The Doings of David and Peter
II Little BIM BAMBO
The dictionary phrase “etymology uncertain” is coming to have a new meaning for me. Week by week there creep into our family conversations strange words and phrases which, at first inexplicable, gather a meaning through use and, losing their strangeness, enter into general currency. etymology uncertain - yes - but fairness makes me add, “probably coined by Peter."
Peter, aged just three, has already a queer gift of words that is all his own. As he works at his favourite puzzles, lying . flat on his tummy on the floor, he sings cheerfully songs of his own invention mixed with remembered scraps of nursery rhymes, or carries on an undertone of conversation with himself wherein strange words appear and are repeated and varied till they reach perfection.
He it was who coined “Mimper”, a word like one of Humpty Dumpty’s, which meant what he chose it to mean. I found it applied to gramophone records -~ certain ones were picked out easily because they were “Mimper records". Pressed to explain, he left it to David, who pointed to the mark across the label where the needle had scratched and, as if it explained everything, said:
"It's called Mimper because we watch the scratch go round and round."
As if this were not difficult enough to understand, Mimper also became personified and for a time, suffering from "spots", occupied my spare bedroom where, I was given to understand, a certain "Miss Johnson" was looking after him. Mimper provided a good excuse for much furniture removing, and when a wastepaper basket hurtled downstairs, the explanation that “Mimper did not want it in his room" seemed perfectly satisfactory to David and Peter, if not to their mother.
Sometimes at was possible to trace a derivation of Peter's words, as in the case of a rubber ring, which he cherished as his "funfeter", and which bears a possible connection with the "comforter" of his babyhood, though his own explanation of it was as enlightening as ever:
"It's called fumfeter because I wear it on my finger."
This fatal habit of inventing words obtruded into and spoilt many of our songs and stories. Miss Muffet became Miss Tuffin, and then, by an obvious association of ideas, was linked with "stuffing", so that ever afterwards she sat eating "roast stuffing" instead of the traditional curds and whey.
My effort to tell the Christmas story to David was also brought to an abrupt end by a cheeky voice chanting from an adjoining cot: “Baby Jesus, Baby Sneezus, Baby Sneezer" - an effort which reduced David to helpless laughter, and emphasised, if additional emphasis were needed, the desirability of instructing my serious son and the born humorist separately and not together.
As if to atone for the stories he had spoilt, in one moment of inspiration Peter gave us "Little Bim Bambo". How he came to be created I cannot tell. One moment he was not, and the next, so to speak, he was already installed in the House in the Wood, ready to receive visitors. Certainly, Peter's father gives some prosaic explanation of its derivation from the German version of "ding-dong-bell", which he had been singing to then, but this seems a poor reason for Peter's announcement: “I'm Little Bim Bambo", and the simultaneous demand of both boys at bath-time: "Tell a little Bim Bambo story."
Humbly I acknowledge that, in installing Bim Bambo in the House in the Wood, I stole freely from A. A, Milne, but before long the story was in command, and I only following where it led me. David and Peter, it seemed, knew what they did, and as they prompted, so I wove the story.
“Far away in the forest was a great, big tree - - - “
“Big as the table?" asked David.
"Just about. But, of course, it was round. And inside the great big tree lived Little Bim Bambé in his tree house. It had a front door, with a shiny knocker, and a window at the side so that Little Bim Bembo could look out and see who was coming. And one day, as he looked out of his window, who should he see coming through the forest but Little Red Horse and David."
“Me” said David, his eyes shining. (Little Red Horse, and most of the other characters who wandered in and out of the story, were boys and girls from a frieze of children of all nations which adorned their bedroom wall.)
"Hallo', said Little Bim Bambo. ‘Where are you going?’
"We were coming to visit you,' said David and Little Red Horse.
“'That's good,’ said Little Bim Bembo. ‘I've just made a big pudding, and I hoped someone would come to dinner,'”
‘David caught me up, protestingly: "I made the pudding for Little Bim Bambo, ‘cos I know about making puddings and he doesn't."
Hastily I adapted my story: "Little Bim Bambo had just put the steamer on the fire ready for his pudding, so you said you would make it for him. You all thought what sort of a pudding you would like.”
David looked puzzled Peter beamed and asked hopefully, with one of his quaint inversions: "What it was?" “David chose a jam pudding, with strawberry jam in it, so Little Bim Bambo went to his larder to get down a pot of jam"
"I made the jam for him," put in David. “I came another time and made it all for him."
"David made the jam for Little Bim Bambo in the summer time when the strawberries were ripe, and now there were rows of pots on Little Bim Bambo's shelves, So they put in ea big spoonful, and David mixed it up and popped it on the fire. Then Little Bim Bambo said he liked sauce with his pudding, but no one was quite sure about making sauces. Bim Bambo thought you started with butter, and Red Horse said his mother mixed in flour next, but David said that didn’t look right. A sauce ought to run about, and he thought they ought to add some… “
I paused, and David thought hard.
