A Victorian Children's Book with a Rat Hero!

Here is the cover, followed below by the color plates from this lovely rarity. For the text, there is no author credited in my old edition but a turn of the century reprint credits "A.L.O.E." (i.e., "A Lady of England"), a prolific author before the 1870s, whose real name was Charlotte Marie Tucker (1821-1893).

   

Then I found that Billy, the smaller one, was afraid of us and screamed when he saw us. "It's only rats," said his brother Bob. "But I don't like them," cried Billy, seizing his brother's sleeve. It was so ragged that it gave way, for both little boys were dressed in tatters. "Never mind the rats, Billy; they won't hurt you." Of course we would not hurt him. We were very sorry for him.

   

Hamster was a beautiful little lemming from Lapland. He said, "I wish I was back in Lapland, among the icy lakes and the nice little huts made of bark, and felt, and reindeer skins." "But don't they give you plenty of food from these gardens?" I asked Hamster carelessly. He got into such a temper that I thought he was going to burst through the bars of his cage and get me. He blew out his cheeks till his head was bigger than his body. "Well fed!" he exclaimed. "Since I came to this hateful country I have never once had a chance to stuff out my cheeks with grain. Stingy men only give me a few grains at a time -- I who used to have a hundred pounds packed up in my own hole."

   

Whiskerandos and I crept on board the Nautilus that night, and we reached it by climbing carefully along a rope which fastened the ship to the shore. I was a bit afraid of such a bridge, but I was not going to let Whiskerandos know that. There were lots of rats on board, and being brown they were friendly; but I went off and made a home for myself in the captain's cabin, though I was careful to find a nice little hole out of which I could escape if I were in danger. Then one night I found Whiskerandos very uneasy. "I wish we hadn't come," he said. "Oh! Why ever do you wish that?" I asked him. "Because," whispered Whiskerandos, "the sailors are talking about catching rats and making a rat pie."

   

It was plain that we were going to be shipwrecked, people crying out, shrieking wind, and the captain's voice above all. We did not know what he said; but suddenly he must have given an order to lighten the ship, for our sack of corn, with Whiskerandos and myself inside, was splashed right into the sea. Ugh! how cold it was! How the water bubbled in our ears! The sack opened and we swam desperately; but our strength was going when we knocked against a floating cask and climbed up on to it more dead than alive. In the morning hope dawned. Our barrel had drifted towards a shore and the waves had grown quiet. "Let's dash in like rats," said Whiskerandos as he plunged into the water.

   

At the end of Rambling Rat's journeys he settles down in London. His autobiography ends thus: "We loved adventures and getting out of them; and in some ways we are useful to the world, for we eat up poisonous things that would get into the air, and our skins are useful to men. But Whiskerandos and I don't mean that our skins shall be useful for a long time. We are much too fond of fun, and too clever to be caught; at least Whiskerandos is, and for helping his friend out of danger he is the best rat friend that ever lived."

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