Micheline and Didi’s three-level tree-house was built with his own hands by Monsieur Renard. «À côté de la porte il y a une cloche. Il faut sonner la cloche pour entrer.» There are four rooms, viz. «la chambre à coucher de Micheline»—that’s her window upstairs above the door—«la chambre à coucher de Monsieur et Madame Renard,» «la cuisine,» and «la salle à manger» (downstairs, in a sort of burrow).
«Les enfants vont à l’école tous les jours de la semaine, sauf le samedi et le dimanche.» The schoolmaster is a bear. —«Il est très grave et parfois un peu severe. Mais, tout de même, les enfants l’aiment. Et il les aime aussi.» There are twelve pupils: Micheline et Didi, who sit in the front row with Bob the rabbit and a fox called Pierre. In the second row sit two little bears, Mimi and Rose. «À côté d’elles sont assis Jules et Jacques, deux levrauts,» i.e. leverets, or baby hares. Finally, in the back row sit Lucette, another hare, the twins Jean and Jeanne, and Guillaume, another bear. «Guillaume est un peu stupide.»
«Micheline aime l’histoire et la géographie. Didi est fort en calcul et en anglais.» «Bob est le bébé de la classe, mais tout le monde l’aime. C’est un drôle d’enfant et toujours gai.»
When Micheline and Didi go to the market they buy a dozen eggs, butter, cheese, a bag of flour, a loaf of bread, half a dozen bananas and «une livre de cerises.» They meet Bob at the boucherie.
«En sortant du magasin les enfants dissent, “Merci bien, Monsieur!” et dans la rue ils sautent, et Micheline dit “À la bonne heure! Maintenant nous avons de quoi acheter des glaces”.»
Mabel Compson Trumble (1889–1961) was the eldest of the six children of our great-grandparents, J. W. Trumble and Susan Davies. Auntie Mab, as she was known, was a teacher of French and English and for some years joined the staff of what is no doubt correctly presumed to have been an exclusive school for young ladies at Montreux in Switzerland. She was the author of “a French reader for young children” entitled Micheline et Didi, which, together with these charming lithographed illustrations by her brother-in-law, the artist A. E. (“Peter”) Newbury, and slightly less interesting ones drawn by a cousin, Arthur C. Trumble (more like diagrams, really), was published in Melbourne in 1935 by Macmillans, in association with McCarron, Bird & Co. It carries a charming and enigmatic dedication “À la petite Micheline qui m’a enseigné tant.”
Micheline and Didi are fox cubs who live with their parents, Monsieur et Madame Renard, in a comfortable, middle-class, three-storey tree-house with hammock. According to our eccentric cousin Robert, this brief but intelligent publication may be regarded as the first book ever written by a Trumble. But it also attests to the vision and prescience of McCarron, Bird & Co., whose shrewd proprietor obviously recognized that spark of genius that distinguishes Trumble women in every generation, as indeed his grandson Bruce Stewart did, and still does.
Auntie Mab went on to be secretary of the executive committee of the Queen’s Fund, based at the Melbourne Town Hall, in which role she was certainly well established by 1945. The Queen’s Fund was originally set up in 1887 as the chief permanent commemoration in Victoria “of the completion of the Fiftieth year of the Queen’s reign, raised by women, managed chiefly by women, for the good of women, and in honour of the long reign of a good woman, during which the general position of women has been in a hundred ways improved.” Lady Loch, its founder and inaugural president, stated that the Fund existed “solely for the relief of women in distress.”
Micheline and Didi’s three-level tree-house was built with his own hands by Monsieur Renard. «À côté de la porte il y a une cloche. Il faut sonner la cloche pour entrer.» There are four rooms, viz. «la chambre à coucher de Micheline»—that’s her window upstairs above the door—«la chambre à coucher de Monsieur et Madame Renard,» «la cuisine,» and «la salle à manger» (downstairs, in a sort of burrow).