"Nook" he cried, triumphantly, using the baby word for milk that he cannot outgrow, "I made it for him?" he added breathlessly, but this was really going too far, and Mrs. Cow had to receive the credit.
"Now the sauce was cooking nicely, but Little Bim Bambo said it looked all white, and what he liked was pinky sauce. So he looked in his larder, and there was a bottle of pinky stuff."
"Did I make the pinky stuffy" asked David hopefully, but none too sure, and again had to be denied the honour. So dinner was served and eaten, and on the story went, with a visit to the farm for milk and eggs, and a walk through the forest to see Mrs. Rabbit, till David grew restless and asked, in a worried tone:
"and did I go home then?”
Quickly the story changed.
"David and Little Red Horse said goodbye and, popping into their motor, which was waiting at the edge of the forest, they drove through the lanes to the town, and on through the streets till they drew up at David's door. And there on the doorstep was his mother waiting for him.
" David gave a sigh of relief. There had been a moment when it had all seemed too real, and he had quailed at the thought of a night alone in the forest with Little Bim Bambo. The latter, on my knee in a bath-towel, looked up cheerfully unconcerned, with:
"what I did?" and, with never a quiver, accepted the fact that he tucked himself into the bed of grass and leaves that he had made. But, incorrigible humorist to the last, he grinned up at me “What happened when I blowed?" and, without waiting for an answer, gave his own:
"The leaves all went up and up and up - up to the light." His eye had reached it as he waved his arms aloft. Then, with that lightning change of subject which leaves the adult gasping, his arms descended, and he remarked, without pause, but as one who has finished with one thing and is ready for the next:
"Tell about a lamp -and a lamp standard."
Second thoughts being best, he amended it:
"Sing a song about a lamp, and a lamp standard."
* * * *
Just as the “children of all nations" stories had become an established ritual at getting-up time, so Little Bim Bambo became part of the bath-time programme, An incipient riot in which, to my shame, I heard phrases like "little idiot" and "you goop", learnt from an indiscreet parent, wes quelled immediately by the opening words of a new adventure. Always they were ready to supply details that I lacked. I had peopled the forest with deer and rabbits, but it was they who _ introduced the “big Jumbo" and insisted on “lots of little jumbos and monkeys." Borrowing from the Jungle Books, I installed an elephant nursery in a clearing, and & tumble-down house inhabited by monkeys. The latter proved rather a nuisance, as the story was always held up by a rain of questions when we reached the monkeys’ houses:
“Why did it tumble down? Was there a roof? Why not? Was there just a tiny bit of roof at the corners to keep out the rain? Why did only monkeys live there? why didn't people?" And, final puzzler, “Where did the monkeys use to live before they went to the tumble down house?"
On other nights, though, the boys helped instead of hindering the story. When David arrived in the snow with Kek the Eskimo, both on skis, and found the snow over Bim Bambo'’s door, it was Peter who put in, like a flash:
"So I put a ladder to the window."
When Mra. Rabbit came to tea unexpectedly with all her children - on the same day as David and Sam the American (who had come by air, tying their aeroplane to the tree with Sam's lasso, and sliding down it) Peter acted host nobly. There was, in David's honour, a chocolate cake, but when it had been cut into enough slices to go round, there was none left,
I had meant to imply that there was just enough, but Peter, who is always hungry, thought otherwise. Promptly he took up the tale: "So I went out and bought ‘nother cake for them. A big cake wiv lemon on, and little pinky ones wiv purple on top”
Truly it was a noble party when Peter played host. The Rabbit children, full to the brim, went home to their beds, and David hinted:
"Did I go too?”
It seemed unkind to leave Little Bim Bambo to deal with the debris of a party, so I hinted back that he and Sam helped clear up. He accepted the suggestion proudly, and organised the clearing-up between himself and Sam so thoroughly that Peter was moved to protest his rights as owner of the house.
"I did, too,” he shouted. “I swepted crumbs wiv a scrumb scroop."
We did not linger over the clearing up and, before dark fell, David was sitting on his own roof, while Sam zoomed on to his own home, It was an interesting side-light on the boys’ characters that, however far afield David might go in aeroplane, motor or sledge, the day must wind up with home and mother, while Little Bim Bambo, carefree and independent, could safely be left to sit by his fireside alone, or curl up in his grass bed. Though I sometimes offered Mrs Rabbit for company, he received the offer with complete indifference, Thinking back, I remembered the cuddly animals he had cast in scorn from his cot, and that dreadful evening when a frenzied family had scoured house and garden in vain, while David's voice wailed in endless repetition:
"But I want my old bunny!"
