (1891), Pax Vobiscum (1891), The Changed Life (1891) and The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man (1894).

Genres: Fiction

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1897

About the author

Henry Drummond FRSE FGS was a Scottish evangelist, biologist, writer and lecturer. He was a friend and contemporary of the Rev. John Watson (the Kailyard novelist Ian Maclaren) at Stirling High School and the University of Edinburgh.

Many of his writings were too nicely adapted to the needs of his own day to justify the expectation that they would long survive it, but few men exercised more religious influence in their own generation, especially on young men. His sermon The Greatest Thing in the World remains popular in Christian circles.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another of those Gutenberg titles that made me think "Hunh?" I've had it on my Someday list forever and these last days before a week away from the computer seemed an ideal time for a short read, so here we are.

There was actually a bit more background to this story than I was expecting. In the preface, the editors of a long-ago monthly children's magazine called Wee Willie Winkie confessed that while they had been called away to Canada for a few months in 1891, their friend Henry Drummond had been in charge.
" And now our readers will understand to whom they are indebted for the quaint sayings and funny stories and Competitions betokening someone who "understood" boys—and girls too. And they will be grateful to a certain contributor who failed to send his copy in time for the monthly issue on one occasion, and so forced the then Editor to sit down and write "something." It was the first time he had ever tried to write fiction, and as the story grew under his pen, he began to realise the joy of creation. And so it was that, in spite of his playful deprecation of "such nonsense" being printed, the adventures of "the Monkey that would not kill" came to be told, and we know that we can do our old friends and readers no greater kindness than to dedicate these chronicles to them in permanent form, in memory of one to whom "Wee Willie" and his bairns were ever a subject of affectionate interest."

The date for this preface and the original copyright of the book was November 1897. Drummond had passed away in March of that same year, which I discovered when I stopped my reading to do a little research. When I read that he had been an evangelist and that "few men exercised more religious influence in their own generation", I thought this story would be full of preaching and not-so-subtle moral lessons.

But I was wrong. This is the tale of a monkey who was given to a missionary family and immediately earned the name of Tricky. If anyone has ever thought about having a monkey for a pet, reading about Tricky and the trouble he caused would certainly change their minds. When he pretty much destroyed the inside of the little mission church, Tricky was taken out to sea in a boat, I thought never to be seen again.

But I was wrong again. He swam to a ship and climbed aboard, proceeding to make mischief there, until the day he....well, he did something the sailors could no longer laugh at, and they set him ashore on a supposedly uninhabited island near Scotland.

But it turned out that there was a shepherd and his family living on the island, and Tricky became a member of the family, although not without quite a few rough spots in the adoption process. Yet just when you think Tricky's life will settle down and be calm, he gets monkey-napped! The second half of the little book is a story about a monkey called Gum, who the author admits to believing is Tricky himself.

I suppose the tender sensibilities of today's animal lovers would be offended at some of the things that happened to Tricky/Gum, but it was still a cute story and not as gruesome as other children's animal stories of the era. I like to think that Drummond had great fun writing about Tricky, and it seemed clear from the preface that the readers of that old-time magazine had enjoyed Tricky's adventures very much.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant children's tale