Jemmerling Collection: Preliminary Catalogue

Great Northern Diver: thanks to Sue Doherty, Bird Photographer of the Year Attention to Detail category 2022,bronze award winner via The Guardian 

Title: Jemmerling Collection Preliminary Catalogue 

Author: Mr Jemmerling (or probably a minion of some sort)

Publisher: Not known but bound in crimson leather with gold lettering 

Source book: Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome (Swallows & Amazons #12)

In Great Northern? Nancy and Peggy Blackett; John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker; and Dick and Dorothea Callum are sailing gently around north west Scotland and the Hebrides with Captain Flint (Nancy and Peggy’s Uncle Jim). Their boat, retired Norwegian pilot boat the “Sea Bear”, comes into a sea loch late in the evening, in a sudden fog (it’s a wonderfully atmospheric description), and next day some of our heroes go for a long walk but Dick, a dedicated bird watcher, stops at a loch to do some bird watching and thinks he’s seen something unusual.

Dick decides to consult a bird expert he knows is cruising the area on the motor yacht, “Pterodactyl”, about whether or not he could have seen a Great Northern Diver nesting on a Scottish loch. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realise that the expert is Mr Jemmerling, an avid collector of birds eggs with a vast collection to his name. Jemmerling boasts to the horrified Dick that he has 18 Golden Eagle eggs, and sends a member of his crew to get a specimen of Great Northern Diver (the skin of a dead bird). There could not have been anything deader thinks Dick: so unlike the live birds he had seen fishing and swimming on the loch the day before. And Jemmerling shows him the beautifully bound Preliminary Catalogue of his collection; which must contain many thousands of eggs plus numerous stuffed birds.

Dick realises that Jemmerling will do almost anything to get hold of an egg from the Great Northern Diver, particularly as the books say it doesn’t nest in Britain. He is so rattled he gives more information about where he saw the Divers nesting than he meant to. Luckily Jemmerling mistakes Dick’s horror for admiration and doesn’t really try to stop him leaving “Pterodactyl”. But he does offer to pay £1 for an egg. He ups the offer to £5 when he sees Captain John who is older than Dick, and later offers £50 or even £100 when he meets Captain Flint. 

Great Northern? was first published in 1947 before birds nesting (collecting birds’eggs) was made illegal in 1954. Another law was enacted in 1981 but that hasn’t stopped unscrupulous collectors dealing in rare birds eggs to this day. £100 was a very large sum of money in 1947, especially as Jemmerling offers it to someone he thinks is a sailor for hire.

Spoiler alert: Mr Jemmerling manages to steal the special eggs but our heroes recover them and replace them on the nest. He tries, but fails to shoot the Divers and take the corpses to the finest taxidermist in London. He really annoys the local landowner by attempting to shoot wildlife on his property without so much as a by your leave. He fails to steal Dick’s discovery.

Also mentioned in Great Northern?, Dorothea is writing another book. Typical Dorothea. But she can’t decide if her hero should have a beard, or be clean shaven with a nasty scar. Or should her protagonists be Picts? Anxious about the invading longships from Scandinavia? And should she add a foggy sequence based on their experience in the sea loch?

As with all Dorothea’s attempts at writing novels, it seems unlikely that Romance of the Hebrides will ever be published, or finished. Or even written? It’s hard to write a book when you have adventures to keep you busy.

Great Northern Diver: thanks to eBird