When I was a kid, I read several old Tarzan books. I don't remember the adult Tarzan having a simian buddy, but I do remember that when he was orphaned in wildest Africa, he was befriended by a female "gray ape." I remember vividly that once when little Tarzan was sick, his ape-mother brought water to him the only way she could - in her mouth.

(He and his parents had been shipwrecked on the African coast, a wild and forested coast.)

Tarzan's parents had left a dictionary behind, and I remember him trying to get hold of the pictured items, but he couldn't scrape them off. Improbably enough, he mastered crude English by looking at the dictionary.

I remember him meeting Jane, but I don't remember anything that happened after that.