Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 30, 2006 at 11:00:05 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Gibber posted by Prue Eckett on March 30, 2006 at 06:46:17:
Famous primate pets in fiction: Maisky, the pet monkey in Anthony Powell's 'Dance to the Music of Time'. This was the '30s when such things were fairly common; Cyril Connolly (Powell's friend) kept ring tailed lemurs, which would be frowned on nowadays too.
Maisky was named for his resemblance to the Soviet Ambassador in London, who had a distinctly simian look. The literary Maisky got into a fight with the butler over a biscuit. The butler came off second best, and died of blood poisoning from a monkey bite, and so Maisky was put down. As one of the characters in the book says, the butler tried to steal the biscuit so it hardly seemed fair.
I think Gibber was a lovely invention; the present of any child's dreams. But AR was far too sensible to keep him around, except to use him brilliantly as a 'Deus ex machina' to kick off Missee Lee. But he knew his readership well enough to know that he couldn't simply be dropped from the 'real' books, so he eased him out via the zoo and subsequent references to visits. AR's sheer skill as a writer is always a pleasure to observe...