By 2007, it has become difficult to find Graham Oakley’s Church Mice books in-print in English. One place to look for them is at used book stores and through used book sellers on-line. Also look for the classic Church Mice adventures in your local public library. Perhaps if the publishing moguls at Macmillan/Antheneum look favorably upon the Church Mice books, they will reprint them again or release them in a collected anthology additions. We can only hope!
Undoubtedly the heroes of Mr. Graham Oakley’s twelve books about the mice who live in the Anglican church of Saint John, Worthlethorpe, England are Arthur and Humphrey.
Arguably the church’s cat, Sampson, could also be called a hero, but as the mice are oft to point out, he really is just a lazy, furball and not worth paying much attention to anyway. Arthur was the original church mouse, but despite the feline companionship of Sampson, he would get depressed and lonely. So he proposed an idea to the parson:
Arthur would invite Wortlethorpe’s entire mouse population to live in the vestry at St. John’s. There the mice would keep the church clean in exchange for a weekly allowance of cheese supplied by the parson each Friday.It took Sampson a bit to get used to living with hundreds of mice, and there were some rough patches from time to time, but generally all was peaceful... sometimes a little too peaceful. In 1997, after reading about the mice’s adventures over nearly the past thirty years, I wanted to meet them. So after a long flight from the States to London and after a long train journey from London to Wortlethorpe, I arrived in the peaceful town and set off to find the church.As I walked up the driveway of Saint John’s, I was greeted by, what can safely be called, a throng of mice. Evidently Arthur and Humphrey had spread the word about their forthcoming interview to be placed on the World Wide Web, and wanted to make a good impression.
My Conversation with Arthur and Humphrey
After brief introductions to the many church mice in the vestry, two mice, which I took to be Arthur and Humphrey, led me to a quiet corner. After offering me a cushion that I was to later discover belonged to Sampson, I began to chat with the two mice. Both are well groomed, slightly-round, graying church mice, and despite their growing years each is as fiesty and lively as ever. Their give and take with eachother and cross-banter was sometimes confusing, but thankfully I recorded our interview. You, of course, will not be surprised to learn that mice speak with very squeaky voices. Here is what Arthur and Humphrey had to say:
- INTERVIEWER:
- I am a bit embarrased to have to admit this, but who is who?
- ARTHUR:
- He’s Humphrey, and...
The mouse speaking points to the other mouse...- HUMPHREY:
- and I’m Humphrey.
The mouse that must be Arthur gives Humphrey the evil eye, but Humphrey continues on...
As you may know we are both Mice-of-Science, and are quite aware of things developing with computational devices and the Worldly-Wise-Web.- ARTHUR:
- The parson has a computer in the rectory that he uses to manage church accounts, and after our stint with WOMUMP such high-tech things are of quite interest to us.
Both mice nod.- INTERVIEWER:
- So how's Womump these days?
- ARTHUR:
- The Worthlethorpe Municipal Moon Programme? Well, as you likely know Arthur and I both trained as astronauts, and were the first astronautical church mice in history.
- HUMPHREY:
- A rather uninformed friend of mine who knew somebody who had heard on the telly that an astronaut was a camel with three humps.
- ARTHUR:
- For a while we couldn’t fathom how learning how to do ridiculously large sums, being rotated...
- HUMPHREY:
- ...and gyrated...
- ARTHUR:
- ...would make us into one of those, however, by the time we strapped ourselves into the space capsule, Icarus I, we were qualified as space explorers.
- HUMPHREY:
- The press called us 20th-Century Columbuses for a while. We were quite famous, and I might add, and the envy of the other mice. We gave exciting lectures on gravitational pull and computerized orbits for the others.
- ARTHUR:
- Strangely enough, the scientists that ran the programme...
- HUMPHREY:
- They did treat us quite abominably... Both mice begin to nod solemnly.
- ARTHUR:
- well maybe rather deservedly that they ran into hard times after our space shot. So, to cut to the cheese, WOMUMP is no more.
- INTERVIEWER:
- Well it is good to hear that you came out okay from that adventure. But tell me, I understand that there wasn’t always a this many mice living here at St. John’s. How did you all come to live here?
- HUMPHREY:
- That was Arthur’s doing.
- ARTHUR:
- At one time, it was just Sampson and me living in the vestry, and as places to live go, a mouse couldn’t do much better than living in a church. Great books to read, good loud pipe organ music, the occasional swim in the font, and a church cat who treated me like his brother.
