This was hardly reassuring, but the Mayor’s official reprimand of the previous day still rankled in this unforgiving young person’s mind.
On their reaching the Château the Mayor was conducted aside, to be dealt with by Thibault; and from the sounds of agonised protestation and lament which shortly reached Jeanne’s ears, it was evident that he was having a mauvais quart d’heure. The young lady was shown respectfully into a chamber apart, where she had hardly had time to admire sufficiently the good taste of the furniture and the magnificence of the tapestry with which the walls were hung, when the Seigneur entered and welcomed her with a cordial grace that put her entirely at her ease.
“Your punctuality puts me to shame, fair mistress,” he said, “considering how unwarrantably I kept you waiting this morning, and how I tested your patience by my ignorance and awkwardness.”
He had changed his dress, and the lace round his neck was even richer than before. Jeanne had always considered one of the chief marks of a well-bred man to be a fine disregard for the amount of his washing-bill; and then with what good taste he referred to recent events — putting himself in the wrong, as a gentleman should!
“Indeed, my lord,” she replied modestly, “I was only too anxious to hear from your own lips that you bore me no ill-will for the part forced on me by circumstances in our recent interview. Your lordship has sufficient critical good sense, I feel sure, to distinguish between the woman and the official.”
“True, Jeanne,” he replied, drawing nearer; “and while I shrink from expressing, in their fulness, all the feelings that the woman inspires in me, I have no hesitation — for I know it will give you pleasure — in acquainting you with the entire artistic satisfaction with which I watched you at your task!”
“But, indeed,” said Jeanne, “you did not see me at my best. In fact, I can’t help wishing — it’s ridiculous, I know, because the thing is hardly practicable — but if I could only have carried my performance quite through, and put the last finishing touches to it, you would not have been judging me now by the mere ‘blocking-in’ of what promised to be a masterpiece!”
“Yes, I wish it could have been arranged somehow,” said the Seigneur, reflectively; “but perhaps it’s better as it is. I am content to let the artist remain for the present on trust, if I may only take over, fully paid up, the woman I adore!”
Jeanne felt strangely weak. The official seemed oozing out at her fingers and toes, while the woman’s heart beat even more distressingly.
“I have one little question to ask,” he murmured (his arm was about her now).
“Do I understand that you still claim your bonus?”
Jeanne felt like water in his strong embrace; but she nerved herself to answer, faintly but firmly, “Yes!”
“Then so do I,” he replied, as his lips met hers.
· · · · · · ·
Executions continued to occur in St. Radegonde; the Radegundians being conservative and very human. But much of the innocent enjoyment that formerly attended them departed after the fair Châtelaine had ceased to officiate. Enguerrand, on succeeding to the post, wedded Clairette, she being (he was heard to say) a more suitable match in mind and temper than others of whom he would name no names. Rumour had it, that he found his match and something over; while as for temper — and mind (which she gave him in bits). But the domestic trials of high-placed officials have a right to be held sacred. The profession, in spite of his best endeavours, languished nevertheless. Some said that the scaffold lacked its old attraction for criminals of spirit; others, more unkindly, that the headsman was the innocent cause, and that Enguerrand was less fatal in his new sphere than formerly, when practising in the criminal court as advocate for the defence.
The Non-Fiction
Mayfield, Cookham, now Herries Preparatory School — Grahame’s last home. On his retirement, Grahame returned to Cookham, where he had lived as a child.
FIRST WHISPER OF ‘THE WIND OF THE WILLOWS’
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION by Elspeth Grahame
A PERSONAL TRIBUTE
BERTIE’S ESCAPADE
LETTERS by Kenneth Grahame
The original frontispiece
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY THANKS are due to the Librarian of the Bodleian Library for permission to include in this book “Letters to his Son” (hitherto unpublished) and “Bertie’s Escapade” from MSS. now in their possession.
E. G.
INTRODUCTION by Elspeth Grahame
HISTORY may be told in two ways: backwards or forwards — just as a river may be traced from its finish where a battleship may ride, to its tiny, moss-covered source which could scarcely harbour a child’s paper boat, or from the all but untraceable trickle of the river to its ending.
Now to start on our history backwards: here is the book itself, speaking for itself into many ears and into many hearts. This requires no explanation nor comment. But how the completed book came into being, does. And as such evidence is rarely available, let me furnish it in the form of ‘Whispers’ one — two — and three, in their sequence backwards, which takes us to the very earliest and softest whisper of all.
First of these are the ‘letters’ on which the book is based, which were written by Kenneth Grahame as a substitute for the bedtime stories told by him to his little son who — refusing point-blank to go away to the seaside, because he would miss the adventures of Toad — was promised by his father that further instalments of these should be forwarded to him in writing, and this was done almost chapter by chapter. His nursery-governess who read the ‘adventures’ aloud to the child, evidently saw there was something unusual about them, for she preserved them and posted them to me for safe keeping, knowing full well that, if restored to the author, they would merely be consigned to the waste-paper basket.
