Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Creating is changing; or, childless cat ladies for the win!

Jul 27, 2024

A picture book that isn’t as well known in the UK as it should be is Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. I was reminded of this book recently in a discussion on Pamela Leavey’s post about lupines (or lupins as we call them in the UK). The message of the book, passed on to young Miss Rumphius (Alice) by her artist grandfather, and then later passed on from the elderly Miss Rumphius to her great-niece (also called Alice), is that ‘you must do something to make the world more beautiful.’1 Pamela’s Substack Words and Pictures is certainly making the world more beautiful.

Words and Pictures by Pamela Leavey

Photo Essay: Lucious Lupines

Greetings Readers, I am here today to wish you all a beautiful day and offer you some flowers. Not just any flowers, mind you, these flowers are luscious lupines which bloom in Eastport, Maine every June. Earlier this month, I featured another photo essay titled…

2 years ago · 106 likes · 33 comments · Pamela Leavey

Miss Rumphius, published in 1982, was based partly on the life of Hilda Hamlin. Like both Hilda Hamlin and Barbara Cooney, Miss Rumphius travels the world before settling to live by the sea in Maine. Unlike Hamlin and Cooney, Miss Rumphius remains single; however, both Hamlin and Cooney were divorced at a time when divorce was far less accepted than it is now. We follow Miss Rumphius from her girlhood at the turn of the 20^th century through to old age, seeing her grow and slowly age.

One of the themes of this book is change. We see the changes in the world over the course of the 20^th century: the changes in fashion, the differences in homes, the move from horse-drawn carts to motor cars. Like her grandfather before her (and her great-niece to come), Miss Rumphius plans to travel to ‘faraway places’ and then settle down to live by the sea. The sea, however, is a place of constant change, with its tides ebbing and flowing.

Unlike her grandfather Miss Rumphius does not become an artist. She becomes a gardener. There is, inherent in all acts of creation, whether in art, or gardening, or writing, a push for change. Creating is changing the world in some way. Interestingly, Cooney depicts a positive image of a woman with a fulfilling and creative life who doesn’t have children. For a book published in the early 80s this is refreshing. Childless cat ladies for the win!

On the subject of cats, it is poignant that there are a series of cats in Miss Rumphius’ life, from the calico cat of her childhood, to the loyal black and white cat keeping her company in her illness and trotting behind her on local adventures in her middle years. In the final picture of her there are two cats sat with the many children enjoying her tales. A sad reminder that we will outlive many of our beloved pets.

As well as the cats, there are friends who are a brief part of Miss Rumphius’ life, including Bapa Raja, whose mother-of-pearl shell gift is on her mantlepiece at the end of the book. I think we all have people who are a big part of our lives briefly and then are gone: friends, colleagues, people we meet who affect us in some way. When my first son was a baby I was a ‘house mother’, opening my home to overseas students who were in the UK for a time to improve their English. Some stayed for just a week or two, but several lived with me for the best part of a year. I think about them sometimes, remembering them, of course, at the ages they were 20 years ago and forgetting that they will all be grown up now!

As well as the changes we see over the course of Miss Rumphius’ life, there are also threads of consistency. Barbara Cooney weaves this idea of constancy into the illustrations throughout the book. The ships’ masts and rigging from the first page are echoed in the trees of the home where Miss Rumphius finally settles. The retired Miss Rumphius leans on the rails of her home, looking out over the sea, much as she does as a girl at the beginning of the book, despite the change from a busy port to the remote Maine coastline.

Miss Rumphius has inherited a number of items from the grandparents who raised her: paintings, a conch shell and a wicker chair. These are all in the final picture of her in her living room, which is similar in colour scheme and cosiness to that of her childhood home, with a roaring fire, comfy chairs, cats and books.

There are also items that Miss Rumphius has collected or been given through her work and travels. The mother-of-pearl shell on her mantlepiece from Bapa Raja. The floor cushions made from fabric she has brought back from Guinea (it matches the fabric her friends’ skirts are made from). The stacked bookshelf and green lamp reminiscent of her time as a librarian.

This is a story that spans at least five generations, from Miss Rumphius’ grandparents (and the previous generations in the family portraits on their mantlepiece) to her great-niece. As well as the heirlooms that are passed down the generations, there are various familial similarities. History often repeats itself in families – there are certainly common themes in the lives of my family going back generations! Miss Rumphius’ grandfather was a traveller who lived by the sea, and both she and her great-niece express from a young age a wish to do the same. In the final picture of Miss Rumphius, the younger Alice is sat listening to her great-aunt’s stories, wearing a sailor top, reminiscent of the sailor outfit worn by the older Alice in her girlhood, but paired with jeans and running shoes, and with the curly, red hair she has inherited from her great-aunt cut short. Things change and stay the same.