- HUMPHREY:
- I still say he is a leopard in sheep’s clothing...
Ignoring Humphrey intrusion, Arthur continues on with his tale...- ARTHUR:
- Occasionally though, I would get a bit depressed. The only bad things about the church back then, was lack of food aside from candy left behind by the choir and the lack of mousely companionship. So after discussing an idea I had with the parson, I went to find some other mice to come and live in the vestry with me.
- HUMPHREY:
- He was a regular Pied Piper of Hampstead in those days.
- ARTHUR:
- The idea was in exchange for doing a few odd jobs about the church, such as polishing the congregation’s shoes during the sermon, picking up rice and confetti after weddings, and polishing the brasses about the church, all in exchange for...
- HUMPHREY:
- CHEESE!
- ARTHUR:
- Yes cheese, the parson would put a large helping of cheese in the centre of the vestry every Friday.
- HUMPHREY:
- Despite having my doubts, the rest of the mice in Worthlethorpe thought Arthur’s idea just splendid and took a vote on the spot for what varieties of cheese to ask the parson to purchase.
- ARTHUR:
- We mice voted for all the popular kinds of cheeses: Cheddar, Cheshire, Wensleydale, and, of course, something with holes in it. But old Humphrey here cast his vote for...
Humphrey suddenly grins!- HUMPHREY:
- Afghanistan goatsmilk cheese. Of course none of the others had a sophisticated enough palette to appreciate my selection, so I had to settle on Edam. The red wax crust has always appealed to my artistic nature.
Arthur rolls his eyes and looks upwards.- ARTHUR:
- Yes, yes, anyway things were going fine. We mice were keeping up our end of the bargain, the parson kept bringing us cheese every Friday, and Sampson did a spot of baby-sitting for the young mice.
- HUMPHREY:
- Everything was going fine until Sampson awoke from a nap and went crazy chasing everyone during the Harvest Festival service.
- INTERVIEWER:
- I noticed from reading your chronicles that in your first book, The Church Mouse, that only you, Arthur, are mentioned by name. Humphrey is refered to only as “the schoolmouse” and we don't learn his name until the second book. Any thoughts on that?
- ARTHUR:
- Arthur chuckles to himself.
You see, since the first book is about me and my idea to...- HUMPHREY:
- Interupting...
It was all part of the plan. You see the first book established what a miserably lonely chap Arthur is and how his life would be empty without the benefit of my educational insights and lectures. As you may have also notice, that neither the town, nor the church is named in the first book either.- ARTHUR:
- Only Sampson and I are named.
- HUMPHREY:
- Precisely! The important names, like Humphrey, were not revealed until the second book.
More to come...
The Church Mice Chronicles
The Church Mouse
Atheneum, 1972
The Church Cat Abroad
Atheneum, 1973
The Church Mice and the Moon
Atheneum, 1974
The Church Mice Spread Their Wings
Macmillan (London), 1975
Atheneum, 1976
The Church Mice Adrift
Macmillan (London), 1976
Atheneum, 1977
The Church Mice at Bay
Macmillan (London), 1978
Atheneum, 1979
The Church Mice at Christmas
Atheneum, 1980
The Church Mice in Action
Macmillan (London), 1982
Atheneum, 1983
The Diary of a Church Mouse
Macmillan (London), 1986
Atheneum, 1987
The Church Mice and the Ring
Atheneum, 1992
Humphrey Hits the Jackpot
Hodder Children’s Books, 1998
The Church Mice Take a Break
Hodder Children’s Books, 2000
Graham Oakley was interviewed in the February 26, 1979 issue of Publishers Weekly. Here are a few selected excerpts from the interview:
“I was going to open with a high view on top of the town and a series of stories about each building, starting with the church and moving on to the library and the town hall, but the first book, The Church Mouse was so successful I never got to the library.”
“No, I don’t have a cat myself, but I’ve always collected photographs of them. I try not to let anything human creep into my portrayal of Sampson, to keep him looking like a cat at all times. He does just what a cat would do in any situation, when he is frightened, happy puzzled. The church mice, on the other hand, are easy to anthropomorphize, and I think it’s no great affront to nature to do so.”
“I try to think, ‘How could a little creature get rid of a man?’... The devices have to be contrived. I suppose what I’m trying to do is create a James Bond-type story on the mice level.”
Text copyright 1997-2007 by David Czeck
Pictures copyright by Graham OakleyPage last updated on Wed Jan 31 06:08:17 EST 2007