No one had ever heard these stories related, except the child himself. But once I remember, on asking my maid to tell Kenneth that we were already very late in starting for some dinner-party, that she mentioned: ‘Oh, he is up in the night-nursery, telling Master Mouse some ditty or another about a toad.’
This maid was of Wiltshire origin and used words now almost obsolete in their meaning, such as ‘ditty’ for story, and ‘clown’ for fool.
I had another peep into the ‘toad-ditty’ some time later when we were spending part of our summer holiday at a famous old Scottish castle where one day some neighbours (as neighbours go in an isolated part of Scotland) came over to tea. They were very late in arriving, distances being great in those parts, and hills steep for the horses, then still in common use, and therefore our small boy had already gone to bed, and Kenneth was in attendance with his bedtime story. One of the visitors, having expressed a great desire to meet Kenneth, was directed to the night-nursery along many winding passages and landings. She was a long time in returning and, on being asked if she had had a nice talk with Mr. Grahame, said she had not seen him.
‘But surely, you could not have taken all this time to find your way there and back!’
‘No,’ said the lady, ‘though I did not see him, I have been listening to him spell-bound through the door which fortunately happened to be just ajar, and I heard two of the most beautiful voices, one relating a wonderful story, and the other, soft as the south wind blowing, sometimes asking for an explanation, sometimes arguing a point, at others laughing like a whole chime of bells — the loveliest duet possible, and one that I would not have interrupted for the world But the subject under discussion was so entrancing that I only wished I could have taken down every word of it, so that others — indeed a world-ful of others — might have the chance of enjoying the story as much as I did.’
‘What was the story about?’ inquired the company.
‘To tell you that, I should need to be as skilful as the actual teller of the tale, and all of you as appreciative as the one to whom it was told.’
‘Well, tell us something about it, after liste
ning to it all this long time!’
‘It sounded like music, and every word slid just into its rightful place. There was magic in it, there was sense in it, and above all there was beauty in it.’
‘Yes! But what was it all about? Do tell us that! Fairies? Real people? Children? Places?’
‘None of these. But I know there was a Badger in it, a Mole, a Toad, and a Water-rat, and the places they lived in and were surrounded by.’
‘Oh, I see, or rather I don’t — but it seems to have kept you standing outside that door so long that if we don’t start now we shall be late for dinner.’
‘It didn’t seem long to me, as I could have listened to Mole and Rat and Badger for ever, and was quite unconscious of standing outside a door, or indeed of being in any material world at all, till I looked at my watch and found I had to return to it.’
And then for some years, no further glimpse into the future Wind in the Willows was vouchsafed to me, when I chanced to see the Letters to his son, returned to me from the seaside. And possibly no more would ever have been heard of Otter, Badger, Mole, Toady, Ratty and all the other ‘Characters’, but that a lady-agent for an American Firm of Publishers arrived in a taxi from London at the house in Berkshire where we were living, to proffer a request that Kenneth would write something for them on any subject and at any price he desired.
Kenneth said he had nothing ready, and as he ‘regarded himself not as a pump, but as a spring,’ he could not hold out any particular hopes as to when he would have anything to offer. The lady seeming very disappointed at failing in her mission, I bethought me of the bedtime stories now more or less in manuscript form, and after some discussion, it was decided that the adventures of Toad, Mole, and Company should go farther afield and be published in America.
They arrived there, but occasioned bitter disappointment. Where were the children first met with in The Golden Age and their adventures, together with their successors in Dream Days? Not a trace of them. But in their place: animals, not even ‘domestic’, but from wild wood, river- banks and other obscure and unaccustomed haunts. The impasse between what was supplied and what was demanded was great and seemed insurmountable.
It is, of course, a known fact that once an author has made a success with one type of book, he must continue to take that as a model. It reminds me that Anstey Guthrie told me that his publishers in begging a further work from him, after the triumph of Vice Versa, suggested that he might write a companion story about ‘a girls’ school’. ‘Now what,’ said he, ‘should I know regarding a girls’ school?’
So evidently the American publishers were quite at a loss how to adapt themselves to the transmutation of those very realistic boys and girls, such as their readers could comprehend, into animals, and wild animals at that.
Therefore Kenneth asked for the MS. to be sent back, and it was forthwith published in England, and when the head of that American firm saw how the book made its way into the hearts of its English readers he was a sad man, and lived to call his beautiful American country-home by the name of ‘Toad Hall’.
Another enthusiastic reader of Kenneth’s former books in the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, the then President, was also disappointed by the reviews of The Wind in the Willows, which he made up his mind not to read, so as not to spoil his admiration of The Golden Age and Dream Days. He had himself just published an article in one of the American magazines, denouncing the Brer Rabbit school, saying that stories confounding animals with human beings were both bad natural history and bad literature. But six weeks after The Wind in the Willows was published, the President wrote to Kenneth saying: ‘I knew from the reviews of your latest book how much it differed from the former ones, in which my wife and I could pass an examination, and especially in the psychology of Harold. So I just made up my mind that I would not read it, in order not to disturb my love of the other books. However, being at work one evening in Mrs. Roosevelt’s sitting-room, where she was reading aloud The Wind in the Willows to the younger children, I saw I should have to revise my opinion, and I have since read the book three times, and now all the “characters” are my dearest friends.’