As well as the physical things we inherit from our families, both deliberately and accidentally, stories and values are also passed along. In the book, values are deliberately taught by the older members of the family (‘“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”’), but in real life it is often less explicit. In childhood we pick up stories and values in snippets, trying to make sense of them over a lifetime. We have to spend time figuring out who we are, and what we believe and value, rather than just accepting or rejecting what has been handed down to us. This is what therapists are for!

Miss Rumpus has many names over the course of her life. She starts as Alice. The narrator, also named Alice, calls her my Great-aunt Alice. Then, as an adult, she is given a series of names by other people: Miss Rumphius, then That Crazy Old Lady, and finally the Lupine Lady. The title of the book is her public, formal name and the first paragraph of the book calls her the name she has in old age, the Lupine Lady. The names Miss Rumphius is given are ones that other people have given her. We don’t know the name she would use to introduce herself, or how she thinks of herself.

Is who we think we are more important than who other people think we are? My first instinct is to say ‘yes!’, but I don’t think it is as simple as that. Certainly the way other people think of us is sometimes entirely different to who we believe ourselves to be. There are as many versions of ‘us’ out in the world as there are people who have met us, or heard of us. Just as there are as many versions of a book as readers of that book. I suspect we wouldn’t recognise some of the versions of us that people hold in their minds! The difference between our outsides and our insides can be as different as the wintry outside and the tropical inside of Miss Rumphius’ park conservatory.

We are hearing Miss Rumphius’ story from someone else, her great-niece. Alice isn’t just inventing this story, she is retelling the stories her great-aunt has told her. She knows her great-aunt’s story because ‘she told me so.’ But this isn’t the same as hearing someone’s story in their own words. Miss Rumphius was also told stories by her grandfather, possibly including stories about his parents and grandparents, whose portraits sit on the mantlepiece of Miss Rumphius’ childhood home. These stories we have passed down to us through the generations are so valuable. But how can we know the veracity of them?

As well as a picture book in which a young narrator tells us the story of her great-aunt, Barbara Cooney’s book is also partly a fictionalised retelling of the life of Hilda Hamlin. How can we truly write about real people who existed in the world? The work of biographers and writers of historical fiction must involve difficult ethical decisions. I have often thought that I would like to write about the various interesting lives that my sister has come across when researching our family tree. There are stories there that I want to know more about, but cannot. But writing about people who really existed feels intrusive. They cannot consent to your interpretations of their lives, plus in the case of my ancestors the facts are thin on the ground.

For Jennifer Hamlin Church, lack of material was not a problem. She had stacks of letters and journals and unpublished memoirs to search through, as well as her own memories of her grandmother, when writing her biography of Hilda Hamlin (Harry and Hilda: Letters Home, published last year). One comment Hamlin Church makes in an article in a local newspaper highlights the difficulty of telling stories, whether our own or other people’s:

There were surprises, too, Hamlin Church said, “My grandmother liked telling a good story and was prone to a little melodrama. I know now that sometimes she didn’t tell the whole story, and other times, she just stayed mum—there was a lot she never mentioned.”2

Did Hilda Hamlin want her story told? I have no idea. I do know though that I want to read Jennifer’s book! Do I want all my letters and notes and journals discovered after my death and made into a biography? Errrr, no.

Because can any story told about our lives, even one we tell ourselves, be anything other than a fiction, given the huge number of details we would need to leave out, even if we were being fully honest about our flaws and mistakes? We are probably as little known to ourselves as others are known to us. I am currently rereading A Tale of Two Cities and chapter three opens with the words:

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.3

In all relationships, I think, there is an element of fiction. Our imaginations fill the gaps in our knowledge. At least with the relationships we have with people who are still living, we can attempt to close that gap between truth and fiction. But we are such multitudinous creatures (Internal Family Systems agrees with Walt Whitman) that no book or story could contain us.

We are creating as we go through life, whether accidentally or deliberately. Drawing or painting, writing, sewing or lace-making. Cooking, baking, gardening, playing music. Building and improving things, whether in the real, material world or digitally. Creating ideas, nurturing relationships, developing a character for a D&D game.

Sometimes what we do or create ends up being by accident, seeds that we sow carelessly in stony ground spring up and flourish and spread while we are busy doing something else (or sick in bed for a season, as Miss Rumphius is). Sometimes we work diligently at something, creating it piece by piece. But for all of us, making the world a little more beautiful, in whatever way we can, is a good value to hold and hand down to the generations to come.

Just make sure you check the seeds you are chucking around aren’t an invasive species!4

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