The Life and Perambulation of a Mouse[114] was Dorothy Kilner’s contribution to the literature of talking beasts. The author is discovered in a frontispiece, seated at a little round table, in a mob-cap and kerchief. Her quill has just reached the end of the second line. Erect in a box of wafers, the Mouse, with extended paw, is dictating the story of his life.
This “chief of aunts,” snow-bound in a country house with many “young folk,” takes up her pen at their request, to attempt her autobiography.
“I took up my pen, it is true”, she writes, “but not one word toward my appointed task could I proceed....
‘Then write mine, which may be more diverting’, said a little squeaking voice.”
Few “Introductions” were so promising, and the story (apart from inevitable lessons) keeps its promise.
Four mice, Nimble (the narrator) and his brothers Longtail, Softdown and Brighteyes, correspond to Mrs. Trimmer’s nestlings; over whom, to a child’s mind, they have one advantage: they are outlaws, repeating in miniature the adventures of Robin Hood.
To be sure, they lack the outlaw’s chief virtues, for they fly at the approach of an enemy, and rob rich and poor alike. And although such creatures could always be excused in the words of Dr. Watts:
“For ’tis their Nature too,”
a problem remains to puzzle the wit of a little philosopher: how it happens that creatures so keenly alive to human errors are blind to the iniquity of eating a poor woman’s cake, a present from her foster-son, or the solitary candle that lights a poor man to bed. For indeed, these mice are unsparing critics of cowardly, cruel and overbearing children; they have a full repertory of moral and cautionary tales; they preach sermons on human courage and honour.
The child of action puts aside all questioning, jumps nimbly into a mouse’s skin and makes a fifth on these marauding expeditions. He scuttles along behind the wainscot, buries himself in the most delicious of plum cakes, outwits the footman, narrowly escapes the trap and thrills at his first sight of the cat.