Note, that the characters were all animals!
This reminds me how once, on returning from a holiday abroad, we found — amongst a heap of letters, circulars, and parcels and all the postal accumulations waiting for us — a parcel from the U.S.A. containing two copies of The Wind in the Willows, and inside one ‘This is for Kermit, not Ethel’ in Theodore Roosevelt’s own handwriting — with a further explanation that as Kermit, then a small boy, had taken the trouble to send to England for a special edition of the book, and Ethel had contented herself with forwarding an American one, Kermit did not want his transferred to Ethel.
He was then only a little boy, but it shows how thorough he was. Now he has just given his life as a thorough-going ally in our cause.
We had to assume that the children’s books were sent to be autographed — though no reference was made to this.
Now we must travel farther up the stream which leads us to a yet earlier whisper of The Wind in the Willows, namely ‘Bertie’s Escapade’.
This was written all in Kenneth’s own beautiful handwriting as a contribution to a children’s magazine, whereof the joint editors were the small daughter of S. Sullivan, the artist, and our own boy, not yet able to write, who dictated his material to his nursery-governess. There were many distinguished authors, poets, and artists, but none of the contents have ever been published or even printed. The undertaking was known as the ‘Merry-Thought’, and Sullivan did a really beautiful design for the cover of the first number, depicting his daughter and our own small boy pulling a merry-thought so valiantly as to suggest a tug-of-war.
So here is how the story came to be written down. And now for its origin.
I may preface this by mentioning that the names of people, places, and animals are all real.
It all began by Albert King requesting Kenneth to have the fence round the sty of Bertie, our black pig, heightened, as he had taken a standing jump and cleared the existing one. Albert King, as Bertie’s guardian, felt bound to be reproachful as to this episode, but was evidently bursting with pride on such an achievement, which he said was unique in his experience, since the fence was of quite average dimensions and Bertie very fat.
So, the nursery party being specially interested in Bertie’s adventure, Kenneth founded his story for the Merry-Thought on that strange happening. As it was intended for a very youthful circle, he wrote of places and ‘characters’ well known to the children. We were neighbours of Mr and Mrs. Stone whose large kennel of seventy dogs was to be let loose on the poor heroes of the story, to save Mr. Stone the trouble of going downstairs in the middle of the night, in order to warn them off the premises.
We were then living at Cookham-Dene in Berkshire, and this being on high ground above Cookham-on-Thames, may very well have suggested to Kenneth a lift between the two levels. Indeed, Cookham-Dene was so far removed from civilization that prevailed in its namesake below that the inhabitants, who were mostly of gipsy origin, were known as ‘the mountainy men’ and were a lawless brood — so much so that, according to legend, a parson of former days was forced to take off his coat and fight a bullying husband as the only means of remonstrating with him.
So what more natural than that the lift should be controlled by a mole who would be experienced in underground transport.
All the animals in the story are given their actual names and characteristics, and are in a sense the forerunners of those in the book itself. Note also the items in the picnic- feast, garnered from the Mayfield larder, as they correspond with those of the al fresco lunch which the water-rat’s hamper contained.
The whole thing is really a sort of rehearsal for The Wind in the Willows, though I think quite unintentional and therefore the more striking.
There is, however, yet another link on our way upstream, earlier even than the foregoing, of which there is
no written record, but I having been present through the greater part of its forging, can rescue it from oblivion.
Now comes the ‘Tug-of-War’.
This sounds very belligerent, but is merely the name I am giving, in default of a more descriptive one, to the first appearance of Mole ‘on any stage’. Perhaps I should rather have said ‘at any stage’, for there was another Mole who did appear on another stage, no less than Shakespeare’s. This was chronicled not very long since in a leader of The Times entitled, ‘The Gentleman in Velvet’, which referred to our Mole and ended up by saying, that his tribe would think Shakespeare a poor authority thereon in comparison with Kenneth Grahame, though the former does make Hamlet address the Ghost of his father as, ‘How now, old Mole?’ Here is the earliest known instance of the coming together of Kenneth and Mole. He, Kenneth, was changing for dinner one evening (the Mole being a gentleman always ‘in velvet’ is already attired for his late dinner) when, glancing from the window towards the sun-setting sky, behind a group of trees at the far end of the lawn, he perceived beneath them some sort of flurry or disturbance going on. He was dressed, barring his coat, but as yet unshod. However, what was going forward under those trees would ‘wait for no man’, and in a flash he was down the stairs, out of the door, and on the scene where a startling drama was being enacted, namely a vital contest between a robin and a mole for the possession of a seven-course dinner, in the shape of a very large worm. His bare feet, so swift in action, had carried him so silently across the soft grass that he was bending over the combatants and their victim (which was adding its own violent struggles to the fray) before they were aware of it.
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 63